I decided to start writing reviews of books I read or listen to that deal with topics from Antiquity. I hope you all enjoy these and find them informative. Hopefully, these reviews will be a good way to add more content to the site. So, here goes …
The first book getting reviewed here is Gates of Fire, Stephen Pressfield‘s novel about the Battle of Thermopylae (although it is really more of an ode to Sparta and “Spartan culture” as the battle shows up late and takes up a relatively small amount of the narrative (the battle doesn’t start until about 245 pages into a 384 page book)). I read Gates of Fire like 20 years ago and I remember enjoying it. Over the years, I’ve recommended it to others and discussed it whenever it came up. One of my favorite parts of the book is the line Dienekes uttered about fighting the battle in the shade. I think the reason the book stuck with me is because I was pretty young when I read it and almost certainly had a lot of thoughts about getting my name forever mentioned in the history books (you know, the kind of thing that most young, dumb kids think about). Because of these fond memories, I bought it for my son thinking that he might like it. He was 15 or 16 then, so it seemed like it might be the right age for him. Anyway, he never read it which made me decide to read it again.
My basic thought on the book is that it is a book for dudes, a book for the kind of people that Denis Leary mentioned in “A**hole” when he sang the line, “I like … books about war”. The book, a fairly well-written and captivating narrative, albeit a repetitive one, is designed to appeal to traditional masculine concepts about duty, sacrifice and noble deaths. In addition to those themes, you can also find the over-used “Women totally bought into this and are super noble and powerful in their own way and, at times, their nobility and power will overpower Mark Zuckerberg’s masculine energy” (also, Zuck has a ridiculously punchable face). One of the best examples of this narrative trope can be found at the end of The Quiet Man when Maureen O’Hara takes charge of her home and shuts her brother up.
There’s a lot about the specifics of this period of Greek history that I’m not familiar with, so I won’t get into whether Gates of Fire is historically accurate. Instead, my main discussion will relate to what I think Pressfield could’ve done to make the book better and what I think is the biggest problem with the book.
To begin with, I think that the book spent too much time talking about how great Sparta was. While some of the focus on “Spartan culture” is necessary to set the scene and provide some background regarding Ancient Greek and Spartan society, the novel devoted too much time making Spartan culture heroic. And doing that is what, for me, is the book’s biggest problem for. In talking up Spartan culture, there is an implied acceptance / justification of the slave society and police state upon which that society was based.
It’s extremely problematic for Pressfield to present a slave-based culture in the light that he did. When reading the book, I thought about what a film professor taught me years ago (and this is a paraphrase) – when you make a movie about the past, it doesn’t matter what you’re saying about the past. What matters is what you’re saying about today. This is because the past is a great narrative tool to discuss present problems. When telling a story set in the past, comments about the present can be snuck into the narrative. The same is true with sci-fi – futuristic and alien worlds are a perfect way to explore problems with the present and to comment about current events.
And that’s what, in my opinion, Pressfield got wrong. He made the slave-based culture that was Sparta too acceptable, too necessary and to some extent, too natural. Recall that the Spartans are presented as Xeones’ savior and they become necessary protectors. By portraying Sparta that way, there’s an implicit adoption of the need for a strongman and militaristic culture. I’m not suggesting that there’s an actual endorsement of these things, including Spartan slavey, at play here by Pressfield. But what I am suggesting is that when all of Spartan society is made to look heroic and the only way to fend off the Persians, readers have no choice but to assume that the basis of that society (slavery, limited social mobility, oligarchical structure, police state in many respects, etc.), is necessary. (It is at times like this that I wish I had more knowledge about women in Ancient Sparta. Due to that lack of knowledge, I don’t feel comfortable discussing how they were portrayed in the book beyond saying it was a stereotypical portrayal.) I don’t think by any means that the author intended to convey that message, but a book like this could easily be misused by some of the worst among us to support such narratives.
That misuse becoames more likely when the book focuses almost entirely on the Spartans and what they did at Thermopylae at the expense of the rest of the Greeks. Pressfield makes it seem like the other Greeks who were at Thermopylae played a minimal role and it is implied that the battle couldn’t have occurred without the Spartans. This is kind of odd given that, and this gets into what little I know about Greek Antiquity, the Greek forces totaled around 7,000 and consisted of a large number of non-Spartans. Here’s a brief, and incomplete, list of the Greek combatants I pulled from my copy of Herodotus’ Histories:
- 300 Spartans;
- 500 from Tegea;
- 500 from Mantinea;
- 120 from Orchomenus;
- 1000 from Arcadia;
- 400 from Corinth;
- 200 from Philus;
- 80 from Mycenae; and
- Many, many others.
Also, I recall something about Sparta religious practices keeping limiting the number of Spartans involved initially. But I’ll leave the rest of the research to the readers and to the experts.
An additional critique I have derives from the fact that I think I’m getting fairly impatient in my old age and want books to get to the point quickly. I think Pressfield could’ve made this significantly shorter and gotten to the battle more quickly. And this isn’t a knock on Pressfield specifically, it’s more a comment on my losing battle with patience. For example, I recently stopped reading a book by Martin Amis that I enjoyed because I thought he should’ve cut about a third of it out. In order to provide the necessary historical background and set the stage without lionizing Sparta, Pressfield should’ve focused more on Greek political dynamics surrounding the Persian invasion and the Greek response. A political thriller would’ve been more entertaining and intriguing than the ode to Sparta this turned into.
Another critique I have about the book is that the nobility theme was repeated a bit much. I wouldn’t recommend this, but if you took a drink each time nobility or sacrifice are mentioned, you’d be dangerously intoxicated pretty quickly. If you do decide to try it, and I wouldn’t, make sure you have a sober friend nearby or are otherwise drinking within stumbling distance of a hospital.
One thing that I do like about this book is that the Persians are portrayed better than they are in other modern representations of Thermopylae (like 300). I don’t think that I would read this again. I would, however, read another Pressfield book as he’s a pretty good writer. And I’m a white male in my 40s which means I’m contractually obligated to read books about war.
Those are my thoughts on the book. Let me know what you think about what I think in the comments, on Bluesky, on Mastodon, on Reddit, or on Instagram.
And never forget that The Classical Antiquity Sidequest is a podcast without end.
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