Gates of Fire

by Steven Pressfield

I saw another light, a sicklier, cruder, more coarse illumination, and knew that it was the sun.

“Welcome, brothers. Since I find myself among allies, I am making a long-winded speech.” The officers settled in with an anxious chuckle. “I am telling the Spartans,” Leonidas resumed, “what I now tell you. You are the commanders, your men will look to you and act as you do. Let no officer keep to himself or his brother officers, but circulate daylong among his men. Let them see you and see you unafraid. Where there is work to do, turn your hand to it first; the men will follow. Some of you, I see, have erected tents. Strike them at once. We will all sleep as I do, in the open. Keep your men busy. If there is no work, make it up, for when soldiers have time to talk, their talk turns to fear. Action, on the other hand, produces the appetite for more action. “Exercise campaign discipline at all times. Let no man heed nature’s call without spear and shield at his side. “Remember that the Persian’s most formidable weapons, his cavalry and his multitudes of archers and slingers, are rendered impotent here by the terrain. That is why we chose this site. The enemy can get no more than a dozen men at a time through the Narrows and mass no more than a thousand before the Wall. We are four thousand. We outnumber him four to one.” This produced the first genuine laughter. Leonidas sought to instill courage not by his words alone but by the calm and professional manner with which he spoke them. War is work, not mystery. The king confined his instructions to the practical, prescribing ...

“Dogs in a pack find courage to take on a lion. Each hound knows his place. He fears the dog ranked above and feeds off the fear of the dog below. Fear conquers fear. This is how we Spartans do it, counterpoising to fear of death a greater fear: that of dishonor. Of exclusion from the pack.”

He declared that in all other questions one may look for wisdom to the gods. “But not in matters of courage. What have the immortals to teach us? They cannot die. Their spirits are not housed, as ours, in this.” Here he indicated the body, the flesh. “The factory of fear.”

He observed that often those who seek to overcome fear of death preach that the soul does not expire with the body. “To my mind this is fatuousness. Wishful thinking. Others, barbarians primarily, say that when we die we pass on to paradise. I ask them all: if you really believe this, why not make away with yourself at once and speed the trip?

“Further, experience has taught us,” Aristodemos added, “that honor and glory are boons which cannot be granted by the pen but must be earned by the spear.”

“When I first came to Lakedaemon and they called me ‘Suicide,’ I hated it. But in time I came to see its wisdom, unintentional as it was. For what can be more noble than to slay oneself? Not literally. Not with a blade in the guts. But to extinguish the selfish self within, that part which looks only to its own preservation, to save its own skin. That, I saw, was the victory you Spartans had gained over yourselves.

“The opposite of fear,” Dienekes said, “is love.”

I will tell His Majesty what a king is. A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not command his men’s loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden, a king lifts first and sets down last. A king does not require service of those he leads but provides it to them. He serves them, not they him.