Another three days had to be set aside to hear disputes over property. Those suits came with a risk, however, as the crowd grew impatient with petty argument. Some of the most complex cases simply lost land they could not divide fairly. Those properties were sold at auction, snapped up by wealthier families.

Neither strategoi nor archons were immune. Over a hundred epistatai were there – each one a man who had ruled Athens for one day of the crisis. They became the keystones of the unfolding history, stepping up in turn to say what they had witnessed and done, sunset to sunset.

Aristides listened to as many of those as he could. He stood close to the speaker’s stone to hear them, his ragged old robe wrapped around him. He had to use his elbows when others threatened to push him out, but he would not give up his spot. Xanthippus and Epikleos were present, he noted, with Pericles. Though the young man was not yet a voting member of the Assembly, his father had taken to keeping him close. No one questioned a strategos who had already given his first-born.

Cimon had come, standing with forty young men in good cloaks, officers from his wing of the fleet. He had begun negotiations to refit three older triremes on behalf of the city. He was even learning carpentry, so it was said, taking a spot alongside the master woodworkers of the port and learning from them. He insisted on it, so that he could repair and understand the ships. It gave Aristides hope, somehow.

There were reports still of Persian strongholds, on islands untouched by the war. A new generation would seek them out the following spring, driving them from home waters with fire and the sword. Aristides just hoped the voyages would not become a great drunken debauch. The people of Athens had suffered dark years. They needed new tales to inspire them, as they continued to rebuild. With the blessing of the gods, men like Cimon could write stories to equal the Argonauts or Odysseus, a reminder that the great days were not all behind.

Themistocles was there as well, on the Pnyx hill, at the heart. As Aristides let his gaze drift over the silver-blond head, Themistocles talked in a low voice to the most senior archons, men drawn away from their youthful authority by time and war. They had all attended the proceedings every morning as they stretched into a second and third week, with a new epistates chosen each day to call witnesses and order what votes the Assembly wanted.