Ce roman, frate, CE ROMAN!! Mi-a luat o lună de zile să-l citesc, și deși am întâlnit câteva chestii care m-au făcut să strâmb din nas, nu pot să nu recunosc talentul autorului! Nu le prea am cu scenele de luptă descrise amănunțit, dar în cazul ăsta le-am apreciat, fiindcă au acordat veridicitate poveștii celor trei sute de spartani de la Termopile. Nu știu ce-aș mai putea spune acum, la cald, decât că mi s-a părut un roman EPIC, plin de personaje și întâmplări memorabile, care oferă spartanilor ce e al spartanilor. Sper numai să mă adun destul de mult încât să-i pot scrie o recenzie care să-i facă dreptate!

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CITEŞTE RECENZIA MEA PE BLOG: https://literaryjungle.wordpress.com/...

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.

DNF @ 100 pages.

Like...I don't know what happened here. It's the freaking Spartans. It's ancient Greek historical fiction. Why didn't I love this?

I did not enjoy myself at all. I never even made it to Thermopylae. I was just so...tedious to me. It's littered with the Greek terminology for things to a degree that seems almost comical and I was just. so. bored. I put it down the first time when we get a montage of Spartan boys training and their overseer is basically the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket. That's just not my bag. When I picked it back up, I read two more chapters and was just so bored. Literally, the history book I have covering this time period was more interesting to me than this fiction book.

I am now 0 for 2 in Greek historical fiction. I weep. Fed by my tears, the floodwaters rise. Farms are destroyed. Livelihoods lost. The land lies fallow. Darkness comes.

La battaglia delle Termopili non ha bisogno di presentazioni. Se ne è parlato molto, forse anche a sproposito: un gesto inutile? Da un punto di vista pragmatico, forse sì, ma questo libro riesce a coglierne e svelarne al lettore il significato più profondo.

La battaglia delle Termopili fu un simbolo, un sacrificio rituale come talvolta si ritrovano nella Storia antica (basti pensare alla Devotio romana) che permise alla civiltà greca di sopravvivere e perpetuarsi, non solo negli atti, ma anche nella memoria. Il sacrificio di un pugno di guerrieri spartani, tespiesi e altri alleati provenienti dalle altre poleis, stretti in quel passo angusto alle Porte di Fuoco, rallentò l'avanzata dello sterminato esercito persiano e risollevò il morale degli altri milioni di greci che, rimasti a difendere le loro città, udirono il racconto della loro strenua resistenza.

Come dice Leonida in questo libro, fu un gesto che segnò il trionfo della libertà sulla schiavitù, che impedì all'Ellade di diventare una provincia periferica dello sconfinato impero. Ma soprattutto, impedì alla secolare identità ellenica di venire inghiottita dal crogiolo persiano, dove già diversi popoli avevano perso la loro autonomia.

Tutto questo, Steven Pressfield riesce a ricrearlo tra le pagine di questo libro. Ricostruisce le condizioni estreme della battaglia, il loro impatto sul morale degli uomini e lo spirito che li ha portati a resistere fino all'ultimo. Ci restituisce i costumi spartani, scava a fondo nella loro mentalità, nella concezione di regalità comune agli antichi popoli europei, e analizza le sfaccettature del coraggio e della paura. Parla di uomini e donne che sanno essere eroici nelle loro fragilità, non perché non abbiano debolezze, ma perché riescono a domarle.
E ci fa capire che forse, se gli Spartani e i loro alleati greci non avessero ottenuto questa vittoria simbolica alle Termopili, adesso la storia europea sarebbe molto diversa.

Highly recommended to me, but highly disappointing. This is a romanticized historical fictional account of the Spartans' stand at Thermopylae against the massively superior forces of Xerxes. It does offer a depiction of the warrior culture of Sparta. But the writing: trite, tedious, melodramatic, sometimes overly flowery faux archaic, and at others base sixth grade genital/excrement humor. One of the major humor touchstones was a character whose catchphrase was "Wake up to this", which cracked everyone up because it sounded like "Weck up to thees". Not only is that not that funny, but it doesn't really work for me because it takes me away from picturing these guys speaking Greek, and becomes a comedy of guys talking in amusingly accented English like Cheech and Chong. I'll allow a star for the research the author did for the background for the book.

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.

I am so surprised that I liked this book so much.

I generally don't like historical fiction or stories about war. I had to read them in school and never really liked them. For several years now, I have been trying to broaden my reading horizons and try different genres that I don't usually read. Now, many years after I finished my school education, there came time for a historical novel, and one in which a lot of space is devoted to the war. Interestingly, this story includes one more thing that I do not like in my books - it is the story of the main character's life from his childhood to the moment he is now. So I am really surprised how interested I was in this story and how much I enjoyed it.

