51 pages • 1 hour read
Steven PressfieldGates of Fire
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Preamble-Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Preamble Summary
The novel begins as a record made by Gobartes, a scribe of Xerxes, for the purpose of gaining “further intelligence, both of certain infantry tactics employed by the enemy which proved of some effect against His Majesty’s troops, and of the type of foemen these were” (22). The scribe relates the discovery of a Grecian survivor, the novel’s protagonist, Xeones, and that his gear is a mix of that assigned to both free Spartans and to helots. Ten days after being found, the captive has recovered enough to speak and provide the desired information.
Chapter 1 Summary
This chapter begins the first interview with Xeones, who promises that “the tale he could tell would not be of generals or kings […] He could only relate the story as he himself had lived it and witnessed it, from the vantage of a youth and squire of the heavy infantry, a servant of the battle train” (25).
Xeones begins his tale by describing how it feels to die, equating it with his experience in an infantry drill in Sparta, noting that, physically, it resembles “not being pierced, but rather slammed” (28). Xeones says that he was about to drink from the Lethe, the river of forgetfulness in the Greek afterlife, when the god Apollo selected him to return to life and tell his tale.
Chapter 2 Summary
This chapter starts with a geographical description of Thermopylae, the name of which means "hot gates" in Greek, after both the thermal springs located there and the narrow entryways into the coastal pass.
Xeones then relates that he came to Sparta at age 12 as a heliokaumenos, a semi-feral child. He says that he was initially placed among the slave class known as helots, who despised him as a possible informer, but physical impairment rendered him useless as a field hand. After nearly a year, Xeones is placed into the service of Alexandros, a child of the Spartan nobility and the protege of Dienekes, a famous and highly-respected Spartan warrior.
Preamble-Chapter 2 Analysis
These first chapters introduce the framing device of the novel. The novel begins (and ends) from the perspective of Gobartes. Xeones’s tale is given as a series of adapted transcripts recorded by Gobartes when interviewing the captive. Since Gobartes conducts the interviews between the battles at Thermopylae and Salamis, the framing device also allows the events of the Persian invasion following Thermopylae to be narrated. In these chapters, Xeones gives a detailed description of the topography of Thermopylae and informs the Persians how the Spartan army is organized.
