Gates of Fire

“‘See how numb we are?’ the man continued. ‘We glide about in a daze, disconnected from our reason. You’ll never see Spartans in such a state. This’–he gestured to the blackened landscape–‘is their element. They move through these horrors with clear eyes and unshaken limbs. And they hate the Argives. They are their bitterest enemies.’” 

With this diatribe, a half-crazed survivor of Astakos impresses upon Xeones the almost mystical martial capabilities of the Spartans. From this description of the Spartans, Xeones determines that he will best be able to take revenge on the Argives by traveling to Sparta and attempting to enter their training program.

“Their own fear defeats our enemies...Never forget, Alexandros, that this flesh, this body, does not belong to us. Thank God it doesn’t. If I thought this stuff was mine, I could not advance a pace into the face of the enemy. But it is not ours, my friend. It belongs to the gods and to our children, our fathers and mothers and those of Lakedaemon a hundred, a thousand years yet unborn. It belongs to the city which gives us all we have and demands no less in requital.” 

Dienekes is attempting to impress upon Alexandros that mastery at arms means nothing without the bravery to stand and fight. He is teaching his pupil that it is loyalty to one’s city and one’s comrades that enables a warrior to ignore his own well-being and find courage.

“‘Have your instructors taught you why the Spartans excuse without penalty the warrior who loses his helmet or breastplate in battle, but punish with loss of all citizenship rights the man who discards his shield?’ They had, Alexandros replied. ‘Because a warrior carries helmet and breastplate for his own protection, but his shield for the safety of the whole line.’” 

The symbolic importance of the shield is clearly elucidated here. The nature of fighting in a phalanx is such that each man uses his shield to protect the man to his left. These heavy infantry tactics require a high degree of coordination, which is why the Spartans engage in such intensive drilling. If any one man fails to do his duty and protect his neighbor, then the line is weakened and may be broken. To show an improper degree of care for one’s shield is, therefore, to show an improper degree of care for one’s comrades.

“Listen to me, boy. Only gods and heroes can be brave in isolation. A man may call upon courage only one way, in the ranks with his brothers-in-arms, the line of his tribe and his city. Most piteous of all states under heaven is that of a man alone, bereft of the gods of his home and his polis. A man without a city is not a man…No one may expect valor from one cast out alone, cut off from the gods of his home.” 

Bruxieus rebukes Xeones for his self-loathing at not fighting the Argives during the sack of Astakos. Xeones feels that he has acted like a coward in not being willing to die fighting the Argives. Bruxieus, who became a slave after the destruction of his home city, appears to take this personally, and gives Xeones a first lesson in the nature of courage. This is the first time that Xeones has been exposed to the notion that bravery is generated by a desire to protect one’s fellows.

“‘You have never tasted freedom, friend,’ Dienekes spoke, ‘or you would know it is purchased not with gold, but steel.’” 

Despite their mutual liking for one another, Dienekes and Tommie have different conceptions of honor and freedom. Tommie maintains that he is honored by the Persians as a leader of the Marines and that he has won great wealth from campaigning in the Persian army. Dienekes and the Spartans, however, believes that no man is free if they must pay for their peace and honor with taxes and submission.

“The Spartans have a discipline they call phobologia, the science of fear. As his mentor, Dienekes worked with Alexandros privately on this […] Phobologic discipline is comprised of twenty-eight exercises, each focusing upon a separate nexus of the nervous system.” 

The Spartans apply a professionalizing approach to combat even outside of group maneuvers and individual skill at arms. Each warrior must face and conquer their personal fear when standing in the line of battle. And since, as Dienekes has taught Alexandros already, the flesh is the “factory of fear,” they also train the flesh to ignore stimuli that produce a natural fear response.

“Among the Spartans the work of war is demystified and depersonalized through its vocabulary, which is studded with references both agrarian and obscene.” 

Xeones explains here the approach of the Spartans to andreia (“bravery, manly behavior”). They see andreia as something to be cultivated through familiarity with combat, rather than inspired in the moments before battle.