This is a male book. I can't say exactly why. But reading, or actually listening to the audiobook, I thought it was a book written by a man for men. It wasn't something that bothered me as a woman, but it was part of the experience.

Steven Pressfield narrates the events that led to the Battle of Thermopylae in an amazing way. His story is both extremely real and has something imaginary about it, something out of a fairy tale. Perhaps because it tells about events that happened hundreds of years ago that they seem unreal to us today. On the other hand, it is not a story of a battle or of political events, but of people who fought with their closest friends in a battle that was lost from the very beginning. In some respects, it reminds me of World War II uprisings (including the Warsaw Uprising), fired with no chance of victory, but only to choose the type of death.

This is a truly amazing story and wonderfully told. I am so happy that I read it. That's why from time to time I like to read something I don't usually read, because I can have that unique experience. I definitely recommend this book to those who are interested in ancient Greece and those who like stories about people caught up in a whirlwind of true historical events.

Υπέροχο βιβλίο. Το δανείστηκα και το διάβασα, μετά το αγόρασα για εμένα αρχικά και ακολούθως πολλές φορές για δώρο.

Υπάρχουν βιβλία που με τη διήγησή τους σε κάνουν να "ζεις" τα γραφόμενα. Με αυτό το βιβλίο έπιασα τον εαυτό μου να κλαίει με ένα θάνατο.. κανονικό κλάμα, με λυγμούς. Και δεν το έχω εύκολο το κλάμα.. Αγάπησα τους Σπαρτιάτες, κόλλησα με την ιστορία τους, αλλά άλλο βιβλίο ισάξιο με αυτό (για ιστορικό μυθιστόρημα μιλάω) δεν βρήκα.

Συμπαθές ανάγνωσμα, γραφή που κυλάει ευχάριστα και πλοκή που αιχμαλωτίζει τον αναγνώστη. Ένα τίμιο page-turner, αλλά μέχρι εκεί. Τίποτα περισσότερο, τίποτα λιγότερο.

Βιβλίο που πρέπει να διαβαστεί από όλους!!!

Remarkably engaging, and remarkably bloody!

While I happily delve into historical fiction on an occasionally regular basis and also enjoy some rousing battles in the more speculative genres, I've never found historical military fiction to be particularly entertaining. This buddy-read turned out to be an outlier. I found Gates of Fire to be nuanced and thoughtfully appealing.

This is the battle of Thermopyle (think 300) recounted by Xeones – a servant of the Spartan army – to the invading Persian emperor Xerxes. Xeones is the only survivor found among the many Greek corpses after the notorious battle, and he is saved from death so that the Persians can get a better idea of the spirit behind the incredible valor and skill of the incredibly efficient Spartans. Xeones' perspective is an interesting one: after being driven from his own home and losing most of his family in a more localized territorial battle, the young boy Xeones ultimately chooses to place himself into servitude in Sparta for the opportunity to learn to fight and model himself after the renowned warriors of that land. His narrative spans many years prior to the big battle at the titular gates, and gives great context about the politics and fighting that precede it. Approaching the story from this angle is great for a reader like me, who is about as far away from a military mindset as a person can be. It also gives observational insight into Spartan ideologies that form the foundation of the unity of their brotherhood.

And ultimately that is what this book is about, though the battle at the Gates of Fire is given gruesome spotlight for the final third-ish of the story. It is about patriotic urges, the philosophies of heroics and fear, and the incredible bond that ties the defending army together. This is powerfully conveyed in Pressfield's writing. It is little wonder that this novel is cited as a favourite of many a Serviceman.

Overall, a moving book to read, though the field of battle is horrific and gory and sad. There are a few slow moments in the middle which still add to the characterizations that are vital for this story to be as affecting as it is.

Having stepped away from the immediate experience, I can feel myself start poking at it with my own ideals and questions and curiosities, but the writing is good, and the tale is both gripping and anthemic enough that I didn't stop to be my own objectionable and critical self while I was reading. I think that is a pretty strong achievement by the author.

If I allow myself to pick away at it in the back of my mind then an eventual reread might fare differently, but I really appreciated Gates of Fire and would absolutely recommend it to any fan of Historical War Fiction.

5 stars - English Paperback - I have dyslexia -
In an older notebook I found this lines:
Much surpriced by this book. A slave who' s hometown is distroyed by the spartans, but becomes one of there worriors because he admires them so much. The fight agains the Persians. Loved it.