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.
Symbols & Motifs
The Shield
The shield is the physical embodiment of the ethos of self-sacrifice and mutual protection that gives a Greek infantry phalanx its strength. A Greek’s shield is very heavy, but it is a supreme dishonor to allow one’s shield to fall to the ground. Since each man’s shield is used to protect the man to their left, a soldier who allows his shield to fall is viewed as likely to fail in protecting the men beside him.
The different ways that shields are painted are also used by the author to indicate the importance of subsuming one’s own ego and fear when fighting in this fashion. When Xeones describes the semi-competence of the Astakiot phalanx, their lack of coordination is indicated by the family crests painted on their shields. This more individual touch is contrasted with the Spartans, whose shields are uniformly painted with a lambda for Lakedaemon, a mythical king of Laconia.
On the final day of the battle at Thermopylae, the shields of the surviving Greeks are effaced with mud so that it’s impossible to tell the difference between the troops of the different cities. On the first day of fighting, Leonidas orders the troops to polish the aspis, the bronze shield boss, to a shine, so as to overawe the Persian troops. The decision to apply mud on the third day symbolizes how fighting together has erased any difference of nation or rank between the men.
Coins
Since Spartan citizens do not carry currency, coins are not frequently exchanged in the book and they instead represent esteem and goodwill between characters.
When Alexandros is unable to persuade Rooster to join the mothax, he gives the helot a sack of coins to help him escape, leaving Rooster agape. Rooster, in his contempt for Alexandros, has assumed that the other young man dislikes him and is shocked to find that Alexandros respects him for his bravery and strength.
In Arete’s grief at knowing that she will soon lose her son and husband at Thermopylae, she desperately wishes to see someone have a happy ending and places a large denomination of coins in Xeones’s campaign pack. She hopes that Xeones will take the money, desert at Athens, and make a new life with his cousin, but Xeones’s love for Dienekes and the Spartans means that he cannot abandon them.
Two special coins are held by Rooster and Polynikes. During a time in which many Spartan soldiers are sending coins home with messengers as mementos for their families, Rooster asks to send a token of his own, an ancient Messenian obol, back to his family. When Xeones comes to accept the coin, Rooster uses the opportunity to deliver his information about the Immortals and the location of Xerxes’s tent. By a strange coincidence, he “buys” his life and his freedom with a token symbolizing the servile status into which he was born.
Polynikes’s coin is one minted to commemorate his victory at the Olympic games. By placing the coin in Alexandros’s jaws as his fare for Charon, Polynikes demonstrates not only the respect he now has for Alexandros, but also the sacrifice of his own pride. Polynikes has always been driven by a thirst for personal glory, but Thermopylae changes him. The agony and ecstasy of the battle changes his motivation from pride to love.
Makeup and Grooming
The Spartans’ shunning of ornamentation in dress and personal adornment is so total that “spartan” has become a synonym with “austere.” The plain dress of the Spartans comes up frequently in the novel, usually in contrast to the other Greeks, or to the Persians. Arete is usually employed for this purpose. When her clothing is described, she is always wearing a simple peplos robe, and her unenhanced beauty prompts Xeones to reflect upon the natural beauty of Spartan women contrasted with the cosmetic artifice of the women of the other Greek cities (209).
Although the “spartan” ways of the Spartans are contrasted with the other Greeks, they are mostly set in opposition to the Persian forces. The “womanly” dress, makeup, and jewelry of the Persians and their vassals is commented upon repeatedly. The author notes that the rouge, eye shadow, and jewelry worn by the Persian troops evokes not “contempt, but terror” (339), but the reader is left to surmise that the Persians would have been better served to drill more and pretty themselves less.
The austerity of the Spartan men is represented in their dress and grooming by their cloak, one of their only personal possessions, which is replaced once a year. The cloak is a mark of their physical hardiness; it alone serves as their cloak, blanket, bedroll, and more. The Spartan warriors wear their hair long and loose—a style apparently considered feminine in most other places—as their only accommodation to beauty. When Tommie asks about this custom, Olympieus tells him that “no other adornment makes a handsome man more comely or an ugly one more terrifying. And it’s free” (78).
