Life is such a… precious thing. It can be taken and given so easily and yet many of us take it for granted. Nobody wants to leave this world forgotten. We all want to leave behind a legacy. In the book Gates of Fire those men that fought in the Battle of Thermopylae, the Spartans, did just that. Even hundreds of years later the US Marines pride ourselves in many of their teachings and beliefs to this day. One statement that motivates so many today, “Molon Labe” which means “Come and take it” was stated by the Spartan king Leonidas when the Persian king Xerxes requested them to lay down their arms and accept defeat. This book Gates of Fire foretells the story of the Spartans, and all of the other countries within Hellenes as they came together to fight the Persian army at the Gates of Thermopylae from the perspective of one of the three survivors of the Three Hundred, Xeones. The book contains …show more content…
The bastard son of a war hero. Rooster was a Messenian who despised the Spartans and claimed he would one day seek revenge for treating him like a slave even though his father was an honorary Spartan warrior. The Krypteia, secret assassins within the Spartan society have been watching Rooster and later take him away in the middle of the night after Rooster refuses the honor to become a Spartan warrior twice and then plans to run away. They end up exiling him and threaten to kill him if they see him ever again. The fourth passage details the life of Arete, wife to Dienekes. Arete summons Xeones for talks on multiple occasions mostly concerning her husband but on one occasion to talk about Xeones’ past and his first love with his cousin. She later interrupts the jury that takes place after the Krypteia kidnap Rooster, Alexandros, and Xeones. She saves her husband’s bastard baby with Roosters wife and further dictates what to do with the three boys stuck there that