Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae

by Steven Pressfield

  He summoned these now aside, declaring that he had something be wished to show them. He led them into the naval commander's campaign tent, erected there upon the strand, and with this officer's permission produced a marvel the like of which the Spartans, and of course I myself, had never beheld. This was a map.

  A geographer's representation not merely of Hellas and the islands of the Aegean but of the entire world.

  The chart spread in breadth nearly two meters, of consummate detail and craftsmanship and inscribed upon Nile papyrus, a medium so extraordinary that though held to the light one could see straight through it, yet even the strongest man's hands could not rend it, save by first opening a tear with the edge of a blade.

  The marine rolled the map out upon the squadron commander's table. He showed the Spartans their own homeland, in the heart of the Peloponnese, with Athens 140 miles to the north and east, Thebes and Thessaly due north of there, and Mounts Ossa and Olympus at the northernmost extremity of Greece. West of this the mapmaker's stylus had depicted Sikelia, Italia and all the leagues of sea and land clear to the Pillars of Herakles. Yet the bulk of the chart had barely begun to be unfurled.

  I wish only to impress upon you, for your own preserva-tion, gentlemen, Ptammitechus addressed the Spartans through his interpreter, the scale of His Majesty's Empire and the resources he commands to bring against you, that you may make your decision to resist or not, based upon fact and not fancy.

  He unrolled the papyrus eastward. Beneath the lamplight arose the islands of the Aegean, Macedonia, Illyria, Thrace and Scythia, the Hellespont, Lydia, Karia, Cilicia, Phoenicia and the Ionic cities of Asia Minor. All these nations the Great King controls. AH these he has compelled into his service. All these are coming against you. But is this Persia? Have we reached yet the seat of Empire…

  Out rolled more leagues of landmass. The Egyptian's hand swept over the outlines of Ethiopia, Libya, Arabia, Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Sumeria, Cappadocia, Armenia and the transCaucasus. The fame of each of these kingdoms he recited, quoting the numbers of their warriors and the arms and armaments they carried.

  A man traveling fast may traverse all the Peloponnese in four days. Look here, my friends.

  Merely to get from Tyre to Susa, the Great King's capital, is three months' march. And all that land, all its men and wealth, belong to Xerxes. Nor do his nations contend one against the other as you Hellenes love so to do, nor disunite into squabbling alliances. When the King says assemble, his armies assemble. When he says march, they march. And still, he said, we have not reached PersepoHs and the heart of Persia. He rolled the map out farther.

  Into sight arose yet more lands covering yet more leagues and called by yet more curious names.

  The Egyptian reeled off more numbers. Two hundred thousand from this satrapy, 300,000 from that. Greece, in the West, was looking punier and punier. She seemed to be shriveling into a microcosm in contrast to the endless mass of the Persian Empire. The Egyptian spoke now of outlandish beasts and chimera. Camels and elephants, wild asses the size of draught horses. He sketched the lands of Persia herself, then Media, Bactria, Partrua, Cas-pia, Aria, Sogdiana and India, nations of whose names and existence his listeners had never even heard.

  From these vast lands His Majesty draws more myriads of warriors, men raised under the blistering sun of the East, inured to hardships beyond your imagining, armed with weapons you have no experience in combating and financed by gold and treasure beyond counting. Every article of produce, every fruit, grain, pig, sheep, cow, horse, the yield of every mine, farm, forest and vineyard belongs to His Majesty. And all of it he has poured into the mounting of this army which marches now to enslave you.

  Listen to me, brothers. The race of Egyptians is an ancient one, numbering the generations of its fathers by the hundreds into antiquity. We have seen empires come and go. We have ruled and been ruled. Even now we are technically a conquered people, we serve the Persians. Yet regard my station, friends. Do I look poor? Is my demeanor dishonored? Peer here within my purse.

  With all respect, brothers, I could buy and sell you and all you own with only that which I bear upon my person.

  At that point Olympieus called the Egyptian short and demanded that he speak to his point.

  My point is this, friends: His Majesty will honor you Spartans no less than us Egyptians, or any other great warrior people, should you see wisdom and enlist yourselves voluntarily beneath his banner. In the East we have learned that which you Greeks have not. The wheel turns, and man must turn with it. To resist is not mere folly, but madness.

