Journal 4

Journal 4: Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire, Books 7 - 8: Chapters 30 - 38: Pages 317 - 384

• Chapter 30: Not a whole lot this chapter either. In fact, most of the book from here on out is descriptions of battles and the like. Eleven are chosen for the night raid on Xerxes' tent, including Dienekes and Xeones. The Spartans sneak up all the way to where Rooster said the tent was, and it isn't there. They soon find the tent, though.
• Chapter 31: Xeo remembers some conversations from before the raid, the most important of which involved Dienekes discovering that the opposite of fear is love.
• Chapter 32: The night raid commences. The Spartans find the tent of Xerxes, but his servants manage to unleash a bunch of birds which confuse the Spartans and save Xerxes' life. Alexandros' hand is chopped off, and a Spartan named Doreion is beheaded. The rest flee.
• Chapter 33: Only one thing happens in this entire chapter. The night raiders get back to camp, and Alexandros dies.
• Chapter 34: The historian relates the fact that Athens is burned and sacked. Xeo then continues his story of the final battle of Thermopylae. Preparations are made for a suicide mission. Leonidas sends all Greeks except for the Spartans back to their cities. The Thespeians refuse, though. Leonidas tells the Spartans that the cities need those men, but if the Spartans leave too, the Persian cavalry will roll through and hack them all down. Therefore, the Spartans must stay alive for a few hours more. They advance to the widest part of the pass so that each man may "sell his life as dearly as possible."
• Chapter 35: With the preparations having been made, the Spartans await their death. Leonidas actually snoozes until the time of battle. Xeones tells Xerxes that if he wants to know what a true king is, he should look at Leonidas. Dienekes says that he doesn't hate the Persians and, were it not wartime, many of them he would welcome as a friend. Xeones had slept too, and he awakes to find the entire Persian empire less than a bowshot away. The Spartans and Thespeians get into formation; Xeones is terrified of all of the Persians, and prays for his courage to not fail. The battle commences, with uncountable moments of valor from the Spartans. Finally, inevitably, the Spartans are killed.
• Chapter 36: The final chapters are purely the historians. Athens may have been burned, but her navy serves to Xerxes' navy a crushing defeat at Salamis. A general orders Xeones to be killed, but the historian refuses.
• Chapter 37: With his story having been told, Xeones dies. The historian and a different Persian general who had come to view Xeo as a friend order him to be carried to the temple at which Diomache served.
• Chapter 38: In this final chapter, the full Spartan army defeat the Persian army at Plataea. Spartans bust into the tent of the historian, and he saves himself by crying the names of the Spartans of Xeones' tale. The Spartans spare him, and he acts as an interpretor for a year or so until he is ransomed by Xerxes. On his way back to Persia, he crosses Thermopylae again. He sees a monument to Leonidas that states one of my favorite lines in all of history: "Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here by Spartan law we lie."

• This book is absolutely insane. I love it, and I can't thank my preacher enough for it. As I said, I had read the "cool parts" before, but they're only so much cooler after reading the rest of the novel. I think that what stood out the most to me was the historical accuracy, especially in the numbers. One part that blows my mind is this: at Thermopylae the Spartans lined up 50 or 60 men across, and 6 men deep. At the battle of Plataea, according to the Persians, "Our warriors beheld again that line of lambdas [the upside down V on Spartan shields] upon the interleaved shields of Lakedaemon [Sparta], not this time in breadth of fifty or sixty as in the confines of the Hot Gates, but ten thousand across and eight deep..." Ten thousand across and eight deep. I can't comprehend that.
• Because this is an incredibly historically accurate novel, there aren't too many ways in which it applies to my life. The theme of forgiveness can, of course, apply to everybody's life. I've forgiven many people for many things in my lifetime. I wish I could say that it applies to me in that I'm a Spartan, but nobody can be that cool in this day and age. :/
• I think that I am most like Dienekes. As I said earlier, not because I'm a Spartan, but who can be? I am nearly constantly pondering the intricacies of the human mind. One of my favorite subjects to consider is fear, its causes and its opposites. Dienekes is the exact same, he is always thinking about fear.
• There can be only one event that truly resolved the plot, and it is obvious. The Battle of Therymopylae pretty much sums everything up. There was a resolution to a subplot, however. The underlying plot of Xeones' love for Diomache was ended when he visited her and they both agreed that they couldn't be with each other.
• Honestly, I don't think the author was really trying to get any kind of message across. I truly believe that this was more along the lines of Steven Pressfield getting what really happened at Theryompylae out to the masses, along with a bit of fiction. Sorta like what Achebe did in Things Fall Apart except without all the metaphors. I guess one message I got was "It doesn't matter what position in life you occupy, all men are equal." I got this because, in the end, the most heroic aspect of Thermopylae, the suicide battle at the very end, slaves and masters fought side by side.
• I would totally recommend this book to other people. The imagery the author uses throughout the entire thing is incredible. Sentences such as "Does His Majesty recall that moment, upon the slope beyond the Narrows, after Leonidas had fallen, struck through with half a dozen lances, blinded beneath his helmet staved in from the blow of a battle-axe, his left arm useless with its splintered shield lashed to his shoulder, when he fell at last under the crush of the enemy?" and "There were ungodly numbers of them. My lungs howled for air; I could feel the blood pounding within my temples and read its pulse upon the vessels of the eyes. My limbs were stone; I could feel neither hands nor feet. I prayed with every fiber, simply for the courage not to faint" paint a vivid picture to the reader. It's all so great.

If I may make a final comment, directly to the Ms. Rickard, I would also strongly recommend this to you. I think you would love this book; if you get the time, perhaps you should read it.