Gates of Fire

by Steven Pressfield

  There was always something for me. This day it was a pouch of coins of the Athenians, twenty in all, tetradrachms, nearly three months' pay for a skilled oarsman or hoplite of their army. I was astonished that the lady possessed such a sum, even of her own purse, and struck dumb at her extravagant generosity. These owls, as they were called from the image on their obverse, were good not just in the city of Athena but anywhere in Greece.

  When you accompanied my husband on embassy to Athens last month, the lady broke my dumbstruck silence, did you find occasion to visit your cousin? Diomache. That is her name, isn't it?

  I had and she knew it. This wish of mine, long-sought, had indeed at last been fulfilled. Dienekes had dispatched me upon the errand himself. Now I glimpsed a hint of the lady's pot-stirring. I asked if it was she, Arete, who had contrived it all.

  We wives of Lakedaemon are forbidden fine gowns or jewelry or cosmetics. It would be heartless in the extreme, don't you think, to ban as well a little innocent intrigue?

  She smiled at me, waiting.

  Well? she asked.

  Well, what?

  My wife, Thereia, was gossiping with the other farm women, out in the courtyard. I squirmed.

  My cousin is a married woman, lady. As I am a married man.

  The lady's eyes threw sparks of mischief. You would not be the first husband bound by love to someone other than his wife. Nor she the first wife.

  At once all teasing gaiety fled from the lady's glance. Her features became grave and shadowed, it seemed, with sorrow.

  The gods played the same trick on my husband and me. She rose, indicating the door and the courtyard beyond. Come, let us take a walk.

  The lady led barefoot up the slope to a shady spot beneath the oaks. In what country other than Lakedaemon would a noblewoman's soles be so thick with callus that they may tread upon the spiky leaves of oak and not feel their spiny barbs? You know, Xeo, that I was wife to my husband's brother before I was married to him.

  This I did know, having learned it, as I said, from Dienekes himself.

  Iatrokles was his name, I know you have heard the story. He was killed at Pellene, a hero's death, at thirty-one. He was the noblest of his generation, a Knight and a victor at Olympia, gifted by the gods with virtue and beauty much like Polynikes in this generation. He pursued me passionately, with such impetuousness that he called me from my father's house when I was still a girl. All this the Spartans know. But I will tell you something now which no one, except my husband, knows, The lady had reached a low bole of oak, a natural bench within the shade of the grove. She sat and indicated that I should take the place beside her.

  Down there, she said, gesturing to the open space between two outbuildings and the track that led to the threshing floor. Right there where the path turns was where I first saw Dienekes. It was on a county day just like this. The occasion was Iatrokles' first march-out. He was twenty.

  My father had brought me and my brother and sisters over from our own kleros with gifts of fruit and a yearling goat. The boys of the farm were playing, right there, when I came, holding my father's hand, over this knoll where you and I now sit.

  The lady drew up. For a moment she searched my eyes, as if to make certain of their attention and understanding.

  I saw Dienekes first from behind. Just his bare shoulders and the back of his head. I knew in an instant that I would love him and only him all my life.

  Her expression grew sober before this mystery, the summons of Eros and the unknowable workings of the heart.

  I remember waiting for him to turn, so I could see him, see his face. It was so odd. In a way it was like an arranged match, where you wait with your heart fluttering to behold the face you will and must love.

  At last he turned. He was wrestling another boy. Even then, Xeo, Dienekes was unhandsome.

  You could hardly believe he was his brother's brother. But to my eyes he appeared eueidestatas, the soul of beauty. The gods could not have crafted a face more open or touching to my heart. He was thirteen then. I was nine.

  The lady paused for a moment, gazing solemnly down at the spot of which she spoke. The occasion did not present itself, she declared, throughout her whole girlhood when she could speak in private with Dienekes. She observed him often on the running courses and in the exercises with his agoge platoon. But never did one share a moment with the other. She had no idea if he even knew who she was.

  She knew, however, that his brother had chosen her and had been speaking with the elders of her family.

  I wept when my father told me I had been given to Iatrokles. I cursed myself for the heartlessness of my ingratitude. What more could a girl ask than this noble, virtuous man? But I could not master my own heart. I loved the brother of this man, this fine brave man I was to marry.

  When Iatrokles was killed, I grieved inconsolably. But the cause of my distress was not what people thought. I feared that the gods had answered by his death the self-interested prayer of my heart. I waited for Dienekes to choose a new husband for me as was his obligation under the laws, and when he didn't, I went to him, shamelessly, in the dust of the palaistra, and compelled him to take me himself as his bride.

  My husband embraced this love and returned it in kind, both of us over the still-warm bones of his brother. The delight was so keen between us, our secret joy in the marriage bed, that this love itself became a curse to us. My own guilt I could requite; it is easy for a woman because she can feel the new life growing inside her, that her husband has planted.