  I watched my master's eyes then. Clearly he perceived the Egyptian's intent as genuine and his words proffered out of friendship and regard. Yet he could not stop anger from flushing his countenance.

  You have never tasted freedom, friend, Dienekes spoke, or you would know it is purchased not with gold, but steel. He contained his anger swiftly, reaching to rap the Egyptian's shoulder like a friend and to meet his eyes with a smile.

  And as for the wheel you speak of, my master finished, like every other, it turns both ways.

  We arrived at Olympia on the afternoon of the second day from Pellana. The Olympic Games, sacred to Zeus, are the holiest of all Hellenic festivals; during the weeks of their celebration no Greek may take up arms against another, or even against an alien invader. The Games would be held this very year, within weeks; in fact the Olympic grounds and dormitories were already teeming with athletes and trainers from all the Greek cities, preparing on-site as prescribed by heaven's law. These competitors, in their youthful prime and peerless in speed and prowess, surrounded my master on the instant of his arrival, clamorous for intelligence of the Persian advance and torn by the Olympic proscription from bearing arms. It was not my place to inquire of my master's mission; one could only surmise, however, that it entailed a request for dispensation from the priests.

  I waited outside the precinct while Dienekes conducted his business within. Several hours of daylight remained when he finished; our two-man party, unescorted as it was, should have turned about and pushed on for Sparta at once. But my master's troubled mood continued; he seemed to be working something out in his mind. Come on, he said, leading toward the Avenue of the Champions, west of the Olympic stadium, I'll show you something for your education.

  We detoured to the steles of honor, where the names and nations of champions of the Games were recorded. There my own eye located the name of Polynikes, one of my master's fellow envoys to Rhodes, graven twice for successive Olympiads, victor in the armored stadion race.

  Dienekes pointed out the names of other Lakedaemonian champions, men now in their thirties and forties whom I knew by sight from the city, and others who had fallen in battle decades and even centuries past. Then he indicated a final name, four Olympiads previous, in the victors' lists for the pentathlon.

  Iatrokles Son of Nikodiades Lakedaemonian This was my brother, Dienekes said.

  That night my master took shelter at the Spartan dormitory, a cot being vacated for him within and space set aside for me beneath the porticoes. But his mood of disquiet had not abated. Before I had even settled on the cool stones, he appeared from within fully dressed and motioned me to follow. We traversed the deserted avenues to the Olympic stadium, entering via the competitors' tunnel and emerging into the vast and silent expanse of the agonists' arena, purple and brooding now in the starlight. Dienekes mounted the slope above the judges' station, those seats upon the grass reserved during the Games for the Spartans. He selected a sheltered site beneath the pines at the crest of the slope overlooking the stadium, and there he settled. I have heard it said that for the lover the seasons are marked in memory by those mistresses whose beauty has en-flamed his heart. He recalls this year as the one when, moonstruck, he pursued a certain beloved about the city, and that year, when another favorite yielded at last to his charms.

  For the mother and father, on the other hand, the seasons are numbered by the births of their ch
ildren – this one's first step, that one's initial word. By these homely ticks is the calendar of the loving parent's life demarcated and set within the book of remembrance.

  But for the warrior, the seasons are marked not by these sweet measures nor by the calendared years themselves, but by battles. Campaigns fought and comrades lost; trials of death survived.

  Clashes and conflicts from which time effaces all superficial recall, leaving only the fields themselves and their names, which achieve in the warrior's memory a stature ennobled beyond all other modes of commemoration, purchased with the holy coin of blood and paid for with the lives of beloved brothers- in-arms. As the priest with his graphis and tablet of wax, the infantryman, too, has his scription. His history is carved upon his person with the stylus of steel, his alphabet engraved with spear and sword indelibly upon the flesh.

