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Gates Of Fire Essay

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The 2006 film titled 300 puts the legendary war between the Persians and Spartans into action on the big screen. Although action-packed and exciting, 300 quickly became controversial due to its lack of historical accuracy and overly exaggerated visual details. Steven Pressfield’s epic novel Gates of Fire also tells the tale of the Battle of Thermopylae. Both the film and epic novel recreate the famous battle by mixing fiction and nonfiction components; however, they each have their own way of telling the tale. Although mostly fiction, Gates of Fire is unique in laying out what exactly happened at the battle of Thermopylae through the eyes of Xeones and a Persian historian retelling the tale of the battle to King Xerxes whom saved Xeones life from battle just to learn all he can about the Spartans and their military tactics for his later pursuits against Greece. Xeones begins talking about his boyhood and how the Persians razed his village of Astakos when he was a boy only to be left homeless from this basically throwing it in Xerxes face retelling of what destruction it can cause (Chapter 4, Pressfield). Just as in the movie 300, we can see the razing Persians had done onto a village the Spartans come across being warned of the immortals by a village boy who dies in Leonidas hands. Although this part is most likely dramatized, it does represent the destruction Xeones refers to. Xeones continues to go on about the Agoge training Alexandros, whom he was a squire for, was put

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