An excellent first-hand account of Spartan life and training, culminating with the epic battle of Thermopylae. As much a novel as history.
Well researched and gives an insight into a society built around its military. As a former Special Operations soldier, I found the details about how the Spartans trained fascinating; it's intriguing how some thing don't change in the warrior profession.

An awesome piece of historical fiction!

Todos sabemos lo que pasa y como pasa, pero Pressfield lo narra de forma excepcional.

Gates of Fire is incredible. Framed as the story of the sole Spartan survivor of the Battle of Thermopylae, telling his story to the Persian Emperor Xerxes, Gates of Fire is about more than the battle. It's about the world of the warrior, and the psychology that leads men to triumph in battle.

Our narrator, Xeo, went through childhood in an unremarkable minor city until it was sacked by the Argives. He lived as a refugee in the hills with his cousin Diomanche and a blind slave, learning to hunt and track, and then went to Sparta because the Spartans were the finest warriors in all of Greece. The story moves on two tracks towards the confrontation at Themopylae, where 300 handpicked Spartans and a larger number of Greek allies fought a desperate rearguard action against the massive Persian army to give the rest of Greece time to gather forces and fight back.

The spiritual core of this book (and it does have one), is the centrality of fear in the warrior's experience, and the way that fear can be conquered. The Spartans have an entire discipline around mastering fear, and there are long and fascinating discussions of what courage is. I'll not spoil the answers, since they are worth waiting for.

On a personal level, I'm a Spartan revisionist. We need to acknowledge that they were a brutal slave state built on pederasty. So all the noble Spartan lords carping on about freedom and liberty is a kind of dark joke. But Gates of Fire is fantastic that even this revisionist loves it.

First person narrative Sword and Sandal historical fiction on ancient Sparta and the Battle of Thermopylae.


n  300 Spartans and their allies against the Persian horden

My audiobook was fourteen (14) hours long. George Guidall was the narrator. A dead tree copy is about 530 pages. The original US copyright was 1998.

Steven Pressfield is an American historical fiction and non-fiction writer. He has nine (9) historical fiction books published. Most are set in ancient times and have military themes. He also has the same number of non-fiction books published over a wider variety of subjects, but military themes predominate. I’ve read several books by the author. This was my second reading of this book, but the first was very long ago. I only dimly remembered the story. The last book I read by the author was n  Tides of Warn (my review).

Pressfield’s ancient-period historical fiction stories are a deep-dive into the period. In this case, it’s the imaginary narrative of the lone, captured Spartan survivor of the Thermopylae land battle (Xeones) recorded by the royal historian of the Persian king Xerxes. This was a good clash of ancient armies and the lifestyle of the ancient Spartans story. However, it was somewhat weaker in the parts without 'sword in hand'. It was also a long book to listen to, and contained many characters to keep track of. Being unfamiliar with ancient Greek names and locations made this more difficult. Mercifully, there were very few POVs.

There was a high-degree of historical detail in the story. It centered on the ancient Spartans during the beginning of the n  Greek Classical Agen around 480 B.C. The adjective Spartan was amply illustrated. The author adopted a mainly, first-person narrative technique. The protagonist, the orphaned, youth Xeones, joins the Spartans and over the years becomes one, but due to birth can never really be one. The other POVs included the Persian historian who records Xerones death bed recounting of Spartan life and the battle, and the wife of a main character who gives the Spartan woman’s perspective. Their stories were all told in a verbose, elegiac, archaic-style with many Greek words defined and used. In places, the manly banter was profanely, very funny. The overall effect was immersive in its detail. However, I noted it was a rather idealized version of ancient Greek life. Reading this, you should already know that ancient Greek life was really: nasty, brutish, and short.

Note that there was a lot of edged-weapon and physical violence in the story. The clash-of-arms was well done. In addition, the description of wounding and general carnage was quite detailed. However, I thought the author missed the effects of pain in his descriptions. I likewise thought the romantic aspects of the story lacked emotion.