  Dienekes settled upon the shadowed earth above the stadium. I began now, as was my duty as his squire, to prepare and apply the warm oil, laced with clove and comfrey, which were required by my master, and virtually every other Peer past thirty years, simply to settle himself upon the earth in sleep. Dienekes was far from an old man, barely two years past forty, yet his limbs and joints creaked like an ancient's. His former squire, a Scythian called Suicide, had instructed me in the proper manner of kneading the knots and loaves of scar tissue about my master's numerous wounds, and the little tricks in arming him so that his impairments would not show. His left shoulder could not move forward past his ear, nor could that arm rise at the elbow above his collarbone; the corselet had to be wrapped first about his torso, which he would support by pinning it with his elbows while I set the shoulder leathers and thumb-bolted them into place. His spine would not bend to lift his shield, even from its position of rest against his knee; the bronze sleeve had to be held aloft by me and jockeyed into place over the forearm, in the standing position. Nor could Dienekes flex his right foot unless the tendon was massaged until the flow of the nerves had been restored along their axis of command.

  My master's most gruesome wound, however, was a lurid scar, the width of a man's thumb, that ran in jagged course across the entire crown of his brow, just below the hairline.

  This was not visible normally, covered as it was by the fall of his long hair across his forehead, but when he bound his hair to accept the helmet, or tied it back for sleep, this livid gash represented itself. I could see it now in the starlight. Apparently the curiosity in my expression struck my master as comical, for he chuckled and lifted his hand to trace the line of the scar.

  This was a gift from the Corinthians, Xeo. An ancient one, picked up around the time you were born. Its history, aptly enough, tells a tale of my brother.

  My master glanced away, down the slope that led toward the Avenue of the Champions. Perhaps he felt the proximity of his brother's shade, or the fleeting shards of memory, from boyhood or battle or the agon of the Games. He indicated that I might pour for him a bowl of wine, and that I may take one for myself.

  I wasn't an officer then, he volunteered, still preoccupied. I wore a banty hat instead of a curry brush. Meaning the front-to-back-crested helmet of the infantry ranker, instead of the transverse-crested helm of a platoon leader. Would you like to hear the tale, Xeo? As a bedtime story.

  I replied that I would, very much. My master considered. Clearly he was debating in his mind if such a retelling constituted vanity or excessive self-revelation. If it did, he would break it off at once. Apparently, however, the incident contained an element of instruction, for, with a barely perceptible nod, my master gave himself permission to proceed. He settled more comfortably against the slope.

  This was at Achilleion, against the Corinthians and their Arkadian allies. I don't even remember what the war was about, but whatever it was, those sons of whores had found their courage. They were putting the steel to us. The line had broken down, the first four ranks were scrambled, it was man against man across the entire field. My brother was a platoon leader and I was a third.

  Meaning he, Dienekes, commanded the third squad, sixteen positions back in order of march. So that when we deployed into line by fours, I came up to my third's position beside my brother at the head of my squad. We fought as a dyas, Iatrokles and I; we had trained in the pairs since we were children. Only there was none of that sport now, it was pure blood madness.

  I found myself across from a monster of the enemy, six and a half feet tall, a match for two men and a horse. He was dismasted, his spear had been shivered, and he was so raging with possession he didn't have the presence of mind to go for his sword. I said to myself, man, you better get some iron into this bastard fast, before he remembers he's got that daisy-chopper on his hip.

  I went for him. He met me with his shield as a weapon, swinging it, edge-on like an axe. His first blow splintered my own shield. I had my eight-footer by the haft, trying to up-percut him, but he splintered the shaft clean through with a second blow. I was now bronze-naked in front of this demon. He swung that shield like a relish plate. Took me right here, square above the eye sockets.

  I could feel the crown of the helmet tear up and off, shearing half my skull with it. The bottom lip of the eyehole had opened the muscles beneath the brow, so that my left eye was sheeted with blood.

  I had that helpless feeling you get when you're wounded, when you know it's bad but you don't know how bad, you think you may be dead already but you're not sure. Everything is happening slowly, as in a dream. I was down on my face. I knew this giant was over me, aiming some blow to send me to hell.

  Suddenly he was there beside me. My brother. I saw him take a step and sling his xiphos like a throwing blade. It hit this Corinthian Gorgon right below the nose; the iron smashed the fellow's teeth, blew right through the bone of the jaw and into his throat, lodging there with the grip sticking out before his face.

