Female Strength and Influence Theme Analysis

Though Gates of Fire is very much dominated by male characters, women play a surprisingly prominent role throughout. Speaking of what prompted the monumental battle at Thermopylae, Xeo readily acknowledges that “In the end it was their women who galvanized the Spartans into action.” Though female characters are largely viewed through the eyes of male characters in the novel, Pressfield argues that women were the major inspiration for Spartan actions and character in war and beyond.

Women’s decisions set the course of the war, on both governmental and personal levels. After the Spartans skulk home in shame from Tempe, having expected to clash with the Persians but never actually drawing blood, the wives of Sparta mock their husbands’ inaction as disgraceful and even blasphemous. “A delegation of wives and mothers presented itself to the ephors [senior magistrates], insisting that they themselves be sent out next time, armed with hairpins and distaffs, since surely the women of Sparta could disgrace themselves no more egregiously nor accomplish less than the vaunted Ten Thousand.” This savage insult finally prompts King Leonidas and his advisers to send 300 warriors on a suicidal mission against the Persians at Thermopylae. It also suggests an ambivalence in the Spartans’ attitudes toward their women—both that they desire the women’s respect and that being shown up by women (who were considered inferior to men) is a deep insult that can’t go unanswered. The rulers answer it by initiating war, showing just how consequential women’s voices could be.

When the krypteia (a secret squad that eliminates troublemakers) hunts down Rooster and is about to summarily execute him as a conspirator, the lady Arete intervenes at the last moment. She persuades the men to release her nephew Rooster and to recognize his son as her husband Dienekes’s offspring, though this revelation brings shame on both Dienekes and herself. Because of Spartan laws about who was permitted to go into battle (in this case, only those with male offspring), “it was this infant whose life would mean Dienekes’ death,” and the deaths of others associated with his household. Though affronted by her intrusion, this squad of assassins listens to Arete, admires her principle, and follows her advice—showing women’s courageous ability to influence the course of battle on a more personal level, too.

Women’s character—or at least men’s idealization of women’s character—motivates the warriors’ fighting and sets the tone for the nation as a whole. While contemplating the nature of courage on the eve of battle, the youth Ariston suggests, “What could be more contrary to female nature, to motherhood, than to stand unmoved and unmoving as her sons march off to death […] [That] the women, from some source unknown to us, summon the will to conquer this their own deepest nature is, I believe, the reason we stand in awe of our mothers and sisters and wives.” Alexandros, in turn, proposes that “What elevates such an act to the stature of nobility is, I believe, that it is performed in the service of a higher and more selfless cause […] Is it not this element—the nobility of setting the whole above the part—that moves us about women’s sacrifice?” Ariston and Alexandros both read the women’s behavior as a female expression of Spartan selflessness. However much it is praised and held up as motivation, for the men there is a mystifying aspect to women’s actions; they can only interpret their female counterparts at a distance and through the lens of their own experience.

Later, in an elaboration of Alexandros’s insight, Xeo gives Leonidas’s reasoning for the selection of the 300 Thermopylae warriors—Leonidas chose each of them because of the character of the women they would leave behind. Leonidas explains to Arete that “the Spartans will look to the wives, 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 […] you and your sisters of the Three Hundred are the mothers now of all Greece, and of freedom itself.” In other words, it’s up to the grief-stricken survivors to ensure that Greece and its values stand firm after the 300 fall. While this affirms the high esteem with which Spartan men regarded their women, Leonidas’s charge, too, puts women on a pedestal and places a great burden on them based on his idealization of them.

While, on one hand, Spartan men—everyone from lowly squire Xeo to King Leonidas—has a very high view of Spartan women, one could argue that, like the 300 themselves, the wives and mothers are conscripted for a cause they wouldn’t have chosen for themselves. The feelings of female characters about the Persian Wars aren’t explored at great depth in the novel. Nevertheless, even though women are mostly seen through the eyes of male characters, they clearly act with self-possession and bravery on many occasions. By portraying them in this way, Pressfield deliberately shines a light on the fact that, even if their names aren’t as readily remembered, women were major actors in the events of history.