I have a keen interest in ancient history, particularly ancient military history info-dumps. I liked the book for that. This was a soldier’s story with: conflict against great odds, honor, duty, country and comradeship. It was good at that. However, it verged on a Hollywood depiction, where having a hand lopped off was just a flesh wound, and Spartan women were better men than their husbands. That is, it was weak once it strayed from the mano-e-mano action plotlines. However, I was not bored. In addition, I appreciated the audiobook for providing the proper pronunciations for ancient Greek militaria I have been butchering for years now.

If you read only one macho right-wing war novel in your life -- read this book!

Steven Pressfield has written a masterpiece about the ancient warrior state of Sparta. This is a society that almost any modern person would loathe on sight. It was a military dictatorship where all power belonged to soldiers and no one had any rights. Slaves were routinely murdered as part of military training. Young boys were conditioned from early childhood to brutalize each other to the point of serious injury.

Yet somehow Steven Pressfield brings this strange society to life, and creates Spartan warriors who are not only admirable and powerful but at times almost lovable.

It helps, of course, that the narrator is a slave from another part of Greece. His perspective is gentle and humane, yet truthful about the price of freedom. As he grows up among the Spartans, you can gradually see the human decency behind the rigid discipline. The training scenes are brutal. The battle scenes are electrifying. And there's so much more!

n  n    “Victory cannot simply be declared, it must be won.”n  n

We all know how this battle ended, so I was ready for heartbreak from page one. And still that first description of the surprise attack in the tent left me speechless, I only there realized truly that our heroes whom I came to know here are not immortal.

Alexandros captivated me the most (with the narrator Xeones being close second). It’s crazy to think how young they were even at the end, at least by today’s standard.

“There is a proverb in Lakedaemon, ”the reed beside the staff“, whose meaning is that a chain is made stronger by its possession of one unproven link.”

This book sat on my TBR shelf for 6 years; I think I was avoiding it because of its obvious tragic ending. Now I feel just as sad as I thought I would before I even read the first page.

“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.”

There were so many quotes that I loved but this one was by far my favorite:

“The opposite of fear,” Dienekes said, “is love.”

"Tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
that here obedient to their laws we lie."

Good authors are often graced with one great book. 'Gates of Fire' is Pressfield's henosis. It is lyrical, compelling, thought provoking, and soars above most works of historical fiction (at least those that shrug in the mud of military historical fiction). Like most of Pressfield's work, 'Gates of Fire' deals with the common soldier, the grunt, the squire. His narrative is informed by a people's history of Greek history. For me, the most surprising aspect of 'Gates of Fire' was the nuance Pressfield's gave to Spartan women.

If I sound too enraptured, too possesssed, I apologize. I am sure that there are faults in this novel, but they are few and mostly irrelevant. Pressfield wasn't aiming for 'War and Peace', he wasn't trying to capture the flag of high literature. His goal was more humble, but he more than won it.

Monumental, inspiring and epic.

First of all, I am proud to have visited the spot in Greece where supposedly the battle/drama of Thermopylae took place. Wonderful to be able to interact with history, even if it's in such a small way.

"Study the past if you would define the future." by Confucius

"Gates of Fire" is a fictional novel, with very accurate historical facts due to the author's thorough research.

This book was way better than I expected and it made me care for the characters and to some degree raised some inner self questions regarding: self-sacrifice , loyalty, duty for the country I was born in.(I possess none! but who knows what may happen later in life, or in times of need) I have to admit that Pressfield did an awesome job, he wrote everything with such depth of details; every action scene keeping me on pins and needles, making you an eye-witness to the events. Some may appreciate the battle scenes - marvelously depicted- , others the way he pictured the Spartan society. Either way, the writing, his narrative brings those imaginings to life.

Self-sacrifice, Loyalty,Duty,Endurance... I'm not a spartan or maybe I was,for a while... Definitely I felt some connection.


It was a nice touch, the way he used Xeones A foreign-born spartan squire is found on the battlefield,saved and taken as captive by the persians. Xerxes was curious what made the Spartans fight with such vigour - everything given for the realm they cared for. So it begins, the story of Xeo and the Hot Gates  as a narrator. Loved every insight into the lives of our characters, every nook and cranny of this book. I haven't been bored by the various plots,the sudden change from one to the other - sometimes interrupting a scene that was more beguiling -a bit confusing at times, but got on track right away. Besides, those back-stories, brought you closer to each character as well as throwing you in a lot of clever talk philosophical issues e.g. fear. Priceless!