  Dienekes shook his head and released a dark chuckle, the kind one summons recalling a tale at a distance, knowing how close he had come to annihilation and in awe before the gods that he had somehow survived. It didn't even slow this dick-stroker down. He came right back at Iatrokles, with bare hands and that pig-poker buried square in his jaw. I took him low and my brother took him high. We dropped him like a wrestler. I drove the blade end of my eight-footer that was now a one-footer into his guts, then grabbed the butt-spike end of someone's discarded eight from the dirt and laid all my weight on it, right through his groin all the way into the ground, nailing him there. My brother had grabbed the bastard's sword and hacked half the top of his head off, right through the bronze of his helmet. He still got up. I had never seen my brother truly terrified but this time it was serious. 'Zeus Almighty!' he cried, and it was not a curse but a prayer, a pissdown-your-leg prayer.

  The night had grown cool; my master draped his cloak around his shoulders. He took another draught of wine.

  He had a squire, my brother did, from Antaurus in Scythia, of whom you may have heard. This man was called by the Spartans 'Suicide.'

  My expression must have betrayed startlement, for Dienekes chuckled in response. This fellow, the Scythian, had been Dienekes' squire before me; he became my own mentor and instructor. It was all new to me, however, that the man had served my master's brother before him.

  This reprobate had come to Sparta like you, Xeo, on his own, the crazy bastard. Fleeing bloodguilt, a murder; he had killed his father or father-in-law, I forget which, in some hill-tribe dispute over a girl. When he arrived in Lakedaemon, he asked the first man he met to dispatch him, and scores more for days. No one would do it, they feared ritual pollution; finally my brother took him with him to battle, promising he'd get him polished off there.

  The man turned out a holy terror. He wouldn't keep to the rear like the other squires, but waded right in, unarmored, seeking death, crying out for it. His weapon, as you know, was the javelin; he crafted his own, sawed-off specimens no longer than a man's arm, which he called 'darning needles.' He carried twelve of them, in a quiver like arrow
s, and threw them by the clutch of three, one after the other, at the same man, saving the third for the close work.

  This indeed described the man. Even now, what must be twenty years later, he remained fearless to the point of madness and utterly reckless of his life.

  Anyway here he came now, this Scythian lunatic. Hoom, hoom, hoom, he put two darning needles through that Corinthian monster's liver and out his back, and added one for good measure right where the man's fruit hung. That did it. The titan looked straight at me, bellowed once, then dropped like a sack off a waggon. I realized later that half my skull was showing through to the sun, my face a mass of blood, and the whole right side of my beard and chin had been hacked off.

  How did you get out of the battle? I asked.

  Get out.7 We had to fight across another thousand yards before the enemy finally turned the creases and it was over. I couldn't tell the state I was in. My brother wouldn't let me touch my face. 'You've got a few scratches,' he said. I could feel the breeze on my skull; I knew it was bad.

  I remember only this ghoulish surgeon, our friend Suicide, stitching me up with sailor's twine while my brother held my head and cracked jokes. 'You're not going to be too pretty after this one. I won't have to worry any more about you stealing my bride.'

  Here Dienekes drew up, his expression going suddenly sober and solemn. He declared that the story at this point proceeded into the province of the personal. He must put a period to it.

  I begged him to continue. He could see the disappointment on my face. Please, sir. You must not carry the tale this far, only to discard it by the wayside.

  You know, he offered in wry admonishment, what happens to squires who spread tales out of school. He took a draught of wine and, after a thoughtful moment, resumed.

  You are aware that I am not my wife's first husband. Arete was married to my brother first.

  I had known this, but never from my master's lips.

  It created a grievous rift in my family, because I habitually declined to share a meal at his home, I always found some excuse. My brother was deeply wounded by this, thinking I disrespected his wife or had found some fault in her which I would not divulge. He had taken her from her family very young, when she was just seventeen, and this overhaste I know troubled him. He wanted her so much he couldn't wait, he was afraid another would claim her. So when I avoided his house, he thought I found fault with him for this He went to our father and even to the ephors over it, seeking to force me to accept his invitations. One day we wrestled in the palaistra and he nearly strangled me (I was never half a match for him) and ordered me that evening to present myself at his home, in my best dress and manners. He swore he would break my back if I gave offense once more.