“Listen to me, brothers. The Persian is not a king as Kleomenes was to us or as I am to you now. He does not take his place with shield and spear amid the manslaughter, but looks on, safe, from a distance, atop a hill, upon a golden throne […] he comes not as a man worthy of respect, but as a spoiled brat and petulant child, in its tantrum when a toy is snatched from it by a playmate.” 

Leonidas clearly delineates the Spartan conception of freedom and slavery. Although the Spartans are subject to the harsh punishments of the law of Lykurgus and are ruled by a pair of kings, they are free because their kings are also subject to these harsh punishments and are expected to be at the vanguard of any onerous task. Their kings do not hold the power of life and death over Spartan citizens as Xerxes does over all his subjects. Moreover, the Spartans obey their kings and give their loyalty to them willingly, not because they are compelled to under penalty of death or torture.

“It was something else, some loss obvious aspect of character which Dienekes possessed and which the city honored him by recognizing, instinctively, without prompting or ceremony. Polynikes saw it in the way the young boys and girls joked with Dienekes when he passed their sphairopaedia, the ball-playing fields, during the noonday break. He caught it in the tilt of a smile from a matron and her maids at the springs or an old woman passing in the square. Even the helots granted my master a fondness and respect that were withheld from Polynikes, for all the heaps of honors that were his in other quarters. It galled him. Mystified him. He, Polynikes, had even produced two sons, while Dienekes’ issue were all female, four daughters who, unless Arete could produce a son, would extinguish his line altogether, while Polynikes’ strapping swift lads would one day be warriors and men. That Dienekes wore the respect of the city so lightly and with such self-effacing with was even more bitter to Polynikes. For the runner saw in Dienekes neither beauty of form nor fleetness of foot. Instead he perceived a quality of mind, a power of self-possession, which he himself, for all the gifts the gods had lavished upon him, could not call his own. Polynikes’ courage was that of a lion or an eagle, something in the blood and the marrow, which summoned itself out of its own preeminence, without thought, and gloried in its instinctual supremacy. Dienekes’ courage was different. His was the virtue of a man, a fallible mortal, who brought valor forth out of the understanding of his heart, but the force of some inner integrity which was unknown to Polynikes. Was this why he hated Alexandros? Was it why he had splintered the boy’s nose that evening of the eight-nighter?” 

The difference in temperament and deportment between Dienekes and Polynikes, two of the most admired men in Sparta, is repeatedly used by the author to compare two different models of nobility and courage. Polynikes is widely acknowledged to be the greatest warrior in Sparta, and his courage and thirst for glory is innate. If he feels any fear in combat, he has no apparent difficulty in ignoring it. Polynikes’s feats are individual: his victories at the Olympic games, his individual commendations for valor, and so on. Dienekes, by contrast, has an interest in the metaphysical nature and source of bravery. This interest is not purely philosophical for Dienekes, since he freely admits that he feels a great deal of fear in the moments before battle, which he has trained himself to overcome. Dienekes is not an Olympic champion, nor has he been commended individually for bravery in battle, but rather he is honored as a selfless leader, both of the men in his platoon and those youths whom he mentors. A Dienekes can produce a Polynikes, but a Polynikes can never produce a Dienekes.

“‘My tutor instructed me that a boy must have a city or he cannot grow to be fully a man. Since I no longer possessed a city of my own, I felt free to choose any I liked’ […] ‘Why not, then, a polis of riches or opportunity? Thebes or Corinth or Athens? All that can come to you here is coarse bread and a striped back.’ I replied with a proverb that Bruxieus had once quoted to Diomache and me: that other cities produced monument and poetry, Sparta produces men.” 

In answering Arete that he has come to Sparta since it produces men, Xeones points to a major theme of the book: bonds of choice have deeper meaning than those established by birth. Despite being a non-citizen, Xeones has chosen Sparta as his polis and, in making that choice freely, he has more firmly committed himself to Sparta and its laws than many of those born there. Rooster’s compulsory service serves as the counterpart to Xeones’s voluntary loyalty.

“Across all Hellas, phobos advanced like a sapper’s tunnel […] The Fear made people reckless. Many were selling all they owned; others, more heedless, were buying. ‘Let Xerxes spare his sword and send his purse instead,’ my master observed in disgust after yet another embassy had been rebuffed. ‘The Greeks will trample one another’s bones, racing to see who first can sell his freedom.’” 

