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

Alexandros listened with the grim concentration of a boy who knows his whole life will be war; that the laws of Lykurgus forbid him and every other Spartan to know or pursue a trade other than war; that his term of obligation extends from age twenty to age sixty, and that no force under heaven will excuse him from soon, very soon, assuming his place in line of battle and clashing shield-to-shield, helmet-to-helmet with the enemy.

Now answer again, Alexandros. Did you observe today in the manner of the eirenes delivering the beating any sign or indication of malice?

The boy answered no.

Would you characterize their demeanor as barbarous? Did they take pleasure in dealing agony to Tripod?

No.

Was their intention to crush his will or break his spirit?

No.

What was their intention?

To harden his mind against pain.

Throughout this conversation the older man maintained a voice tender and solicitous with love.

Nothing Alexandros could do would ever make this voice love him less or abandon him. Such is the peculiar genius of the Spartan system of pairing each boy in training with a mentor other than his own father. A mentor may say things that a father cannot; a boy can confess to his mentor that which would bring shame to reveal to his father.

It was bad today, wasn't it, my young friend?

Dienekes then asked the boy how he imagined battle, real battle, compared with what he had witnessed today. No answer was required or expected.

Never forget, Alexandros, that this flesh, this body, does not belong to us. Thank God it doesn't.

If I thought this stuff was mine, I could not advance a pace into the face of the enemy. But it is not ours, my friend. It belongs to the gods and to our children, our fathers and mothers and those of Lakedaemon a hundred, a thousand years yet unborn. It belongs to the city which gives us all we have and demands no less in requital.

Man and boy moved on, down the slope to the river. They followed the path to that grove of double-boled myrtle called the Twins, sacred to the sons of Tyndareus and to the family to which Alexandros belonged. It would be to this spot, on the night of his final ordeal and initiation, that he would repair, alone save his mother and sisters, to receive the salve and sanction of the gods of his line.

Dienekes sat upon the earth beneath the Twins. He gestured to Alexandros to take the place beside him.

Personally I think your friend Tripod was foolish. What he displayed today contained more of recklessness than true courage, andreia. He cost the city his life, which could have been spent more fruitfully in battle.

Nonetheless it was clear Dienekes respected him.

But to his credit he showed us something of nobility today. He showed you and every boy watching what it is to pass beyond identification with the body, beyond pain, beyond fear of death. You were horrified to behold his agonisma, but it was awe that struck you truly, wasn't it?

Awe of that boy or whatever daimon animated him. Your friend Tripod showed us contempt for this. Again Dienekes indicated the flesh. A contempt which approached the stature of the sublime.

From my spot, above on the bank, I could see the boy's shoulders shudder as the grief and terror of the day at last purged themselves from his heart. Dienekes embraced and comforted him.

When at last the boy had recomposed himself, his mentor gently released him.

Have your instructors taught you why the Spartans excuse without penalty the warrior who loses his helmet or breastplate in battle, but punish with loss of all citizenship rights the man who discards his shield?

They had, Alexandras replied.

Because a warrior carries helmet and breastplate for his own protection, but his shield for the safety of the whole line.

Dienekes smiled and placed a hand upon his protege's shoulder.

Remember this, my young friend. There is a force beyond fear. More powerful than selfpreservation. You glimpsed it today, in a crude and unself-aware form, yes. But it was there and it was genuine. Let us remember your friend Tripod and honor him for this.

I was screaming upon the hide board. I could hear my cries bounce off the walls of the livestock enclosure and shriek off, multiplied, up the hillsides. I knew it was disgraceful but I could not stop.

I begged the farm men to release me, to end my agony. I would do anything, and I described it all at the top of my lungs. I cried out to the gods in a shameful little boy's voice piping up the mountainside. I knew Bruxieus could hear me. Would his love for me impel him to dash in and be nailed alongside me? I didn't care. I wanted the pain to end. I begged the men to kill me. I could feel the bones in both hands shattered by the spikes. I would never hold a spear or even a gardening spade. I would be a cripple, a clubfist. My life was over and in the meanest, most dishonorable way.

A fist shattered my cheek. Shut your pipehole, you sniveling little shitworm! The men set the tanning board upright, angled against a wall, and there I squirmed, impaled, for the sun's endless crawl across the sky. Urchins from the up-valley farms clustered to watch me scream. The girls tore my rags and poked at my privates; the boys pissed on me. Dogs snuffed my bare soles, emboldening themselves to make a meal of me. I only stopped wailing when my throat could cry no longer. I was trying to tear my palms free right through the spikes, but the men lashed my wrists tighter so I couldn't move. How does that feel, you fucking thief? Let's see you pick off another prize, you night'creeping little rat.

When at last their own growling bellies drove my tormentors indoors for supper, Diomache slipped down from the hill and cut me free. The spikes would not come out of my palms; she had to blade the wood off the frame with her dagger. My hands came away with the tanning nails still through them. Bruxieus carried me off, as he had borne Diomache earlier, after her violation.

Oh God, my cousin said when she saw my hands.

The winter, Bruxieus said, was the coldest he could re-I member. Sheep froze in the high pastures.

Twenty-foot drifts sealed the passes. Deer were driven so desperate with hunger that they straggled down, skeleton-thin and blind from starvation, all the way to the shepherds' winter folds, where they presented themselves for slaughter, point-blank before the herdsmen's bows.

We stayed in the mountains, so high up that martens' and foxes' fur grew white as the snow. We slept in dugouts that shepherds had abandoned or in ice caves we chopped out with stone axes, lining their floors with pine boughs and huddling together beneath our triple cloaks in a pile like puppies. I begged Bruxieus and Diomache to abandon me, let me die in peace in the cold. They insisted that I allow them to carry me down to a town, to a physician. I refused absolutely. Never again would I place myself before a stranger, any stranger, without a weapon in my hand. Did Bruxieus imagine that doctors possessed a more exalted sense of honor than other men? What payment would some hill-town quack demand? What profitable turn would he discover in a slave and a crippled boy? What use would he make of a starving thirteen-year-old girl?

I had another reason for refusing to go to a town. I hated myself for the shameless way I had cried out, and could not make myself stop, during the hours I was put to the trial. I had seen my own heart and it was the heart of a coward. I despised myself with a blistering, pitiless scorn. The tales I had cherished of the Spartans only made me loathe myself more. None of them would beg for his life as I had, absent every scrap of dignity. The dishonor of my parents' murder continued to torment me. Where was I in their hour of desperation? I was not there when they needed me.