Gates of Disappointment

A review of the book “Gates of Fire” by Steven Pressfield

I am very far from a competent literary critic. I toyed with being an English major in college before coming to my senses and picking a more marketable degree, but I have found that my interpretations of great works of fiction are not nearly as well-developed as others’. Still, I love to read, and I occasionally like to write reviews of the books I read on Goodreads—even if the books I do review aren’t “great literature” in the sense that English majors use that term.

This post developed as a review for the book Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield for Goodreads. Originally, I was going to write a normal post focused on education or some other topic. But sometimes, I find it challenging to come up with an idea. So I wrote the review in much more detail than I had originally planned. Here is the result.

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The Battle of Thermopylae is one of the most awe-inspiring events in Western history. Three hundred Spartans, along with a couple thousand of their Greek allies, attempted to fend off the invading Persians—some 120,000 to 300,000 of them, depending on which estimate you believe—at a narrow rocky pass in a heroic but ultimately suicidal last stand. Standing at the forefront of this comparatively miniscule but fierce group of Greeks was the Spartan King Leonidas, whose valor contrasts starkly with that of the Persian King Xerxes, since the former led his troops into battle while the latter sat perched in a throne high above the battlefield. It’s the ultimate underdog story, and it does much to heighten in our minds the unique bravery (or perhaps stupidity) of the Spartans. Plus, even though Thermopylae was overcome by the Persians eventually, it’s a relief to learn that the Athenians at the Battle of Salamis routed the Persians and sent them packing back to Asia. The Greeks, whom we think of mostly as dominant victors, displayed enormous valor in the face of an invading army many times the size of their own. And it’s thanks to the Spartans’ tiny force of incomparably brave warriors that the Persians were driven back at all.

The bravery of the Spartans at Thermopylae is quite alien to us today. It’s hard to imagine a force of soldiers in the 21st century standing strong and fighting to the last man against a force that was so obviously overpowering. Modern states simply don’t have the stomach to send elite troops—or any troops at all—to a certain death. That’s most likely the case even if the state in question was at risk of being overrun by an invading army. The closest the modern world came to Thermopylae was when the Allied armies stormed the beach at Normandy, with American Marines charging up a beach riddled with the dead bodies of their comrades as the German machine-gunners mowed down everyone in sight. But even there, the Allied forces were likely to prevail, at the unfortunate cost of thousands of dead Americans. Those thousands of dead Americans, though, were ultimately a small portion of the force used by the Allies to take back Normandy, and they weren’t sent there by the Allied commanders with the certainty that they would all die there. The D-Day soldiers were certainly brave—far braver than I am—but they pale in comparison to the Spartans.

So, the Battle of Thermopylae has rightly been an obsession of history buffs since time immemorial. How did the Spartans stand at that rocky mountain pass without flinching? How did they face down the impending hordes of foreign soldiers knowing that it would take a miracle for even a single one of them to make it out alive? What was it about the Spartan society that drove them to commit such acts of outstanding valor in the face of such insurmountable odds? These are all fascinating questions to explore.

Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield attempts to answer those questions through a narrative. Written from the perspective of an ancient Persian historian of the king Xerxes, the book records the tale of the single captured Spartan, Xeones, who tries to convey through his story the unique character of the Spartan forces. Xeones begins his story as a young boy whose village was invaded and destroyed by an invading army. He is thus cast out into the countryside with his cousin and an old, infirm servant of their family. After years of wandering, during which Xeones is partially crucified, rendering his hands all but useless for wielding a sword or a spear, Xeones and his cousin arrive at Athens. Despite his love for his cousin, whom he desires to marry, he parts ways with her and journeys to Sparta, for which he has always had a profound admiration.

Because he is not a native-born Spartan, Xeones is not part of the elite Spartan fighting force. But he proves himself useful as a perioikos, a form of second-class citizen in Sparta, and eventually becomes a servant of the Spartan warrior Dienekes. Throughout most of the novel, Xeones paints a picture of the warrior-infused culture of the Spartans. He recounts incidents at the agoge, the Spartan military academy, that show how disciplined (and ruthless) the Spartan training regimen was. Xeones tells the tale of how he and his friend, Dienekes’s mentee Alexandros, tracked the Spartan army when they were mere boys to watch it in action. Perhaps more interestingly, Xeones describes the life of the perioikoi and the other lower-class members of Spartan society, including a boy, nicknamed Rooster, who resents the Spartans and everything about their culture.

