Response to Connelly: First at the Gates of Fire: can there be any survivors?

Abstract

I first read Connelly’s review of the Behavior Change Consortium (BCC) studies while on a family trip to Greece. I was engrossed in my reading Gates of Fire (Pressfield, 2000), an historical novel about the battle of Themopylae in 480 BC. Reportedly, 300 Spartans held off an estimated 2 million Persians for 7 days in defense of a narrow mountain pass, where superiority in the numbers of invaders was partially neutralized by the geography. Before all the Spartans were killed, they took the lives of perhaps 20 000 Persians. Pressfield describes the Persian commanders ordering their archers to shoot through their own soldiers to hit, by chance, a Spartan. My initial reaction to Connelly’s review was to feel as I imagine the Persian soldiers at the front of the battle might have felt when wounded by arrows fired by an ally. Although I continue to believe that some of his points were wrong or inappropriately narrow, I have with time, come to find some value in his comments.

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