Xanthippus came home. The news of victory at Plataea had spread across the Aegean – island to island, boat to boat – until it reached his fleet. He had gathered the captains on his deck and drunk the last of the good wine with them. It was a sort of brotherhood, forged in the fleet actions. Pericles had heard his father and Epikleos talking about it afterwards in a sort of drunken wonder. Even without the ships of the Peloponnese, those captains represented thirty states and cities between them, led by Athens. They had all been alone, before the war. That night, some of them had seen a nation, for the first time.

With the port of Athens in sight, Pericles watched his father going to the prow, curling his arm around the keel beam while their ram crested the waves. Xanthippus’ expression was dark, under lowered brows. At the same time, his rowers made a fine show of the approach, oars rising and falling in perfect unison.

The people were already gathering in the port of Piraeus, running down from the city as news spread, ready to welcome the fleet home. They carried branches of red amaranth and waved their arms, cheering along the green hills as the ships rowed by, then racing to the port in desperate hope and joy, where they might see husbands, brothers, sons. The day was warm, the sky clear. Some of the men waved in reply, overcome at the sight of their own people, freed at last from fear. The shadow of the Persian invasion had hung over them for years. The people of Athens had lived with that threat every day. They had seen their fleet driven back in the first battles, the sacred city burned twice, every woman and child forced out as refugees. They had nothing – and they would take it up and rebuild once more.

Xanthippus stood like a knot, out of place as his ships came in and began to disembark their crews. The Piraeus had a dozen massive quays in stone, so that he did not have to wait, but came straight in to be tied on. The crowd cheered like madmen when they saw who it was, calling his name over and over. They brought a plank bridge, but Xanthippus ignored them. Pericles watched as his father jumped down to the dock, standing to balance for a moment as it swayed under him. He saw his father bend and kiss the ground then, patting it like the dog whose gravestone still marked the coast of Salamis.