All along the line, his people lowered the great lengths of Macedonian ash. Some were older than the men who bore them, but cared for, oiled, sanded, the heads kept free of rust. They glittered silver as they came down, the wide leaf blades too thick to bend, strong enough to pierce armour and keep an edge.

Some of the Persians threw their own spears, short and vicious things. A few found a mark in the Greek lines, but the rest seemed to vanish in the flood of gold. Forty paces. Xanthippus was leaving it late, he knew. Epikleos was pointing at him, summoning the order. Over on his right, King Leotychides of Sparta had pulled down his helmet. His red-cloaks drove forward, edging ahead of the rest of the line in their eagerness. Xanthippus could see it all, perfectly clear, as if the moment was carved in glaze. He felt his bladder ache in fear that his own death had come, that the shears were snipping him out of life.

The moment passed. Sound roared back from thousands of throats, calling defiance or anger, or driving themselves to feel no pain. At ten paces, the Persians were a wall, solid on the earth. Xanthippus pulled in a great breath and bellowed across the field.

‘Strike! Spears! Strike!’

His front ranks lunged in a sudden rush, like javelin throwers at Olympia, the last three paces long, arms punching forward, driving dory spears into Persian armour. As one, they plunged in and came back red, then in again. Each time, the phalanx ranks gave a great shout. The shield of the man next to them was their protection, but the spears were their teeth. Some of the factions jabbed the length forward with each step, loping in like leopards. Others kept their right thigh forward and shuffled with every lunge, so that dust rose in a thickening cloud.

The Persians crumpled ahead of them. Though some raised spears of their own, they could not match the length. Those first ranks fell before they took a single life, each thrust of the dory spears cutting through shields and panelled armour, then pulled back. Before they could respond, the things licked out again with that awful grunt, over and over.

The Persians panicked when they saw no weakness. The phalanx formation was an armoured skin, gleaming in the sun. Brave men died like children before it, while on the Greek side, the ranks behind began their great heave forward, growling like a sea storm. There was no way to stop the advance, not once it had begun. They would go through, or they would be made wheat against a stone.