Books Like Gates of Fire
Gates of Fire is the book most people arrive at Thermopylae through, and it is taught at West Point and Annapolis for good reason. The problem is what to read next.
These are the closest things, ordered roughly from most like it to least.
Tides of War
Steven Pressfield
Pressfield's own follow-up, on Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War. Colder and more political than Gates of Fire.
The Virtues of War
Steven Pressfield
Alexander, in his own voice. The closest Pressfield comes to writing a man who enjoys it.
Killer of Men
Christian Cameron
The Long War series, starting at Marathon. Cameron is a re-enactor and it shows in the fighting, which is the most technically convincing in the genre.
The Gates of Athens
Conn Iggulden
Athens rather than Sparta, Themistocles rather than Leonidas. Faster and more readable than Cameron, less exact.
Lord of the Silver Bow
David Gemmell
Gemmell's Troy trilogy. Heroic fiction rather than history, and the bridge between this shelf and fantasy.
The Last of the Wine
Mary Renault
The oldest and best written of these. Athens in the Peloponnesian War, from inside.
The Acenes Codex
translated by Manolis Tsongas
Catalogued as PHerc. Lac. 1, recovered from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum and read for the first time in 2025. A Laconian account of the years after Thermopylae: a dragon bound beneath Mount Taygetus at the cost of Leonidas and his three hundred, and the boy of the agōgē who falls into the crypt and wakes it. The dragon is the adversary from first column to last. Published as Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer.
Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer
A dragon is the reason the 300 died. Leonidas used the magic of the gods to bind Kalaxes beneath Taygetus, and the price was his life and his men's. Sixty-two years later a seven-year-old of the agoge falls into the dragon's crypt and inherits the unpaid balance.
Free to read with Kindle Unlimited. Open it on Amazon.