In some ways, historical fiction is an odd genre, almost contradictory: history, by definition, is not fiction, and strictly speaking fiction does not describe fact. Yet diction permits us sufficient leeway for this slight misuse of terms, and so we have this collection of books which are neither history nor entirely fiction but a meld of both – a fictionalized account of history, as it were.
One of the finest examples of historical fiction is undoubtedly Gates of Fire (1998). The first, and arguably best, of American novelist Steven Pressfield’s works, this book was a bestseller at release and is required reading at military academies in the United States. With good reason, because it is an excellent book all around and most definitely one of the best examples of historical fiction yet produced.
Gates of Fire tells a story most of us are familiar with, particularly after the high-profile release of the movie 300, based on the eponymous Frank Miller graphic novel, in 2006 (2007, in Singapore). The tale is that of the three hundred Spartan warriors who, along with their squires, helot servants and several hundred other Greek allies (who, sadly, are very often left out of modern depictions of the battle), held the pass of Thermopylae for some days (the sources differ) against Persian Emperor Xerxes’ overwhelmingly superior invading army. It was a defeat, but a last stand that came to epitomize last stands – a fight against hopeless odds which was to define all future futile but heroic efforts in battle.
The trouble with writing a book about such a well-known event, of course, is that everyone already knows what your work is going to be about. They most definitely know how it is going to end. How, then, are you going to surprise your readers and keep them reading? Pressfield manages this right from the introduction: he mentions a survivor dragged from the carnage, who is to be his narrator – and states that this narrator is not Spartan! More intriguingly, despite not being Spartan, he is dressed in the attire of a Spartiate officer. How this distinctly odd state of affairs comes about is what hooks the reader and keeps him or her reading.
Speaking of which, what is often forgotten, or to be a little fairer to chroniclers of the event past and present, simply not emphasized is that the Battle of Thermopylae was not a purely Spartan-Persian affair. The fact is that prior to this last stand, a several-thousand strong allied Greek force of which the 300 Spartans were but a part held the pass with equal valour against the ceaseless Persian waves. The Spartan last stand, as a matter of fact, was partly meant to cover the retreat of these allies. Some writers have gone yet further and ignored the Spartans’ squires and Thespian allies who stood with them to the end, and conferred upon the three hundred Spartans an almost mythical status; every man a shining Apollo of perfection, slaying Persians by the score until at last dying a flawlessly heroic death atop mounds of enemy corpses. Frank Miller, though he has produced a piece of sublime artwork and entertainment, can be accoutered worst of these sinners. It is not an accurate portrayal by any means, and a great injustice to the so many more who fought and died with astonishing bravery those bloody few days of 479BC.
Steven Pressfield does not make this common error. Gates of Fire, in fact, is told not from the perspective of a Spartan, but a squire; one Xeones, squire to Dienekes of “Then we will fight in the shade” fame. Discovered under the piles of mangled corpses after the battle, he is dragged out and resuscitated on orders of Xerxes himself, who wishes to hear of these Spartans who stood, “though unbound by liege law or servitude, facing insuperable odds and certain death, to the last man.”
Pressfield then proceeds to create an exceedingly wretched history for his narrator; Xeones is orphaned at ten when his city is sacked by Argives, supposedly allies, and he has to flee to the hills with his cousin Diomache and his family’s blind slave Bruxieus. Years pass and Xeones goes through horrific trials and tribulations, including being nailed bodily to a board of wood and displayed, for attempted theft, but eventually – almost miraculously – survives. One might question the need for such a long and detailed back-story, which appears to have little to do with the plot and the climactic event of the story, but it makes Xeones appear human to us. The best authors are those who can make their readers actually care for their characters, and in laying down such a detailed biography, Pressfield achieves this. Before the young Xeones has even got to Sparta, he has suffered any number of mishaps, ill fortune and cruelty. We sympathise with him, and we get to see how such experiences mould him into what he eventually becomes – the man who refuses, though he has the chance – nay, is offered the chance – to walk away from Thermopylae. Rather than a two-dimensional character in a storybook, he becomes real to us, and we can understand why he takes all the decisions that he does throughout the novel.
The author manages to do the same with practically all the characters he introduces, Persians included. That is another strong point of the book – versions of the tale too often fail to emphasize the Persian role at Thermopylae, preferring rather to treat them as one-dimensional villains and transform the battle into a showdown between good (Spartans) and evil (Persians). Herodotus, of course, had good reason to do this. He was a Greek, after all. For modern authors, moral absolutism usually sells better. Coupled with the fact that virtually no notable Persian sources have come down to us, this results usually in the story being told only from one main perspective. Pressfield manages to tell it from three: Spartans, Greek allies/non-Spartan squires and Persians. Although fictionalized, I suspect this makes it the most complete account of the battle in existence, Herodotus included.
