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

Hearing these words of the queen, I confess to you, Dienekes, and you, ladies, that my hands trembled so that I feared I may not command them-not alone with the foreknowledge of grief but of rage as well, blind bitter fury at Leonidas and the heartlessness with which he decanted the double measure of sorrow into my cup. Why me? my heart cried in anger. I stood upon the moment of giving voice to this outrage when the sound of the gate opening came from the outer court, and in a moment Leonidas himself entered. He had just come from the marshaling ground and bore his dusty footgear in his hand. Perceiving his lady and myself in intimate converse, he divined at once the subject of our intercourse.

With apology for his tardiness he sat, thanking me for presenting myself so punctually and inquiring after my ailing father and others of our family. Though it was plain he bore a thousand burdens of the army and the state, not excepting the prescience of his own imminent death and the bereavement of his beloved wife and children, yet as he took his bench he dismissed all from his mind and addressed himself to me alone with undiverted attention.

'Do you hate me, lady?' These were his initial words. 'Were I you, I would. My hands would now be trembling with fury hard-suppressed.' He cleared a space upon his bench. 'Come, daughter. Sit here beside me,'

I obeyed. The lady Gorgo moved subtly closer upon her settle. I could smell the king's sweat of his exercise and feel the warmth of his flesh beside me as, when a girl, I had known my own father's when he had called me to his counsel. Again the heart's surfeit of grief and anger threatened to take me out of hand. I fought this back with all my force.

' 'The city speculates and guesses,' Leonidas resumed, 'as to why I elected those I did to the Three Hundred. Was it for their prowess as individual men-at-arms? How could this be, when among champions such as Polynikes, Dienekes, Al-pheus and Maron I nominated as well unblooded youths such as Ariston and your own Alexandros? Perhaps, the city sup' poses, I divined some subtle alchemy of this unique aggregation. Maybe I was bribed, or paying back favors. I will never tell the city why I appointed these three hundred. I will never tell the Three Hundred themselves. But I now tell you. 'I chose them not for their own valor, lady, but for that of their women.'

At these words of the king a cry of anguish escaped my breast, as I understood before he spoke what further he would now say. I felt his hand about my shoulder, comforting me. 'Greece stands now upon her most perilous hour. If she saves herself, it will not be at the Gates (death alone awaits us and our allies there) but later, in battles yet to come, by land and sea. Then Greece, if the gods will it, will preserve herself. Do you understand this, lady? Well. Now listen.

'When the battle is over, when the Three Hundred have gone down to death, then will all Greece look to the Spartans, to see how they bear it.

'But who, lady, who will the Spartans look to? To you. To you and the other wives and mothers, sisters and daughters of the fallen.

'If they behold your hearts riven and broken with grief, they, too, will break. And Greece will break with them. But if you bear up, dry-eyed, not alone enduring your loss but seizing it with contempt for its agony and embracing it as the honor that it is in truth, then Sparta will stand.

And all Hellas will stand behind her.

'Why have I nominated you, lady, to bear up beneath this most terrible of trials, you and your sisters of the Three Hundred? Because you can.'

From my lips sprang these words, reproving the king: 'And is this the reward of women's virtue, Leonidas? To be afflicted twice over, and bear a double grief?

On this instant the queen Gorgo reached for me, to offer succor. Leonidas held her back.

Instead, yet securing my shoulder within the grasp of his warm arm, he addressed my outburst of anguish.

'My wife reaches for you, Paraleia, to impart by her touch intelligence of the burden she has borne without plaint all her life. This has ever been denied her, to be simply bride to Leonidas, but always she must be wife to Lakedaemon. This now is your role as well, lady. No longer may you be wife to Olympieus or mother to Alexandros, but must serve as wife and mother of our nation. You and your sisters of the Three Hundred are the mothers now of all Greece, and of freedom itself. This is stern duty, Paraleia, to which I have called my own beloved wife, the mother of my children, and have now as well summoned you. Tell me, lady. Was I wrong?

Upon these words of the king, all self-command fled my heart. I broke down, weeping. Leonidas pulled me to him in kindness; I buried my face in his lap, as a girl does with her father, and sobbed, unable to constrain myself. The king held me firmly, his embrace neither stern nor unkind, but bearing me up with gentleness and solace.

As when a wildfire upon a hillside at last consumes itself and flares no more, so my fit of grief burned itself out. A peace settled clemently upon me, as if gift not alone of that strong arm which clasped me yet in its embrace, but of some more profound source, ineffable and divine. Strength returned to my knees and courage to my heart. I rose before the king and wiped my eyes. These words I addressed to him, not of my own will it seemed, but prompted by some unseen goddess whose source and origin I could not name.

'Those were the last tears of mine, my lord, that the sun will ever see.'

These were the final words spoken by the captive Xeones. The man's voice trailed off; his vital signs ebbed swiftly. Within moments he lay still and cold. His god had used him up and restored him at last to that station to which he yearned most to return, reunited with the corps of his comrades beneath the earth.

Immediately outside the captain Orontes' tent, armored elements of His Majesty's forces were clamorously withdrawing from the city. Orontes ordered the man Xeones' body borne without upon his litter. Chaos reigned. The captain was past due at his post; each succeeding moment heightened the urgency of his departure.

His Majesty will recall the state of anarchy which prevailed upon that morning, Numerous street youths and blackguards, the scum of the Athenian polity, that element of such mean station as not even to merit evacuation but who instead had been marooned by their betters and left to prowl the streets as predators, now made bold to penetrate the margins of His Majesty's camp.

These villains were looting everything they could lay hands upon. As our party emerged onto that now-rubbled boulevard called by the Athenians the Sacred Way, a clutch of these felons chanced to be herded past by subalterns of His Majesty's military police.

To my astonishment the captain Orontes hailed these officers. He ordered them to release the miscreants to his charge and themselves begone. The malefactors were three in number and of the scurviest disposition imaginable. They drew themselves up before Orontes and the officers of the Immortals, clearly expecting to be executed upon the spot. I was commanded by the captain to translate.

Orontes demanded of these rogues if they were Athenians. Not citizens, they replied, but men of the city. Orontes indicated the coarsecloth wrap which draped the form of the man Xeones.

Do you know what this garment is?

The villains' leader, a youth not yet twenty, responded that it was the scarlet cloak of Lakedaemon, that mantle worn only by a warrior of Sparta. Clearly none of the criminals could summon explanation for the presence of the body of this man, a Hellene, here now in the charge of his Persian enemy.

Orontes interrogated the wretches further. Did they know the location, in the seaport precinct of Phaleron, of that sanctuary known as Persephone of the Veil?