I'm glad to have read this and recommend it highly.

Some nice quotes that I like:

"Fear arises from this: the flesh. This "he declared, “is the factory of fear.” by Dienekes


"tMankind as it is constituted, "Polynikes said, " is a boil and a canker. Observe the specimens in any nation other than Lakedaemon. Man is weak, greedy, craven, lustful, prey to every species of vice and depravity. He will lie, steal, cheat , murder, melt down the very statues of the gods and coin their gold as money for whores.This is man.This is his nature,as all the poets attest.
tFortunately God in his mercy has provided a counterpoise to our species' innate depravity. That gift, my young friend is war.War, not peace, produces virtue. War, not peace, purges vice.
tWar, and preparation for war, call forth all that is noble and honorable in a man. It unites him with his brothers and binds them in selfless love, eradicating in the crucible of necessity all which is base and ignoble. There in the holy mill of murder the meanest of men may seek and find that part of himself, concealed beneath the corrupt, which shines forth brilliant and virtuous, worthy of honor before the gods. Do not despise war, my young friend, nor delude yourself that mercy and compassion are virtuessuperior to andreia, to manly valor." by Polynikes


"He observed that often those who seek to overcome fear of death preach that the soul does not expire with the body. "To my mind this is fatuousness.Wishful thinking. Others, barbarians primarly, say that when we die we pass on to paradise. I ask them all: if you really believe this, why not make away with yourself at once and speed
the trip?
Achilles, Homer tells us, possessed true andreia. But did he? Scion of an immortal mother, dipped as a babe in the waters of Styx, knowing himself to be save his heel invulnerable? Cowards would be rarer than feathers on fish if we all knew that. " by Dienekes

"The supreme accomplishment of the warrior: to perform the commonplace under far-from-commonplace conditions. Not only to achieve this for oneself alone, as Achilles or the solo champions of yore, but to do it as part of a unit, to feel about oneself one's brothers-in-arms, in an instance like this of chaos and disorder, comrades whom one doesn't even know, with whom one has never trained; to feel them filling the spaces alongside him, from spear side to shield side, fore and rear, to behold one’s comrades likewise rallying, not in a frenzy of mad possession-driven abandon, but with order and self-composure, each man knowing his role and rising to it, drawing strength from him as he draws it from them; the warrior in these moments finds himself lifted as if by the hand of a god. He can not tell where his being leaves off and that of the comrade besides him begins. In that moment the phalanx forms a unity so dense and all-divining that it performs not merely at the level of a machine or engine of war but, surpassing that, to the state of a single organism, a beast of one blood and heart." by Dienekes

"When a warrior fights not for himself, but for his brothers, when his most passionately sought goal is neither glory nor his own life’s preservation, but to spend his substance for them, his comrades, not to abandon them, not to prove unworthy of them, then his heart truly has achieved contempt for death, and with that he transcends himself and his actions touch the sublime. That is why the true warrior cannot speak of battle save to his brothers who have been there with him. This truth is too holy, too sacred, for words." by Suicide


The End


P.S: wanted to read it in December as a group read for Ancient & Medieval Historical Fiction, but postponed it until this year.Me.A dumbass.So, thanks. I doubt I would've ever read "Gates of Fire" otherwise. This is why I love goodreads.

-Potencia y tensión combativa.-

Género. Novela Histórica.

Lo que nos cuenta. Un superviviente de la batalla de las Termópilas recuerda su infancia en Esparta, su formación y los eventos que le llevaron a formar parte de los soldados que intentaron detener al gran ejército de Xerxes en su invasión de la Antigua Grecia.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com....

Una descripción espectacularmente épica de la batalla de las Termópilas (unas 100 páginas). El resto del libro (unas 300 páginas) totalmente prescindible.
En la traducción española, en el capítulo 36 se salta la mitad del contenido y se inventa un trozo (verificado con la edición inglesa). ¿Por qué hacen este tipo de cosas?