When the Spartans learn of the impending Persian invasion, King Leonidas selects for battle 300 elite fighters who have already borne sons, so that their bloodlines would be able to continue if they died. Included in this selection are both Dienekes and Alexandros, who by this time is married and has sons of his own. Since his master has been selected to defend Thermopylae, Xeones accompanies him on a six-day march to the mountain pass, where the Spartans meet with a few thousand other Greeks to defend their homeland against a supremely powerful foe. Once there, Xeones recounts the scenes of the battle, which takes place over six days and includes a clandestine mission to kill the Persian king that ultimately fails to achieve the desired result. Since the reader knows the outcome of the battle before he begins reading the book, it is no spoiler to say that the Spartans are all killed by the final day of the battle. Xeones is one of very few Spartans left, and despite being mortally wounded, the Persians patch him up and request an explanation of how the Spartans were able to perform in battle so well despite being outnumbered by orders of magnitude.

Gates of Fire was, therefore, a promising read. Historians can paint a full picture of an ancient society, but sometimes it takes a novelist (or a poet, in Homer’s case) to illuminate the human characters that populate those societies. Pressfield makes a mighty attempt to capture that Spartan spirit, and to show—rather than tell—how the Spartans acquired their reputation for outstanding valor. In the end, though, Pressfield fails to spin a convincing narrative.

Most of the weaknesses of this novel revolve around the character development (or lack thereof). Xeones is a fairly one-dimensional narrator. It’s obvious that the man revered the Spartans, but his actual character arc throughout the novel is mostly flat. It was an interesting and promising choice to cast Xeones as an immigrant to Sparta, since immigrants often have a unique perspective on a society that a native often lacks. But because the focus is on the Spartans, rather than Xeones himself, Xeones becomes a minor character instead of a major force behind the narrative. Because of this, it mattered less to the story whether Xeones was actually an interesting character.

The two obvious missing pieces to the narrative regarding Xeones are his relationship with his cousin and his mangled hand. Both of these plot lines start out with lots of potential. When he and his cousin are separated at Athens, Xeones is obviously heartbroken, and the reader can sympathize with him (despite the obvious and icky incestuousness of his love). But once Xeones is in Sparta itself, she becomes mostly irrelevant. She is mentioned a few times by Xeones throughout the story, but one gets the impression that Pressfield almost forgot about her (until the very end) because she seemed such an afterthought. 

Similarly, Xeones’s experience of being almost crucified towards the beginning of the story suggests a weakness for Xeones to overcome, thereby giving him an outlet to develop his character further. Indeed, because his hands are so torn up, Xeones despairs of never being able to wield a Spartan weapon. Xeones is visited by the archer god Apollo, who reassures Xeones that he can use a bow and arrow instead of a sword or shield. This revelation snaps Xeones out of a suicidal reverie and gives him renewed purpose, and he does in fact become an excellent archer. 

But the reader can be forgiven for not remembering that Xeones’s hand was so unusable, or that he developed his archery skills. Throughout the rest of the novel, Xeones appears to use his hands for normal, everyday purposes. In fact, his hand seems to work perfectly well. Moreover, when he receives his bow from Dienekes as the narrative approaches the final battle at Thermopylae, he is profoundly grateful that his master would be so gracious. But this, too, seems an afterthought by Pressfield. Xeones spends hundreds of pages telling tales in which his bow is not mentioned once, and indeed he seems mostly content in his position as a Spartan servant (and not at all resentful for having to relinquish his bow). Somehow, the importance of archery to Xeones ebbs and flows throughout the novel, rendering it more head-scratching than satisfying.

The other characters are mostly a mixed bag. The main Spartans—Dienekes, Leonidas, and the Achilles-like Polynikes—are completely one-dimensional. Leonidas is mostly absent from the narrative until the final battle, where he shines just slightly brighter than his peers. Dienekes plays an interesting role as a mentor to Alexandros and a benevolent master to Xeones, but he is mostly just another warrior with the same fighting spirit as the rest of the Spartans. Of these three, Polynikes stands out the most. He acts as a bully to Alexandros in the agoge, breaking his nose with his shield and excoriating him for not relishing battle as much as the rest of the Spartans. Polynikes, though, is a world-class athlete and warrior—a modern-day Achilles, from their perspective—and so he effectively has carte-blanche over discipline in the agoge. In ordinary narratives, this would make Polynikes an enemy. But somehow he just blends into the background except for when he reminds Alexandros that the boy is unfit for Spartan service. Towards the end, they repair their relationship. But there is no direct confrontation, despite how Pressfield set them up as enemies in the beginning.

