Gates of Fire

The next morning, Dienekes tells Xeones of the pity he has for Persephone, goddess of the underworld, to whom the spring at Thermopylae is dedicated. Dienekes tells Xeones that he was surprised when Xeones did not desert at Athens, as he had intended. Xeones explains that Diomache wouldn’t let him.

Xeones tells Dienekes the he finally found his cousin at a temple functioning as a sanctuary for abandoned women. Diomache has become a novice there, and Xeones is shocked by how aged she appears. He soon recognizes, though, that she has learned much compassion and wisdom from her hardships. Diomache tells Xeones that she had aborted the fetus conceived by her rape and had nearly died of blood loss but that Bruxieus had managed to save her.

She describes a dream she had at that time, while racked with fever. A goddess had appeared to her and she had realized that “our role as humans was to embody here, upon this shadowed and sorrow-bound side of the Veil, those qualities which arise from beyond and are the same on both sides, ever-sustaining, eternal and divine” (406-07). Xeones divulges his own divine vision to his cousin. She says that she forgot her vision for a time but that she was eventually drawn to the temple where she is content. When they part, they know it is forever.

Suicide awakens Xeones and informs him that Rooster has been captured. He is to be executed but has been granted the chance to talk to Xeones. Rooster warns Xeones that Xerxes is obsessed with finding a way to outflank the Greeks and that the Greeks have one day before he does so. Rooster offers to lead the Spartans to Xerxes’s tent in exchange for freedom for his wife and children, but he is not trusted.

A trio of Theban deserters are hauled back to the camp, and the Greeks work themselves into a homicidal frenzy. Dienekes defuses the situation by asking if everyone will accept the sentence he offers for the three men. First, he acknowledges that all the men were afraid in the night and thought of running, himself included. When a voice points out that, despite their fear, the other men did not run, Dienekes gives his sentence:

Let these men live out their days, cursed by that knowledge. Let them wake each dawn to that infamy and lie down each night with that shame. That will be their sentence of death, a living extinction far more bitter than the trifle the rest of us will bear before the sun sets tomorrow (415).

The deserters beg to be given a second chance but are denied and slink away in shame. A Spartan congratulates Dienekes on ensuring that no man will dare desert after this public shaming. 

An emissary from the Persians informs the Greeks that 10,000 Persian soldiers will be behind the defenders by the next morning. The Greeks believe this to be a trick and turn down the chance to withdraw.

On the second day of fighting, the Greeks hold their own, despite their line nearly buckling three times. Although the Persians manage to gain control of the defensive wall, the Greek lines remain unbroken when night falls.

Xeones recounts some of the deeds of valor he witnessed that day. Even slaves and squires are fighting now, and the merchant Elephantinos is shot through the throat and killed. When the Persians gain the wall, a lightning bolt strikes the cliff face opposite the shore. The Greeks take this as an omen from Zeus and rally and charge.

When night falls, news comes that the storm has wrecked a good portion of the Persian fleet. The Greeks are emboldened by what they consider favorable omens and refuse another offer to withdraw.