Steven Pressfield's masterwork, Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae, is reported to contain this imaginary dialogue between two Spartan
warriors, which explains something of the love combat veterans feel for those with whom they stood shoulder to shoulder, as well as how fear and courage play a crucial part in bonding warriors together:
"What is the opposite of fear?"
"To call it aphobia, fearlessness is without meaning. This is just thesis expressed as antithesis."
"Dogs in a pack find courage to take on a lion. Each hound knows his place. He fears the dog ranked above and feeds off the fear of the dog below. Fear conquers fear. This is how we Spartans do it, counterposing to fear of death a greater fear that of dishonor. Of exclusion from the pack."
"But is this courage? Is not acting out of fear of dishonor still, in essence action out of fear?"
"You young men imagine we veterans have mastered fear. But we feel it as keenly as you. Fear lives within us 24 hours a day."
"We cobble our courage together. Fear of disgracing the city, the king, the heroes of our lines. Fear of proving ourselves unworthy of our wives and children … I know all the tricks … I know how to close with my man, how to convince myself that his terror is greater than my own. I employ care for the men serving beneath me and seek to forget my own fear in concern for their survival. But it is always there."
"When a warrior fights not for himself, but for his brothers, when his most passionately sought goal is neither glory nor his own life's preservation, but to spend his substance for his comrades, not to abandon them, not to prove unworthy of them, then his heart has truly achieved contempt for death, and with that he transcends himself and his actions touch the sublime."
"Forget country. Forget king. Forget wife and children and freedom. Act for this alone: for the man who stands at your shoulder. He is everything, and everything is contained within him."
"The opposite of fear, is love."
