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Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.
Thus reads an ancient stone at Thermopylae in northern Greece, the site of one of the world's greatest battles for freedom. Here, in 480 B.C., on a narrow mountain pass above the crystalline Aegean, 300 Spartan knights and their allies faced the massive forces of Xerxes, King of Persia. From the start, there was no question but that the Spartans would perish. In Gates of Fire, however, Steven Pressfield makes their courageous defense--and eventual extinction--unbearably suspenseful.
In the tradition of Mary Renault, this historical novel unfolds in flashback. Xeo, the sole Spartan survivor of Thermopylae, has been captured by the Persians, and Xerxes himself presses his young captive to reveal how his tiny cohort kept more than 100,000 Persians at bay for a week. Xeo, however, begins at the beginning, when his childhood home in northern Greece was overrun and he escaped to Sparta. There he is drafted into the elite Spartan guard and rigorously schooled in the art of war--an education brutal enough to destroy half the students, but (oddly enough) not without humor: "The more miserable the conditions, the more convulsing the jokes became, or at least that's how it seems," Xeo recalls. His companions in arms are Alexandros, a gentle boy who turns out to be the most courageous of all, and Rooster, an angry, half-Messenian youth.
Pressfield's descriptions of war are breathtaking in their immediacy. They are also meticulously assembled out of physical detail and crisp, uncluttered metaphor:
The forerank of the enemy collapsed immediately as the first shock hit it; the body-length shields seemed to implode rearward, their anchoring spikes rooted slinging from the earth like tent pins in a gale. The forerank archers were literally bowled off their feet, their wall-like shields caving in upon them like fortress redoubts under the assault of the ram.... The valor of the individual Medes was beyond question, but their light hacking blades were harmless as toys; against the massed wall of Spartan armor, they might as well have been defending themselves with reeds or fennel stalks.Alas, even this human barrier was bound to collapse, as we knew all along it would. "War is work, not mystery," Xeo laments. But Pressfield's epic seems to make the opposite argument: courage on this scale is not merely inspiring but ultimately mysterious. --Marianne Painter --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Pressfield's first novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, was about golf, but here he puts aside his putter and picks up sword and shield as he cleverly and convincingly portrays the clash between Greek hoplites and Persian heavy infantry in the most heroic confrontation of the Hellenic Age: the battle of Thermopylae ("the Hot Gates") in 480 B.C. The terrifying spectacle of classical infantry battle becomes vividly clear in his epic treatment of the Greeks' magnificent last stand against the invading Persians. Driven to understand the courage and sacrifice of his Greek foes, the Persian king, Xerxes, compels Xeones, a captured Greek slave, to explain why the Greeks would give their lives to fight against overwhelming odds. Xeones' tale covers his years of training and adventure as the loyal and devoted servant of Dienekes, a noble Spartan soldier, and he describes the six-day ordeal during which a few hundred Greeks held off thousands of Persian spears and arrows, until a Greek traitor led the Persians to an alternate route. Rich with historical detail, hot action and crafty storytelling, Pressfield's riveting story reveals the social and political framework of Spartan life?ending with the hysteria and brutality of the spear-thrusting, shield-bashing clamor that defined a Spartan's relationship with his family, community, country and fellow warriors. Literary Guild and Military Book Club selections; film rights sold to Universal Studios for George Clooney and Robert Lawrence's Maysville Pictures; UK rights to Bantam, Spanish rights to Grijalbo Mondadori, Italian rights to Rizzoli.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
GREAT STORY - BEAUTIFULLY TOLD!,
By NeuroSplicer (Freeside, in geosynchronous orbit) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME) (TOP 10 REVIEWER)
This review is from: Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae (Mass Market Paperback)
Everybody dies. So did these 300 Greeks. But the world will never forget their choice of death.It is incorrect that the battle at Thermopylae changed the course of history. That was the battle at Marathon, some years before, when the Greek cities were unprepared and only the city of Athens was able to scrape a small army of conscripts which, brilliantly generaled by Miltiadis, defeated the first Persian campaign and, thus, averted the infusion of Asia into Europe. Thermopylae was mostly a moral victory. In every sense - as well in the sense that it demoralized the Persian troops. At the same time, it bought the rest of the Greeks the time needed to organize their naval forces at Salamis, where they crushed the great Persian forces only weeks later. Pressfield does a fair job in making his readers get a taste of the Spartan way of life. The loyalty to the city-state; the devotion to the ideals of freedom; and the personal sacrifices offered to safeguard it. Those who would try to extract modern lessons from this historic sacrifice against the Persians should probably keep in mind that other aspects of the Spartan society have been left untold: the oppression of the older tribes - hence the need for a militaristic elite; the dissolution of democracy in any city-state conquered and the establishment of a Spartan-controlled oligarchy; the skewed morality that allowed theft and cheating as long as the final goal was achieved - and the perpetrator never got caught. Then again, maybe modern lessons can be extracted after all... Not to be taken as a history lesson - yet, could be a great excuse to get interested in the period that shaped the western civilization. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
5.0 out of 5 stars
By far one of the BEST books i've read in Years!!,
By Doctor I "Doctor I" (British Columbia, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae (Mass Market Paperback)
If you liked the Movie "300" or even just the story, then you MUST READ THIS BOOK.The movie was an extremely light version of TRUE HSTORICAL EVENTS that took place in ancient Greece, when a small army of Spartans and Greek alies took on an army of 2 million Persians!! (although some historians think it was closer to 200,000). However, to get a REAL IN DEPTH look at this story (with lots of historical true details) through an extremely artful make-believe plot, you need to get this book! I don't ever read a book a second time. This is the first time i've ever done it! You WON'T regret my suggestion!
4.0 out of 5 stars
Best of it's kind,
By Wendell (Edmonston) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Gates of Fire (Hardcover)
That's where I come down on this novel. It's not high art, exactly. It's a bit over the top with it's heroic musculinity. Some of it's heroes are more noble ideals than actual people... BUT, it's still head and shoulders above the norm. Pressfield's careful writing and vivid descriptions elevates GATES OF FIRE to heights well above most novels set in the ancient world. So all I'm actually trying to do by writing review at all is suggest that while this novel didn't stagger me in the way great literature sometimes does, it did leave me impressed. And I think it will do the same for many readers interested in this sort of subject matter. I'd also recommend PRIDE OF CARTHAGE by David Durham, another fine novel of classical war.
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