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'Gates of Fire' by Steven Pressfield
Pressfield is an interesting character: X-Marine Corps grunt with a degree from Duke who has lived a vagabond life for much of his years including stints as a truck-driver, oil rig hand, and Hollywood screenwriter (he wrote "The Legend of Bagger Vance"). Pressfield has also written three acclaimed historical novels--Gates of Fire being one (fourth novel due out October of 2006). This book describes the heroic last stand of 300 Spartan hoplites and their 4000 Greek allies at Thermopylae. The name Thermopylae means "hot gate" (hence the book title). It is a narrow pass of land on the coast road wedged between the two mountains next to the sea at the northern entrance to the Greek heartland (just below Thessaly). Before the Greek city-states of Sparta and Athens were at one another's throats in the 27-year Peloponnesian War, they were allies against the invading Persians described as follow:
Xerxes I, king of Persia, had been preparing for years to continue the war against the Greeks started by his father Darius. In 484 BC the army and navy of Xerxes arrived in Asia Minor and built a bridge of ships across the Hellespont at Abydos to march his troops across. According to Herodotus, Xerxes had over five million men, while the poet Simonides estimated three million; Herodotus also wrote that the army drank entire rivers and ate the food supplies of entire cities. While these may be exaggerations, it is clear the Greeks were enormously outnumbered. Link.
The goal of the Spartans and their allies was merely to delay the Persians, not defeat them, at Thermopylae. The strategy was (a) to buy time for Greeks to assembly a larger army from the various city-states and (b) the vast size of the Persian Army required immense provisions to stay in the field thus stretching their supply lines. The turning point in this Greek-Persian War came not at Thermopylae but, later, when the Athenian fleet crushed the Persian fleet under Themistocles at the battle of Salamis. Without resupply via sea, a large portion of the Persian army was withdrawn from Greece and the portion that stayed was later defeated in battle.
Back to Thermopylae. King Leonidas (one of two Spartan co-rulers), was told before the battle by the Oracle at Delphi that the Spartans would either see their city in ruins or a dead king. Thus, Leonidas went on the mission to Thermopylae with the intention not to come back. The Spartans soldiers he took knew they went there to die. As legend goes, Leonidas took with him only men who had fathered sons.
Pressfield relies on the ancient author Herodotus. If one is to tell the story of the Spartans (as Pressfield aims to do), there is an inherent problem. The Spartans were said to have been killed to the last man so through whom does one narrate this story? Pressfield solves the problem through an innovative device: narrate through Xeones, a squire to a Spartan hoplite (hoplite = full citizen of Sparta, professional soldier, member of the elite class), who is said to have been near death (actually traveled to the gates of the underworld before returning to life) but was nursed back to life by Xerxes own physician, thus, preserved to tell the tale of the Spartans at Thermopylae.
Pressfield does a masterful job telling the tale of Thermopylae; however, this is a well known incident in history (the subject of an old Hollywood movie). What really impresses with this novel, though, is the story of a soldier's training in the Spartan tradition, the intricacies of Spartan society, and dedication to their code of honor. Nothing exemplifies Spartan dedication to the code more than the words on a monument to the Spartans who died at Thermopylae and placed at the site of the last stand (quoted in Herodotus):
Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
that here, obedient to their laws, we lie
This book was a best-seller in Greece, has been included in the curriculum of the U.S. Military Academy and the U.S. Naval Academy, and was on the Commandant's Reading List for the Marine Corps. In September 2003, the city of Sparta made Mr. Pressfield an honorary citizen. Can a historical novel garner higher praise than that?
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