Gates of Fire

The ever-looming threat of Persian invasion sends periodic waves of panic throughout Greece. Dienekes, as an ambassador trying to bring other Greek city-states into the alliance against Persia, is constantly confronted with the results of this fear, prompting his frequent musings upon the nature of fear and how it can be overcome.

Although there are examples of warriors who have no innate fear of battle, such as Polynikes and Rooster, Dienekes discounts this type of andreia, or courage. For Dienekes, true courage is the overcoming of fear, rather than the absence thereof, and he puzzles over the question of how to overcome one’s fear.

Throughout the novel, it is hinted that it is fear of failing one’s comrades that allows a man to overcome his fear. This view is represented early in the story by Bruxieus, who tells Xeones that a man can only be brave standing together with the other citizens of his city, and made more explicit in Dienekes’s description of a pack of dogs attacking a lion. In this view, it is the fear of exclusion by one’s peers, the fear of being seen as a coward in their eyes, that gives a man the courage to overcome his fear.