In Pressfield’s novel Gates of Fire, he dramatizes the actions of 300 hundred Spartans who hold off the invading Persian army of Xerxes for days in the battle of Thermopylae. Xeones, a young squire of Sparta brought back to life by Apollo to share his tale, recounts the story of Leonidas and his soldiers as they battle from within the strength of the Phalanax to give Greece a fighting chance against the nearly 4,000 invading Persian horde.
