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Gates of Fire
In 480 BC, The Persian Empire under Xerxes sent two million men into the Greek peninsula intending to incorporate the territory into their ever expanding realm. 300 Spartans, trained since childhood that the only thing worth being was a warrior, met the Persians at Thermopylae with only a handful of allies. The place was carefully chosen so that the Spartans could not be surrounded and just swept from the field. They still lost. They went into it knowing they never had a chance, but they managed to kill hundreds of thousands of the enemy, and buy time for the rest of Greece to rally and drive the Persians out of Europe. This battle is consistently rated in the top five most influential of all time. The Spartans literally managed to save western civilization as we know it.
Steven Pressfield manages to weave a convincing narrative told through a squire of the Spartans, who narrates his story to Xerxes after the Spartan defeat at Thermopylae. Xerxes wants to know what it is about the Spartans that made them stand the field, and is worried about what 5,000 Spartans could do when only 300 nearly beat his best army. The squire, Xeo, was the guy who carried your extra spears into battle, and would pull your dead body out if things went poorly. Telling the story through him rather than a Spartan allows Pressfield to keep a distance from the inner working of the Spartan mindset that allowed him to reveal that world view one piece at a time.
What emerges is a story that is sure to make your testosterone pump up a few levels. Not that women cannot enjoy this story. The female characters in the story are, if anything, tougher than their Spartan husbands. This is also not a tale of gratuitous physical violence, despite the subject matter. War is hell, and Pressfield spends alot of time discussing why that is, and what sorts of courage it takes for a man to go into it again and again, and the courage a woman has in watching him go.
What's Bad?
The biggest thing that is bad is that Spartans are now a cheesey mascot for the Michigan State sports teams. But still, this book does have it's weak points. The beginning is slow to build, but once you get through the first chapter, you're in clear water. I also found some of the personal details surrounding the life of the protagonist to be gratuitous, and not meaningfully enhancing the story itself.
The book can also be brutal. An early scene involves a boy who receives a beating, but rather than cry out and admit weakness, he allows himself to be beaten to death. The battle descriptions are also pretty rough, but no more than what they really would have been at the time. It's not these are bad features of the book, just something you may want to know if you have a weak stomach.
What's Good?
Pressfield has done his research. His acknowledgments at the end of the book cite some historians, including John Keegan, who are the best alive today. He's also done his own reading of ancient texts and historians, allowing him to paint a picture of ancient Hellenistic society that is fresh and accurate. You will really stop thinking of the classics as boring when you finish reading this book. The details of everything, from the set up of a Spartan farmhouse, to the lush detail on hoplite battle practices, in this book are well researched and rich.
Also, there is a lot of thought behind this book. The Spartans are not mindless fighters, they have deep rooted philosophies that Pressfield tries to project. The nature of courage is discussed intelligently and at length. The idea of polis, those things that make a city more than a group of bricks, is discussed in a better way than a hundred pompous community building papers I've read lately. This book deserves its status on the bestseller list.
So What's In It For Me?
"Although extraordinary valor was displayed by the entire corps of Spartans and Thespians, yet bravest of all was declared the Spartan Dienekes. It is said that on the eve of battle, he was told by a native of Trachis that the Persian archers were so numerous that, when they fired their volleys, the mass of arrows blocked out the sun. Dienekes, however, quite undaunted by this prospect, remarked with a laugh, 'Good. Then we'll have our battle in the shade.'" Herodotus, The Histories
You will get a glimpse into a life you will probably never have, of men the type you will never meet and leadership that you will never see. You will look at your own arms and imagine them clad in bronze armor and carrying a spear in defense of your people. You will look at your friends and wonder how they would fare at your side shielding you against maddened attackers. You will be, for only a passing moment, a Spartan.
Purchase this book at fatbrain.
His next book Tides of War is due to be published in March, and is also set in ancient Greece this time about General Alcibiades, Athens most brilliant millitary leader. His first book Legend of Bagger Vance is kind of a mystic novel about golf and life, and while good, is not in the same league as Gates of Fire.
