On 30th January 1943, Adolf Hitler’s close associate Goering made a radio broadcast to the beleaguered Sixth Army at Stalingrad on the eastern front. He compared the German army to the Spartan soldiers at Thermopylae in 480 BCE when they stood, fought and died to prevent the advance of the Persians (‘the barbarians’) into Greece. Goering’s broadcast was not well received. The dispirited and starving listeners described it as ‘our own Funeral Speech’ and some officers joked ironically that ‘the suicide of the Jews’, besieged by the Roman army on the top of Masada in 73 or 74 CE was a more apt comparison. This episode raises a host of questions about the reception of classical texts and ideas in later cultures. In this instance, not only was the classical allusion used as a model to sanction expectations of behaviour but further allusions were used as a counter-text to challenge the rhetoric of the high command.