Gates of Fire in The Complete Idiots Guide to the Ultimate Reading List

Mar 01, 2011 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, novels, fiction, ultimate-reading-list

It took a while for me to get into this story, but I did love the novel by the end. The story is framed as the first person account of a "squire" of the heavy infantry of the famous 300 of Sparta at Thermophylae, where in 480 BC a few thousand Greeks held off hundreds of thousands of invading Persians for days. Xeones tells his story to the Persians because he doesn't want his comrades who fell there and what they did to be forgotten.

Xeones, only twenty at the time of the battle, was made statel It took a while for me to get into this story, but I did love the novel by the end. The story is framed as the first person account of a "squire" of the heavy infantry of the famous 300 of Sparta at Thermophylae, where in 480 BC a few thousand Greeks held off hundreds of thousands of invading Persians for days. Xeones tells his story to the Persians because he doesn't want his comrades who fell there and what they did to be forgotten.

Xeones, only twenty at the time of the battle, was made stateless at ten when his city fell to fellow Greeks, the Argives who were Sparta's traditional enemy. Making his way to Sparta and choosing to fix his loyalty there, he is made a servant to one of the Spartan officers, Dienekes, who'll fight at Thermophylae.

The portrait of Sparta fascinated beyond that of simply military fiction because this isn't really a book about the battle, but what it is that within the Spartans, and within humans, that makes deeds like theirs possible. Sparta was the main model for Plato's utopia in The Republic, and the training was famously harsh. Pressfield's Spartans, although brutal by modern standards, aren't brutes though. As he presents them there is no sadism in how they train their soldiers, but an attempt to habituate them to pain and hardship and drive away instinctive fear, so that they can perform "the commonplace" drilled into them in "uncommonplace conditions" of battle.

Xeones greatly admires his master Dienekes, who is presented as a Spartan ideal even above Polynikes who embodies so much of the martial virtues. As Pressfield presents Dienekes, he's not an Achilles who single-handedly slays myriads, but a professional "whose primary attribute was self-restraint and self-composure" and it's this rather than bloodlust or even glory (Polynikes' ideal) that Pressfield presents as at the core of the Spartans martial success. Throughout his life, Dienekes has made his study the question, "What is the opposite of fear?" It's the answer he reaches at Thermophylae I found among the most moving moments in the novel.

At the same time, Pressfield doesn't airbrush out Sparta is essentially a police state, with systematic eugenic infanticide, informers, assassins for dissenters, and that its citizens have only one profession from the moment they are sent for training as young boys at seven-years-old until 60 years of age--war. Within a slave society even its citizens are essentially slaves. Xeones young friend Alexandros, a Spartan "peer," is more suited to be a musician than a soldier and feels a distaste for war--but he has no other options. Given that King Leonidas speeches about the need to fight for "liberty" against the Persians felt a bit hollow to me. The novel does soft-petal just how badly treated the helots, the state slaves were. In addition, from what I've read about Sparta, the mentoring system was a form of institutionalized pederasty in Sparta--someone like Dienekes wouldn't just be Alexandros mentor, but his lover. Nothing like that is hinted in the book.

Despite that, I can't help but feel admiration for Pressfield's Spartans and care about his characters. Leonidas himself is written as an able leader. Like another reviewer of the book, I'm more impressed by the achievements of Athens than Sparta. But it's because of Sparta's part in the Persian war that Athens survived to bequeath to us the cornerstones of Western civilization. Reading Pressfield I'm reminded of the quote attributed to Orwell--that we only sleep safe in our beds because "rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us."

Pressfield wrote a more thoughtful book than I expected, true to the emotions and experiences of military training and war from what I've read of it and heard of it from veterans. This raises it well above the visually spectacular graphic novel and film on Thermopylae, The 300. Pressfield's battle scenes are vivid and seem real because of how he conveys things like the emotional and physical exhaustion. And despite this being essentially a work of military fiction about a warrior society, I thought Pressfield did a good job with his female characters and historically Sparta was, in terms of gender, the most egalitarian of the Ancient Greek city-states, so his strong female characters are fitting.

He certainly does well by those who are buried near the memorial at Thermophylae with the famous epigram: "Tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie." ...more

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Mar 04, 2013 Christian Dibblee rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction

I realize this book receives tons of accolades from everyone, but truthfully I don't really know what the fuss is all about. Sure, there are some awesome battle descriptions and the speeches at Thermopylae sound so badass, but half of the book is spent following the protagonist, Xeo, in the Sparta schoolyard and escaping his home city. Those parts certainly provided an interesting view into Spartan life (their women sound like stone cold ice queens) but for half of the book?

Some of the character ...more

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Mar 05, 2010 Joel Judge rated it really liked it

In short a great book. A historical novel which tells of the ultimate sacrifice paid by the 300 Spartan's at the Battle of Thermopylae. A novel of great passion and vision, very moving and not a dull moment.

Gates of Fire explores the true meaning of courage, loyalty, bravery and self-sacrifice. The language is colorful, the story compelling.

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