This is the book’s greatest achievement, even though it is an excellently-told tale in its own right. By avoiding the casting of two diametrical opposites of good and evil, Pressfield brings to us a nuanced view of the battle, in particular, and the Greco-Persian Wars in general. Inevitably, the Spartans still come off as the heroes of the story, but the line is blurred. Despite not having a Spartan villain, Pressfield still manages to present implied criticism of Spartan society, which has produced the best warriors of Greece and the known world, by recounting in painstaking detail the incredible trials and travails needed to mould Spartan youths into these fearless paragons of martial virtue. He questions Lakedamonian religious devotion and the Spartan ethos of glory through death in battle, using Dienekes’ wife Arete as his mouthpiece. About to be widowed for the second time as Dienekes readies to set out for the Hot Gates, she declares bitterly that “They [the Gods] give with one hand and take with the other, answerable only to their own unknowable laws.” Having already lost one husband in battle, she now has to watch another, and the man she truly loved, march off to certain death. It is not difficult for the reader to imagine her pain and to empathise with her plight.
Aside from creating characters the reader comes to care about, Pressfield also thus manages to make every major character, not just Xeones, human and believable. That is by no means easy, just as it is difficult to avoid falling into the trap of moral absolutism. From Dienekes to Polynikes, who initially seems villainous, to the lady Arete, the centre of most of the book’s most emotional scenes, every single character can be perceived as mortal. While most other characterizations of Spartan women have them as noble, stoic and unyielding paragons of Hellenic womanly virtue, Pressfield shows us the conflict in their hearts. Arete tells Xeones of how the women from other Greek cities marvel at the strength of the Spartan women. “They think we are made of stauncher stuff than they. I will tell you, Xeo. We are not.” What could be more human than such raw, mortal grief?
After the emotional farewells comes the battle itself. Several days of holding out against the Persian assaults leave the Greeks bloodied and battered. Unlike the perfectly choreographed blood splatters of 300, the fighting in Gates of Fire receives more prosaic treatment. Descriptions abound of a hard, ungodly filthy slog, on a battlefield churned into mud by thousands of pairs of feet, blood, urine and other bodily secretions. Death comes suddenly, swiftly or deliberately, with survivors conscious that they are probably only alive by luck rather than skill. As any combat veteran is likely to attest, a battle is basically one chaotic lottery; the difference in this case though, for the Spartans, is that they all know they are going to die. It is just a matter of time for them.
All the hard fighting, after some time, predictably wears down the Greek force. It is at this juncture that Pressfield does something slightly baffling; he presents us with a somewhat implausible scenario. A common ruffian, once Xeones’ companion, is captured; he claims knowledge of the location of Great King Xerxes’ command tent. In a desperate attempt to actually win the battle, a select squad of Spartan warriors is sent to assassinate the Persian ruler. This turn in the plot, while not entirely implausible, smacks somewhat of a deus ex machina to me – with the difference, of course, that they did not actually succeed. It also seems to me that the very idea of such a raid is at odds with the stated Spartan ethos of glory and honour on the battlefield. If they came prepared to die and go down in glorious defeat, why resort to such obviously underhand methods to end the war? The argument can of course be made that the Spartans simply wanted to spare Greece any more fighting and destruction of any nature, as even a victorious war could be ruinous. However, it still does not sit very well with me. Happily, this is just about the only nitpick I have with Gates of Fire.
Pressfield, however, superbly carries off the description of the raid. All his characters fight with believable courage for a lost cause, a microcosm of the larger battle at hand. It all, of course, ends in failure. It would have ruined the entire work had the author so abruptly changed the course of history. Almost the entire party is killed or wounded, and the farewells are imbued with the kind of raw emotion that makes a reader actually feel sad at the losses. Pressfield’s ability to make his readers care for his characters deserves yet another mention. He also manages a very tender, moving conciliation between two characters during this segment, fittingly and gently closing off one life. To put it baldly, I have not read any author better at killing off characters than Steven Pressfield.
Inevitably, the Persians come on again; from two sides this time, guided by the infamous Greek traitor Ephialtes in exchange for gold. The Christian faith has Judas; the Greeks, Ephialtes, and he is still remembered in Greece to this day as one of antiquity’s great traitors. The Spartans, true to their word, fight to the very last drop of blood. Xeones survives to relate the tale, which “by bitter irony” as the Persian court historian Gobartes puts it, is completed on the very day of the catastrophic Persian naval defeat at Salamis. Without ships to ensure a steady flow of supplies for the army, the campaign is over. Xerxes departs for Persepolis, leaving an army under his trusted general and kinsman Mardonius to finish the job. This army is crushed by the combined Greek forces, including a full mobilization of Spartan manpower (one of the very few times it ever happened) the very next year at the battle of Plataea. Gobartes, captured in the rout, is spared as he mentions Xeones and is able to correctly answer questions about the latter’s eventual fate. The novel ends with the famous inscription that can still be seen on a memorial at Thermopylae; in English,
Tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
that here obedient to their laws we lie.
Gates of Fire is one of the most compelling, moving and historically accurate fictionalized accounts of this famous battle, and fully deserves the acclaim it has been given. The actual evidence for even one of the great last stands of history is desperately thin; from these few scraps Steven Pressfield has managed to weave a tale that is both believable and touching. It is no mean feat. While the battle itself decided little, its memory lives on as an enduring symbol of honour and a tribute to resilience and camaraderie. Such a memorable battle deserves to be immortalized in an equally memorable account, and Gates of Fire, though technically fiction, is just such an account.