  But when each child was bom and each a female, four daughters, and then! lost the gift to conceive, I felt, and my husband did too, that this was a curse from the gods for our passion.

  The lady paused and glanced again down the slope. The boys, including my son and little Idotychides, had dashed out from the courtyard and now played their carefree sport directly below the site where we sat.

  Then came the summons of the Three Hundred to Thermopylae. At last, I thought, I perceive the true perversity of the gods' plan. Without a son, my husband cannot be called. He will be denied this greatest of honors. But in my heart I didn't care. All that mattered was that he would live.

  Perhaps for only another week or month, until the next battle. But still he would live. I would still hold him. He would still be mine.

  Now Dienekes himself, his farm business completed within, emerged onto the flat below. There he joined playfully with the roughhousing boys, already obeying in their blood the instincts of battle and of war.

  The gods make us love whom we will not, the lady declared, and disrequite whom we will.

  They slay those who should live and spare those who deserve to die. They give with one hand and take with the other, answerable only to their own unknowable laws.

  Dienekes had now spotted Arete, watching him from above. He lifted the boy Idotychides playfully and made the lad's little arm wave up the slope. Arete compelled her own to answer.

  Now, inspired by blind impulse, she spoke toward me, I have saved the life of this boy, my brother's bastard's son, and lost my husband's in the process.

  She spoke these words so softly and with such sorrow that I felt my own throat catch and the burning begin in my eyes.

  The wives of other cities marvel at the women of Lakedaemon, the lady said. How, they ask, can these Spartan wives stand erect and unblinking as their husbands' broken bodies are borne home to a grave or, worse, interred beneath some foreign dirt with nothing save cold memory to clutch to their hearts? These women think we are made of stauncher stuff than they. I will tell you, Xeo. We are not.

  Do they think we of Lakedaemon love our husbands less than they? Are our hearts made of stone and steel? Do they imagine that our grief is less because we choke it down in our guts?

  She blinked once, dry-eyed, then turned her glance to mine.

  The gods have played a game with you too, Xeo. But it may not be too late to steal a roll of the dice. This is why I have given you this pouch of 'owls
.'

  Already I knew what her heart intended.

  You are not Spartan. Why should you bind yourself by her cruel laws? Haven't the gods stolen enough from you already? I begged her to speak of this no more.

  This girl you love, I can have her brought here. Just ask it.

  No! Please.

  Then run. Get out tonight. Go there.

  I replied at once that I could not.

  My husband will find another to serve him. Let another die instead of you.

  Please, lady. This would be dishonor.

  I felt my cheek sting and realized the lady had struck me. Dishonor? She spat the word with revulsion and contempt.

  Down the slope the boys and Dienekes had been joined by the other lads of the farm. A game of ball had started. The boys' cries of agon, of contention and competition, pealed brightly up the slope to where the lady sat.

  One could feel only gratitude for that which had sprung so nobly from her heart: the wish to grant to me that clemency which she felt moira, fate, had denied her. To grant to me and her whom I loved a chance to slip the bonds she felt herself and her husband imprisoned in.

  I could offer nothing save that which she already knew.! could not go. Besides, the gods would be there already. As ever, one jump ahead.

  I saw her shoulders straighten then, as her will brought to heel the gallant but impossible impulse of her heart.

  Your cousin will learn where your body lies, and with what honor you perished. By Helen and the Twins, I swear this.

  The lady rose from her bench of oak. The interview was over. She had become again a Spartan.

  Now here on the morn of the march-out I beheld upon her face that same austere mask. The lady released her husband's embrace and gathered her children to her, resuming that posture, erect and solemn, replicated by the line of other Spartan wives extending fore and rear beneath the oaks.

  I saw Leonidas embrace his wife, Gorgo, Bright Eyes, their daughters, and his son, the boy Pleistarchus, who would one day take his place as king.

  My own wife, Thereia, held me hard, grinding against me beneath her Messenian white robe, while she held our infants crooked in one arm. She would not be husbandless for long. Wait at least until I'm out of sight, I joked, and held my children, whom I hardly knew. Their mother was a good woman. I wish I could have loved her as she deserved.

  The final sacrifices were over, omens taken and recorded. The Three Hundred formed up, each Peer with a single squire, in the long shadows cast by distant Parnon, with the entire army in witness upon the shield-side slope. Leonidas assumed his place before them, beside the stone altar, garlanded as they. The remainder of the whole city, old men and boys, wives and mothers, helots and craftsmen, stood drawn up upon the spear-side rise. It was not yet daybreak; the sun still had not peeked above Parnon's crest.

  Death stands close upon us now, the king spoke. Can you feel him, brothers? I do. I am human and I fear him. My eyes cast about for a sight to fortify the heart for that moment when I come to look him in the face, Leonidas began softly, his voice carrying in the dawn stillness, heard with ease by all.

  Shall I tell you where I find this strength, friends? In the eyes of our sons in scarlet before us, yes. And in the countenances of their comrades who will follow in battles to come.

