Gates of Fire

by Steven Pressfield

Polynikes turned again to Alexandros. When he resumed now, his voice was gentle and without malice; if anything it seemed informed with something not unlike kindness and even, odd as it sounds, sorrow. “Mankind as it is constituted,” Polynikes said, “is a boil and a canker. Observe the specimens in any nation other than Lakedaemon. Man is weak, greedy, craven, lustful, prey to every species of vice and depravity. He will lie, steal, cheat, murder, melt down the very statues of the gods and coin their gold as money for whores. This is man. This is his nature, as all the poets attest. “Fortunately God in his mercy has provided a counterpoise to our species’ innate depravity. That gift, my young friend, is war. “War, not peace, produces virtue. War, not peace, purges vice. War, and preparation for war, call forth all that is noble and honorable in a man. It unites him with his brothers and binds them in selfless love, eradicating in the crucible of necessity all which is base and ignoble. There in the holy mill of murder the meanest of men may seek and find that part of himself, concealed beneath the corrupt, which shines forth brilliant and virtuous, worthy of honor before the gods. Do not despise war, my young friend, nor delude yourself that mercy and compassion are virtues superior to andreia, to manly valor.”