An impetuous gust of wind sweeps across the three hundred Spartans as they face gloriously impending doom. It sparks an image of the indecorous underworld god reclining on a throne of bones. But the image fades, blankly receding into its former irrelevance. The battlefield already becomes a memory. It rolls back the idle threat of unending obscurity. Shields glitter in golden unison. Warriors decode their fear, feeling phobos vacate the chambers of their hearts. They are on the verge of entering a room in the mind that should be left unseen, unknown. One by one they find themselves on the brink of an unseemly entrance, observing the door at the other side of which the heaviest loss soars above the sweetest pleasures of the world. There was a quickening of dust under the roar of the sun. A hand reached for mine. I grasped it, but then released it. My small hand drifted away from the large, scarred hand. I was a child in the agoge again. I rose to my feet, and then the sun shone invisibly through my battle-bruised limbs to fill my heart with longing. I was born to be a warrior, not to be king. My brothers were the next to succeed my father to the throne. My oldest brother was exempt from the agoge as he was the first-born son of a king. I became the Spartan king, but I was born for war. And then my most recent memory resurfaces like a long-forgotten sea that breaks its millennial silence. I remember Apollo. He was there with me and the other Spartans. He was at Thermopylae. He was there when my life's memories dimly reflected on the stream of Lethe before returning to the hot gates and ushering forth my final breath upon this earth. I imagine the silver visages dissolving in the light of an unbroken dawn. A splendid ethereal sight suddenly adorned the scene of bloodshed. The god of light appeared, swift and soundless. I whisper a breath of longing under the sea of dispersing blades. Apollo moved silently through the dark mass of the Immortals, aiming his bright arrow at one Persian royal guard after another. The shining arrows penetrated the blackness. I feel the silent, rippling roar of bloodied bodies, and I harden my limbs against the large churning wave of shields and armors. My unspoken words remained unutterably whole for they traverse the blissful silence created by the unexpected divine presence. Apollo shoots one arrow after another. But I know that the time for glorious self-sacrifice had come. Apollo was gone now. I feel the sacred springs flow beneath his feet. I feel the hot gates breathe all around me, reminding me that the death of instant defeat would precede my own death. I feel the mountain breathe fire, infusing my heart with the sublimely untouched radiance that has just departed from my vision. Death now advances. I was born to be a warrior. I was born to die at the hot gates.