Just as courage is mutually reinforcing, so is phobos, or fear. From one panicked person, a whole city becomes panicked, and, if not quickly contained, panic spreads to other cities. This is why the formation drilling and phobologia of the Spartans is so key to their military success. By preventing any one soldier from being overtaken with fear, the spread of fear is precluded. In this passage, Dienekes also reiterates the Spartan view that freedom is won by skill at arms and that it is surrendered by offering tribute to a foreign power.

“‘I know you don’t respect me,’ Alexandros told him. ‘You think yourself my better in skill at arms, in strength and in valor. Well, you are. I have tried, as the gods as my witness, with every fiber of my being and still I’m not half the fighter you are. I never will be. You should stand in my place and I in yours. It is the gods’ injustice that makes you a slave and me free’ […] ‘You own more of valor than I ever will,’ the bastard replied, ‘for you manufacture it out of a tender heart, while the gods sat me up punching and kicking from the cradle. And you do yourself honor to speak with such candor. You’re right, I did despise you. Until this moment.’”

The contrast between the characters of Alexandros and Rooster echoes that between Dienekes and Polynikes. Alexandros, as an asthmatic naturally inclined towards singing and music, has great difficulty in keeping up with his peers and is afraid of underperforming in battle. He must practice constantly to overcome his innate fear. Rooster, however, is extremely physically capable, naturally fearless, and, if not for his parentage, would be the champion among the boys in the agoge. Although Alexandros interprets this as meaning that Rooster has a more noble nature than him, the helot recognizes the truth that it is the conquest of fear that makes a man brave, rather than the absence of fear. It is something of a paradox, but Rooster proves his noble nature in this moment by recognizing Alexandros’s own bravery far better than he ever has by fighting.

“Remember, in warfare practice of arms counts for little. Courage tells all, and we Spartans have no monopoly on that. Lead your men with this in mind and all will be well.” 

Despite the emphasis on the Spartan training regimen throughout the book, the author repeatedly returns to the point that courage and spirit are more important to the outcome of battle than skill at arms. This point would seem to undercut the importance of the agoge, the oktonyktia, and the other training exercises described by Xeones, but it does not. As is emphasized again and again, the purpose of the drills and beatings of the agoge is more to teach the boys to overcome their fear than to handle their weapons.

“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 […] But is that courage? Is not acting out of fear of dishonor still, in essence, acting out of fear?”

Although Dienekes recognizes that fear of exclusion from his peers is what may keep a man from being a coward, he does not consider a man motivated by this fear to truly possess courage. Even so, he uses this fear of exclusion to great effect later.

“Man’s courage, to give his life for his country, is great but unextraordinary. Is it not intrinsic to the nature of the male, beasts as well as men, to fight and to contend? It’s what we were born to do, it’s in our blood. Watch any boy. Before he can even speak, he reaches, impelled by instinct, for the staff and the sword–while his sisters unprompted shun these implements of contention and instead cuddle to their bosom the kitten and the doll. What is more natural to a man than to fight, or a woman to love? Is this not the imperative of a mother’s blood, to give and to nurture, above all the produce of her own womb, the children she has borne in pain? […] What could be more contrary to female nature, to motherhood, than to stand unmoved and unmoving as her sons march off to death? Must not every sinew of the mother’s flesh call out in agony and affront at such an outrage? Must not [she] seek to cry […] ‘No! Not my son! Spare him!’ That women, from some source unknown to us, summon the will to conquer this their own deepest nature is, I believe, the reason we stand in awe of our mothers and sisters and wives. This, I believe, Dienekes, is the essence of women’s courage and why it, as you suggested, is superior to men’s.”

Here, Ariston, a young warrior roughly the same age as Alexandros, attempts to explain the difference between the nature of men’s courage and that of women’s, a major theme in the book. Ariston’s explanation—that women are braver because they must act contrary to their nature—parallels the distinction between the types of bravery shown by Dienekes and Polynikes. Dienekes must go against his nature and conquer his fear, whereas when Polynikes fights, he is fulfilling his nature.

