Themistocles looked at his friend. Aristides walked in a robe that looked older than any of them. He did not parade his own virtue, which made it hard to dislike him. Even so, Themistocles knew the man judged his weaknesses. Aristides had never let a single coin stick to his fingers. He’d given away whatever he’d once owned to the poor of Athens. Themistocles honestly thought the man was wearing all he had in the world. On a normal day, Cimon walked with his companions all wearing fine cloaks, solely for the purpose of giving them to anyone in rags who asked. Before the war, Xanthippus had married the sort of wealth that went hand in hand with power. They were his friends, Themistocles did not doubt it. Yet they had not known poverty, or if they had, it was in the nature of a choice. Themistocles shook his head. Poverty was something forced on a man. If he chose to endure it, if he could cast it off like an old cloak, it was not real. They were all great men in their way, he realised. Yet it seemed they did not understand him. After all they had seen and lived through together, he had not expected to feel an outsider, not in that group. He did, even so.

He found himself panting as the steps grew steep. The crowds were thickening around them. His people, beloved to him. He leaned over, his voice low.

‘I don’t remember any of you there when I had to fight to eat, or when I wrote my first pages for families who could not. I think you were made by your fathers, all of you. I made myself – and that is the difference between us. You can take a loss like the one you describe and I think a part of you would not be touched by it. You could go back to your lives after and it wouldn’t be a brand still burning against your skin, not for any of you.’ He smiled without humour, like a rictus of pain. ‘But it would be for me. So they can do what they want. I won’t give them anything. Certainly not whatever dignity I have won for myself. Not a word, not an apology, not a tear. If that means an ostracism, I accept it.’

‘Is it worth your life?’ Aristides said softly. ‘Everything you’ve worked for?’

‘Of course it is!’ Themistocles said. ‘I am an Athenian. I made myself who I am – and I saved us all. After that? Nothing else matters. Not even their gratitude.’

He saw the rest of them exchanging resigned glances as they reached the speaker’s stone and spread apart. Themistocles stepped ahead, passing through the Scythians escorting him up.