Gates of Fire: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

Xeo recalls watching the marshaling of the tiny force of Three Hundred on the Spartan plain. As expected, Dienekes is among them. More surprisingly, Alexandros, only 20 years old, was also picked. The Spartans believe that a mix of green, unseasoned warriors and battle-tested veterans yields the best fighting. The good-byes to loved ones, especially husbands to wives and small children, are poignant.

Two days before the march-out, Arete had summoned Xeo in private, on a “county day,” or festival during which the Peers are allowed to spend a carefree day on their estates with their families. While Dienekes is occupied with settling farm business, Xeo joins Arete in the farm kitchen. She tells him, “The gods remain always a jump ahead of us, don’t they, Xeo?” Xeo helps her pack Dienekes’ kit, including surgical supplies, money, sweets, and mementoes from his daughters.

Arete asks Xeo what happened when he accompanied Dienekes on embassy to Athens last month—did he locate Diomache? When Xeo is hesitant to speak, Arete sadly remarks that Xeo wouldn’t be the first man to love someone other than his wife: “the gods played the same trick on my husband and me.” She invites Xeo on a walk, reminding him that she was once married to Dienekes’ brother, Iatrokles. She loved Dienekes from the first time she saw him as a girl, she tells Xeo, but she was promised to his older brother instead. When at last she and Dienekes married, after Iatrokles’ death, Arete feared that they were cursed for their selfish passion by the fact that they were only given daughters, and then Arete was barren.

When the Three Hundred were summoned to Thermopylae, Arete says, she finally saw “the true perversity of the gods’ plan.” If her husband had remained without a son, he would have been denied the honor of going to Thermopylae. But now, “inspired by blind impulse […] I have saved the life of this boy, my brother’s bastard’s son, and lost my husband’s in the process.”

Arete goes on, musing that women of other cities think that Spartan women are made of “stauncher stuff” than they, able to lose their husbands without tears. But, she says, their grief is no less “because we choke it down in our guts.”

Arete turns to Xeo and tells him that it isn’t too late for him. He isn’t Spartan, and he needn’t bind himself by Spartan laws, or by the seeming cruelty of the gods. She’s given him a pouch of money; he could run away, or have Diomache, whom he loves, brought to Sparta for him. Xeo says this would be dishonorable, and Arete is disgusted. Xeo appreciates Arete’s kindness, but he points out that the gods would indeed be “one jump ahead.” Arete says nothing more, only promising that Diomache will learn of Xeo’s death and burial.

On the morning of the march-out, Xeo watches Arete solemnly bid Dienekes goodbye. King Leonidas does the same with his wife, Gorgo. Xeo bids his wife, Thereia, a warm goodbye, knowing she won’t be a widow for long. He jokes, “Wait at least until I’m out of sight.” He hardly knows his children and wishes he could have loved Thereia as she deserved.

After the final sacrifices, Leonidas prepares to lead the army toward Thermopylae. He makes a speech, saying that it’s from Sparta’s women that he finds the courage to face death. He explains that while men’s pain is of the flesh, quickly over, women’s pain is unending sorrow. He tells his men to learn from the women, who bear painful childbirth knowing that nothing good comes without a price. The warriors, he says, choose to pay this price for liberty. The army drinks a ceremonial libation, and Leonidas swears by the gods that the women of Sparta will not “behold the smoke of the enemy’s fires.”