The writing of the 1982 movie Conan the Barbarian is credited to John Milius and Oliver Stone. I don’t know which of them (or both?) wrote the following exchange, but it is famous:

Mongol General : Hao! Dai ye! We won again! This is good, but what is best in life?

Mongol : The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.

Mongol General : Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?

Conan : To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.

Mongol General : That is good! That is good.

If you’re more of a visual person, you can watch it here.

This brief scene basically sets in dialogue form the ancient priamel, a structuring technique of comparison through which a poet says, “Some people say [x] is best, and some say [y]; but I say it is [z].” Some famous examples are Sappho, fragment 16, and Horace, Odes 1.1.

But it almost seems to me as if the divided priamel is combined with the the refrain from the third stasimon (i.e., choral ode) of Euripides’s Bacchae (which is not a priamel, because nothing is compared);^[1] the Chorus simply tells us what is best. As the Chorus prepares for the divine vengeance about to be exacted upon the god-fighter Pentheus, they say that the best thing in life is to be victorious over one’s enemies. Their words are so close to what Conan says in certain respects that one could almost conclude that the movie is parodying it here. Judge for yourself:

τί τὸ σοφόν; ἢ τί τὸ κάλλιον
παρὰ θεῶν γέρας ἐν βροτοῖς
ἢ χεῖρ᾽ ὑπὲρ κορυφᾶς
τῶν ἐχθρῶν κρείσσω κατέχειν;
ὅ τι καλὸν φίλον ἀεί.^[2]

What is wisdom? Or what honor more beautiful is there

From the gods among men

Than to crush the head of your enemies

With a stronger hand?

Whatever is beautiful is dear forever.^[3]