Gates of Fire

THEY SAY THAT GHOSTS, THOSE THAT CANNOT LET GO their bond to the living, sometimes linger and haunt the scenes of their days under the sun, hovering like substanceless birds of carrion, refusing Hades’ command to retire beneath the earth. That is how we lived, Bruxieus, Diomache and I, in the weeks following the sack of our city. (Location 518)

Dienekes encouraged Alexandros in his singing. The gods endow each man with a gift by which he may conquer fear; Alexandros’, Dienekes felt certain, was his voice. Skill in singing in Sparta is counted second only to martial valour and in fact is closely related, through the heart and lungs, within the discipline of the phobogia. (Location 1346)

it too and raised a shout of delight. Meanwhile the hounds, (Location 1388)

All up and down the line, one beheld warriors clustering in groups of twos and threes as the terror they had managed to hold at bay throughout the battle now slipped its bonds and surged upon them, overwhelming their hearts. Clasping their comrades by the hand, they knelt, not from reverence alone, though that element was abundant, but because the strength had suddenly fled from their knees, which could no longer support them. Many wept, others shuddered violently. This was not regarded as effeminate, but termed in the Doric idiom hesma phobou, purging or ‘fear-shedding’. (Location 1930)

The prized response, the one the Peers look for, is humour. Deflect defamation with a joke, the coarser the better. Laugh in its face. A mind which can maintain its lightness will not come undone in war. (Location 2185)

‘Remember what I told you about the house with many rooms. There are rooms we must not enter. Anger. Fear. Any passion which leads the mind towards that “possession” which undoes men in war. ‘Habit will be your champion. When you train the mind to think one way and one way only, when you refuse to allow it to think in another, that will produce great strength in battle.’ (Location 2350)

At twenty he would be the youngest line warrior and one of only a dozen, including his agoge-mate Ariston (of Polynikes’ ‘broken noses’), without experience of battle. There is a proverb in Lakedaemon, ‘the reed beside the staff’, whose meaning is that a chain is made stronger by its possession of one unproven link. The tender hamstring that drives the wrestler to compensate with skill and cunning, the lisp that the orator extends his brilliance to overcome. The Three Hundred, Leonidas felt, would fight best not as a company of individual champions, but as a sort of army in miniature, of young and old, green and seasoned. (Location 3351)

‘Learn from them, brothers, from their pain in childbirth which the gods have ordained immutable. Bear witness to that lesson they teach: nothing good in life comes but at a price. Sweetest of all is liberty. This we have chosen and this we pay for. We have embraced the laws of Lykurgus, and they are stern laws. They have schooled us to scorn the life of leisure, which this rich land of ours would bestow upon us if we wished, and instead to enrol ourselves in the academy of discipline and sacrifice. Guided by these laws, our fathers for twenty generations have breathed the blessed air of freedom and have paid the bill in full when it was presented. We, their sons, can do no less.’ (Location 3522)

We will all sleep as I do, in the open. Keep your men busy. If there is no work, make it up, for when soldiers have time to talk, their talk turns to fear. Action, on the other hand, produces the appetite for more action. (Location 3750)

‘How does one conquer fear of death, that most primordial of terrors, which resides in our very blood, as in all life, beasts as well as men?’ He indicated the hounds flanking Suicide. ‘Dogs in a pack find courage to take on a lion. Each hound knows his place. He fears the dog ranked above and feeds off the fear of the dog below. Fear conquers fear. This is how we Spartans do it, counterpoising to fear of death a greater fear: that of dishonour. Of exclusion from the pack.’ (Location 3846)

He declared that in all other questions one may look for wisdom to the gods. ‘But not in matters of courage. What have the immortals to teach us? They cannot die. Their spirits are not housed, as ours, in this.’ Here he indicated the body, the flesh. ‘The factory of fear.’ (Location 3854)