The minor characters are much more interesting. Alexandros is the boy among the Spartans who doesn’t fit in. He doesn’t like violence and, in fact, prefers singing. After his spat with Polynikes, he develops severe asthma, which is evidently induced by fear. This sets Alexandros up to be a sympathetic character, and the reader is both surprised and worried when he is selected as part of the 300. But like Xeones’s mangled hand, Alexandros’s asthma basically disappears as the narrative progresses. There is little evidence that he is having an asthma attack at any point during the final battle, despite the obvious fear that the impending battle would create. Alexandros begins as a promising character, but ultimately fades into the blob of Spartan valor at the end.

A similar letdown is the story arc of Rooster. As an outsider who despises Sparta, Rooster is a rebel in a land that prizes conformity. His actions are therefore erratic and reckless; one gets the impression that he is trying to be punished for his sins. But about halfway through the novel, after Rooster has a son, a shadowy secret group of Spartans exiles him from the island in the middle of the night, forcing him to abandon his son. After he leaves, it is as if the man had never been seen before. I don’t think this was a positive choice by the author. Instead, it seems to be another instance of an afterthought. Eventually, Rooster returns, and in the end, he does end up as perhaps the most interesting character in the novel. But the middle of the book is sorely lacking in Rooster content, which gives the impression that Pressfield simply forgot he existed.

Speaking of that secret group: What on earth was that about? For most of the novel, Spartan society is seen as a severe but ultimately fair culture. Other than the second-class status of many of its citizens, Sparta is meritocratic and egalitarian, churning out fierce warriors and kings who fight side-by-side with their troops. But in this one instance, a group of Spartans acts as vigilantes, rounding up suspected traitors within their midst and killing them. (Rooster is only spared by the graciousness of a Spartan woman who is part of the group.) This makes the Spartans seem paranoid and obsessed with conspiracies, even though for the rest of the novel they are proud and stoic. It would be one thing if Pressfield was trying to make a point about how Spartans were sometimes bad and sometimes good. And perhaps he was trying to show that. But ultimately, it fails to convince the reader, and instead only introduces an element of confusion into what is otherwise a fairly compelling portrait of Spartan society.

Despite these weaknesses, the story gets better as it goes on. The best part are the scenes of the actual Battle of Thermopylae. Pressfield does an incredible job of showing the sheer hopelessness of the Spartan cause. His descriptions of the battle, in which Spartans are gruesomely wounded (Dienekes loses an eye but keeps fighting) and the bodies begin piling up around them, are superb. The description of the terrain is particularly impressive: Several times, Pressfield shows how the Spartans were trudging in mud up to their calves where the ground used to be hard dirt. This level of detail was heartening after the disappointment of the character development throughout the rest of the novel.

But this very success actually helps to further undermine the narrator’s perspective. After all, Xeones is a first-person narrator. Typically, this means that the narrator has a constrained vision of the narrative. This makes for interesting scenes, since the reader has to imagine what is going on elsewhere. But for some reason, Xeones appears omniscient. He recounts details that he would not have been able to see. Sometimes, it seems as though he is in the thick of the battle with the main Spartan force; other times, he is atop a battle wall, observing things from afar. It’s inconsistent, and it makes the reader wonder why Pressfield didn’t just write the book from a third-person perspective. Plus, Xeones’s actions are unclear for most of the battle. He has his bow and arrows, but it’s not clear how successful he is in wielding it. And it’s fuzzy as to how much he is actually engaged in battle, as opposed to simply watching from a distance.

Ultimately, Gates of Fire was a disappointment. Its major promise was to paint a picture of Spartan society and to answer everyone’s most burning question when it comes to this ancient civilization: How did they become so brave? Pressfield does provide answers to this question, but at the cost of any actual character development. The narrator has a weak voice, despite a compelling backstory. The Spartan warriors are all one-dimensional. The minor characters have promising beginnings, but ultimately fade into nonexistence at the end. One gets the impression that Pressfield had grand designs for all of the characters and made deliberate choices that ended up backfiring. For instance, perhaps he wanted the Spartan warriors to all basically be the same character, since the Spartan fighting force was predicated on the uniformity of the group. But these choices fail to convince the reader, since Pressfield goes to obvious lengths to attempt to develop his characters well.

I’m open to being convinced that my interpretation of Gates of Fire is woefully inadequate, especially since it is apparently taught at military academies in the U.S. But the weaknesses in the character development were evident from a very early point in the narrative and only slightly changed course towards the end. This book didn’t reduce my estimation of the Spartans. It did, however, disappoint my expectations of Pressfield as a writer.