“These women of whom we stand in awe donate their sons’ lives to their country, to the people as a whole, that the nation may survive even as their own dear children perish. Like the mother whose story we have heard from childhood who, on learning that all five of her sons had been killed in the same battle, asked only, ‘Was our nation victorious?’ and, being told that it was, turned for home without a tear, saying only, ‘Then I am happy.’ Is it not this element–the nobility of setting the whole above the part–that moves us about women’s sacrifice?”

In this passage, the author begins to hint to the reader that the importance of women’s courage is that it inspires men. In setting the polis above themselves and freely allowing their sons to die in its service, the women serve as an example to the men, who must put the good of the city above their own personal safety.

“I understood 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. Do you understand, Xeo? Courage, self-lessness, compassion, and love.” 

Although their lives have followed very different courses since their separation, Diomache and Xeones have each found meaning in their lives through service to others. As a woman, Diomache’s service involves caring for the sick and abandoned, whereas Xeones’s service involves keeping his master ready for battle. Both forms of service demand those qualities that Diomache enumerates here.

“‘I envy you comrades,’ the merchant continued when the emotion had cleared from his throat. ‘I have searched all my life for that which you have possessed from birth, a noble city to belong to […] This will be my city. I will be her magistrate and her physician, her orphan’s father and her fool.’” 

Elephantinos the merchant echoes the earlier sentiments of Bruxieus: that a man may only find his place and his courage within the structure of a city. Like Xeones, Elephantinos has now chosen Sparta as his city and will fight to the death beside those he now considers his comrades. 

“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.”

Suicide, in recounting his bewilderment at the Spartan’s style of combat when he first came to the city, explains how he came to see its wisdom. Because fighting in a phalanx requires coordination and mutual protection, a warrior fighting in that style has no choice but to suppress his own instinctual drive for survival and focus instead on protecting his comrades. If he does not, the phalanx will shatter, and the entire army is likely to be slain or captured.

“‘I have the answer to my question. Our friends the merchant and the Scythian have given it to me […] The opposite of fear,’ Dienekes said, ‘is love.’” 

The conclusion that Dienekes comes to–that love is the opposite of fear–has been demonstrated just then by Suicide and Elephantinos, but it is shown most clearly throughout the novel by his wife. For reasons of love, Arete twice intrudes into spaces from which women are excluded. The first time is when she shames Dienekes into marrying her by disrupting the gymnasion; the second is when she interrupts the krypteia to save her grandnephew. 

“Here is what you do, friends. Forget country. Forget king. Forget wife and children and freedom. Forget every concept, however noble, that you imagine you fight for here today. Act for this alone: for the man who stands at your shoulder. He is everything, and everything is contained within him. That’s all I know. That’s all I can tell you.” 

In his final speech to his men, Dienekes distills his philosophy of courage to its simplest element: in battle there is only you and the man next to you. Focus on protecting the man to your left, and bravery will naturally follow.

“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 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.”

Xeones rebukes Xerxes when describing the Spartans’ final stand under the leadership of Leonidas, their king. Xeones depicts Leonidas as a man intimately concerned with the welfare of his men and cognizant that his deportment must serve as an impeccable example to those he rules. Leonidas never hesitates to perform manual labor or suffer through the training drills to which all Spartans are subject. His nobility is shown through his actions and self-sacrifice, as opposed to Xerxes, who displays nobility by displaying his riches and power.

“I set down my life with gladness, and would do it again a hundred times, for Leonidas, for Dienekes and Alexandros and Polynikes, for Rooster and Suicide, for Arete and Diomache, Bruxieus and my own mother and father, my wife and children. I and every man there were never more free than when we gave freely our obedience to those harsh laws which take life and give it back again.” 

In this passage, Xeones unites two of the book’s major themes: the significance of bonds of choice and the nature of freedom. As in other passages, the author, through Xeones, promotes the idea that bonds and obligations that are freely chosen have a greater hold than those into which a person is born and, further, that such a choice is the ultimate form of freedom, even though Xeones lacks the formal freedom provided by a Spartan citizenship.