  But more than that, my heart finds courage from these, our women, who watch in tearless silence as we go.

  He gestured to the assembled dames and ladies, singling out two matriarchs, Pyrrho and Alkmene, and citing them by name. How many times have these twain stood here in the chill shade of Parnon and watched those they love march out to war? Pyrrho, you have seen grandfathers and father troop away down the Aphetaid, never to return. Alkmene, your eyes have held themselves unweeping as husband and brothers have departed to their deaths. Now here you stand again, with no few others who have borne as much and more, watching sons and grandsons march off to hell.

  This was true. The matriarch Pyrrho's son Doreion stood garlanded now among the Knights;

  Alkmene's grandsons were the champions Alpheus and Maron.

  Men's pain is lightly borne and swiftly over. Our wounds are of the flesh, which is nothing; women's is of the heart- sorrow unending, far more bitter to bear.

  Leonidas gestured to the wives and mothers assembled along the still-shadowed slopes.

  Learn from them, brothers, from their pain in childbirth which the gods have ordained immutable. Bear witness to that lesson they teach: nothing good in life comes but at a price.

  Sweetest of all is liberty. This we have chosen and this we pay for. We have embraced the laws of Lykurgus, and they are stern laws. They have schooled us to scorn the life of leisure, which this rich land of ours would bestow upon us if we wished, and instead to enroll ourselves in the academy of discipline and sacrifice. Guided by these laws, our fathers for twenty generations have breathed the blessed air of freedom and have paid the bill in full when it was presented. We, their sons, can do no less.

  Into each warrior's hand was placed by his squire a cup of wine, his own ritual chalice, presented to him on the day he became a Peer and brought forth only for ceremonies of the gravest solemnity. Leonidas held his own aloft with a prayer to Zeus All-Conquering and Helen and the Twins. He poured the libation.

  In years six hundred, so the poets say, no Spartan woman has beheld the smoke of the enemy's fires.

  Leonidas lifted both arms and straightened, garlanded, raising his countenance to the gods.

  By Zeus and Eros, by Athena Protectress and Artemis Upright, by the Muses and all the gods and heroes who defend Lakedaemon and by the blood of my own flesh, I swear that our wives and daughters, our sisters and mothers, will not behold those fires now.

  He drank, and the men followed him.

  Chapter Twenty One

  His Majesty is well familiar with the topography of the approaches, defiles and the compressed battle plain wherein his armies engaged the Spartans and their allies at the Hot Gates. I will pass over this, addressing instead the composition of the Greek forces and the state of discord and disorder which prevailed as these arrived and took station, preparatory to defending the pass.

  When the Three Hundred-now reinforced by five hundred heavy infantry from Tegea and a matching number from Mantinea, along with two thousand combined from Orchomenos and the rest of Arkadia, Corinth, Phlius and Mycenae, plus seven hundred from Thespiae and four hundred from Thebes-arrived at Opountian Lokris, ten miles from the Hot Gates, there to be joined by a thousand heavy infantry from Phokis and Lokris, they found instead the entire countryside deserted.

  Only a few boys and young men of the neighborhood remained, and these occupied themselves in looting the abandoned homes of their neighbors and appropriating whatever stores of wine they could disinter from their compatriots' caches. They took to their heels at the sight of the Spartans, but the rangers ran them down. The army and populace of Lokris, the pimply pillagers reported, had taken to the hills, while the locals' chieftains were scurrying north toward the Persians as fast as their spindly shanks would bear them. In fact, the urchins claimed, their headmen had already capitulated.

  Leonidas was furious. It was determined, however, in a hasty and decidedly ungentle interrogation of these farmyard freebooters, that the Lokrians of Opus had gotten the day of assembly wrong. Apparently the month called Karneius in Sparta is named Lemendieon in Lokris. Further its start is counted backward from the full moon, rather than forward from the new. The Lokrians had expected the Spartans two days earlier and, when these failed to appear, determined that they had been left in the lurch. They bolted amid bitter oaths and maledictions, which the gales of rumor scattered swiftly into neighboring Phokis, in which country the Gates themselves are located and whose inhabitants were already in terror of being overrun. The Phokians had hightailed it too.

  All along the march north, the allied column had encountered country tribes and villagers fleeing, streaming south along the military road, or what had n
ow become a military road. Tattered clan groups fled before the Persian advance, bearing their pitiful possessions in shoulder sacks contrived from bedcovers or bundled cloaks, balancing their ragged parcels like water vessels atop their heads. Sunken-cheeked husbandmen wheeled handbarrows whose cargoes were more often flesh than furniture, children whose legs had given out from the tramp or bundled ancients hobbled with age. A few had oxcarts and pack asses. Pets and farm stock jostled underfoot, gaunt hounds cadging for a handout, doleful-looking swine being kicked along as if they knew they would be supper in a night or two. The main of the refugees were female; they trudged barefoot, shoes slung about their necks to save the leather.