Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae

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

“Nothing fancy, brothers,” the king guided the construction. “For a wall of stone will not preserve Hellas, but a wall of men.”

“But by our deaths here with honor, in the face of these insuperable odds, we transform vanquishment into victory. With our lives we sow courage in the hearts of our allies and the brothers of our armies left behind. They are the ones who will ultimately produce victory, not us. It was never in the stars for us.

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

The more miserable the conditions, the more convulsing the jokes become, or at least that’s how it seems.

This process of arming for battle, which the citizen-soldiers of other poleis had practiced no more than a dozen times a year in the spring and summer training, the Spartans had rehearsed and re-rehearsed, two hundred, four hundred, six hundred times each campaigning season. Men in their fifties had done this ten thousand times. It was as second-na

Your music. How much of it there was, not alone the martial odes or war songs you sing as you advance upon the foe, but in the dances and the choruses, the festivals and the sacrifices. Why do these consummate warriors honor music so, when they forbid all theater and art? I believe they sense that the virtues are like music. They vibrate at a highe

If you show fear, they will be afraid. If you project courage, they will match it in kind. Our deportment here must not differ from any other campaign. On the one hand, no extraordinary precautions; on the other, no unwonted recklessness. Above all, the little things. Maintain your men’s training schedule without alteration. Omit no sacrifice to th

You have all heard the oracle declaring that Sparta will either lose a king in battle or the city herself be extinguished. I have taken the omens and the god has answered that I am that king and that this site will be my grave.