pilotpat's Full Review: Steven Pressfield - Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel o...
Last month, I stood on sacred ground. A tiny hillock near the sea, insignificant today to the masses speeding by on the Hellenic National Road. Even the simple, flat, marker atop the hill is invisible to all except those who make the short walk up the dusty, unmarked trail. On the other side of the highway, poorly maintained monuments don't do justice to the events that transpired here 2500 years ago. The few paragraphs in English and Greek on the sign next to the monuments give us a hint, but it's only a taste.
Despite the lack of external honors, this is holy ground.
Few people stop at the roadside monument these days, and even fewer brave the busy traffic to climb The Hill, but it was a pilgrimage for me, something I had dreamed about even before knowing I would move to Greece. To the student of military history, and others who know even a bit of the story, its name brings awe. Because on that tiny bump of land, Kolovos, what was left of only 4,000 Spartans, Thespians, and their allies made their final stand against the Persian hordes, having held off the invaders (who numbered between 300,000 and 2,000,000, depending on the account you read) for seven days. Then, after the shattered remnants of the allied forces were dispatched to defend Hellas against the inevitable break-through, the remaining Spartans and Thespians rallied to Kolovos and fought to the last man, using rocks, hands, and teeth as their weapons shattered from the continual combat.
Thermopylae - the Hot Gates.
The terrain has changed significantly since 480 B.C. The three sheer fingers of mountainside still reach towards the sea, but where they used to nearly touch it so that only a handful of men could pass at one time, the beach has widened to nearly a mile across. But it doesn't take much for those who know the story to imagine the scene of that hellish week, the phalanxes of Greek soldiers crashing into wave after endless wave of Xerxes' empire, filling the narrow gaps with over 20,000 of their enemy's bodies. Dust from the churned earth filling the air of the bowls between these gates. Thousands upon thousands of Persian arrows shrieking through the air. Yells of triumph, cries for help, and screams of terror punctuating the crashing of shield, scimitar, sword, and spear against armor and flesh.
The sacrifice of these valiant few delayed and demoralized the Persians enough to set the stage for their eventual defeat in the Straits of Salamis and the plain of Plataea.
The sand-colored marker atop Kolovos holds a simple epitaph, today obscured by a hand-woven wreath of olive branches left by an earlier visitor.
Go tell Sparta, thou who passeth by,
That here, obedient to her laws, we lie
THE STORY Gates of Fire tells the story of Thermopylae through the words of the Spartan Captain Dienekes' fictitious squire, Xeones, as he relates his tale to Xerxes' chief historian. Xeones is found underneath the bodies of his comrades, sent back from the dead, he says, by Apollo so that the story will not die with him.
The novel is fiction, but beautifully researched fiction. Beyond the writings of the historians of the day, Pressfield relies upon the historical and archaeological expertise of the best. His description of both the battle and the decades prior that set the scene is a riveting account, rather than boring recounting of historical facts.
Though the description of the battle of Thermopylae is unmatched, it is his illumination on the life and philosophy of Lakedaimona (Sparta) which makes this Novel one of my favorites. Xeones' unique experiences, which I will not reveal for the sake of saving the plot for the reader, give him a first-hand look at the journey of Spartan children, men, and women that forms them into the legendary and awe-inspiring polis.
One could argue that this is a book of theology as much as history. It is a search for something bigger than the individual, manifested in the search for the opposite of fear (the answer, with which I agree, may surprise you).
STYLE
The writing alternates between the first-person voice of Gobartes, the historian, and Xeones. The style is captivating and draws the reader first into the interrogation tent, where we can see the gravely wounded Xeones painfully but animatedly relating his tale, and then into the very eyes of Xeones as we trace his path from childhood as it knits itself to those of the famous and obscure in the story.
Though you can feel the painful weariness of the characters, the book is not tiring - it is habit-forming. Character development, from the protagonist to the several main characters, a strength of the novel, and it makes the world it draws us into all the more real. In my first read, I intended to spend a leisurely hour or so a day on the book, enjoying it over a week. I finished it in two nights. The only reason that it took me two is that I purposely set a time to stop reading a few hours before bedtime so that I could "cool down" and not dream all night of phalanx warfare!
I read in an earlier review that perhaps Pressfield uses too much archaic Greek terminology. I think that the weakness actually is that, in the interest of brevity, he does not go far enough to describe these terms. For the person enthralled as I am with ancient warfare, the terms are familiar, but I would think that the average reader may get lost at times.
Another detractor, one might say, is the concentration of vulgarity. This is intentional, as Pressfield wishes to convey the speech of a common soldier. If the modern-day common speech of Greeks is any indicator, Pressfield is on-the-mark. I have found that many Greeks are expert and fluent in their cursing, and the words they use are so graphic, they might cause blushes at a biker bar!
The real beauty of the book; however, is its description of the hearts of the warrior and of the women left behind, and the valor of both. Pressfield gets it right... really right.
OVERALL
A must read, as it brings the cold facts of the battle to life, and explains the reason why we remember it as a heroic stand instead of a tragic slaughter.
FAVORITE QUOTE "When a warrior fights not for himself, but for his brothers, when his most passionately sought goal is neither glory nor his own life's preservation, but to spend his substance for them, his comrades, not to abandon them, not to prove unworthy of them, then his heart truly has achieved contempt for death, and with that he transcends himself and his actions touch the sublime. That is why the true warrior cannot speak of battle save to his brothers who have been there with him. The truth is too holy, too sacred, for words."
FAVORITE SHORT QUOTE Said by Dienekes after being told the Persian archers were so numerous their arrows blocked the sun when they fired.
"Good, then we'll have our battle in the shade."
THE BASICS Gates of Fire
Steven Pressfield
Bantam Books, 1999 (Hardback by Doubleday,1998)
ISBN: 0-553-58053-1
www.stevenpressfield.com
In 480 B.C., two million Persian invaders come to the mountain pass of Thermopylae in eastern Greece, where they are met by 300 of Sparta s finest war...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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