<RANT> As for all the posts wondering how this is News for Nerds, most of us enjoy a good book, this is a good book, hence the review. It was obvious from the topic is wasn't going to be about technology, why did you click through and read it? Better yet, why did you take the time to post 'This doesn't belong on Slashdot!!'? Noone forced you to read it, noone forced you to reply, and noone voted you Editor-in-Chief of Slashdot. </RANT>
Being a Greek, it was a nice surprise seing this story on Slashdot. The battle of Thermopylae is one of our favorite historical moments as a nation. These days Thermopylae is just another spot on the highway, but if you take the time to visit the monument there, you'll see on the most gut-wrenching epitaphs I know about on the ancient memorial there: "Stranger, tell the Spartans that we lie here, having followed their rules".
Also, I'd like to correct one common fallacy: there weren't just 300 Spartans at Thermopylae: they also had another 700 (I think) allies from Thebes. Still, the odds were like 500:1 --consider that military science says you only need 6:1 to take a well-defended position...
And at the end they only lost due to treason --a local shepherd who the Persians bribed, guided some Persian soldiers through the rough paths of the area around the Spartan stronghold, surrounding them...
Spartan society was one of the strictest, most autocratic of ancient times, but noone can claim they had no valor...
engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.
Well, yeah Sparta wasn't a happy place to live back in those days, and if you visit the actual city (I am Greek, BTW) you will see why --it's locked in by high mountains all around; it just looks gloomy ;-)
At any rate, you're right on all points --modern Greek history books estimate the Persian army to have been closer to ~300-500k rather than 2M. Also, look at what the poor Persians were carrying --cotton uniforms with wick shields and spears-- and their training --they had the draft; most of the army was peasants and farmers, only Xerxes' personal guard were professional soldiers. They went against highly trained warriors (male Spartan citizens, who were the only eligible to fight for Sparta were training for war as a full-time job) clad in brass armor, brass shields, spears and swords.
That's why it took 500:1 to get past Thermopylae --and then it took treason (another curious trivia: the name of the traitor "Ephialtes" has passed on to modern Greek language as "nightmare"/"supreme traitor").
Plus you have to consider the Spartan motivation: male Spartans grew up training for war; and when they went into battle their mothers gave them their shields (carrying the family insignia) with this wish: "bring it back or be carried on it [i.e. die]".
engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.
> The Spartans literally managed to save western civilization as we know it.
Now that's an interesting exaggeration if I saw one. The Spartans certainly made a great display of courage at Thermopylæ, but even if we want to take that reductive view of things (whereby the Greeks are the ``good guys'' and the Persians are the ``bad guys''), the Athenians should be the real heroes. After all, they had beaten Darius at Marathon ten years earlier, in 490 (first Median war), and they destroyed Xerxes' fleet in Salamis. Granted, Leonidas and his brave Spartans probably bought the Athenians time, but Athens nevertheless was sacked by Xerxes in 480 — and despite this the Greeks were victorious.
Besides, this reductive point of view leaves much to be desired. Who are the great men (i.e. scientists) of Greece? Thales, Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and the like, I would say: see any Athenians there? any Spartans? Definitely not. Athens only produced Plato and Aristotle, who merely served to justify much of the philosophical mumbo-jumbo that was qualified as ``science'' during the Middle Ages; and Sparta produced nothing of note, and is now an unremarkable village of the Peloponnesus (sic transit). Thales lived in Miletus, which was taken by the Persians at the end of the VIth century (and no Athenians or Spartans rose to the arms to defend their comrades against Media).
In any case, later on, Sparta made war upon its former ally, Athens, and won. Then Thebes warred against Sparta and won. Then Alexander (the ``Great'') made war upon Greece and won. Then the Romans conquerred the shreds of Alexander's Empire. But even Rome fell in its time, and Constantinople much later on. And after all that, civilization is as we know it; I do not think there is much point in asking what would have happened otherwise.
What is the moral? I don't know. But certainly, civilization cannot be saved by military victories, but by the thinkers who perpetuate it. (There is this very pretty quote in Montaigne's Essays, which bears some relation to the subject: Anaximenes would have asked Pythagoras, ``For what reason should I trouble myself to seek out the secrets of the stars, having death and slavery continually before my eyes.'' The ``death and slavery'' in question, is of course, the war against Persia.) Likewise, when Constantinople fell in 1453, it was not the end of the world, but the onset of the Renaissance.
I thank the League of Delos no more than I thank Xerxes. As for the Spartans (or the Thebans, for that matter), I hold some sympathy for them in that they glorified homosexuality, but they were assuredly not a very pleasant people.
My apologies for this rant.