In the past, they had sacrificed a ram and dripped its blood in a great ring around that stone. So many recent sessions and a lack of suitable sacrifices had brought an end to the practice, at least for that year. As one, the crowd bowed their heads and said they would. Aristides and Cimon did the same, with as much right to stand there as any free man. Aristides saw Xanthippus greet his friend Epikleos. The man had brought Xanthippus’ younger son. The Scythians had not stopped those, he noticed. He frowned at the thought, while the first witnesses stepped up to the speaker’s stone, nervous and proud in roughly equal measure.

The ostracism vote was called for and rejected at the end of the first day. Families who had lost their wealth on the docks of Piraeus led that call, but there were too few hands to force a formal count. Themistocles had nodded once then, relieved. On the second day, the crowd had endured testimony from weeping families whose tombs he had used to make the Dipylon gate. The show of hands was closer then, but still not enough. On the third, they heard every detail of Salamis, from Themistocles and hundreds of officers. Some in the crowd cheered his tale of letters delivered to a Persian king. Others called out that it was all lies.

Both Cimon and Xanthippus were recalled to confirm the testimony of others. Each session of around four hours came to an end with a sudden unrest in the crowd, but no clear result. The fourth day was different. Overseers and workers from the mines at Laurium appeared. They described weight missing, empty sacks, payments made to strangers with no record. Nothing could be proven, but there were glares of suspicion turned on Themistocles. He had been in charge of the mines for crucial months of the war, after all.

He did not deny removing valuables from the bags on the docks, or remaking the city walls, or even keeping vast sums of silver in his own home to pay the rowers. He told them instead that they owed their lives to him. On the fourth day, when the cry went up again for a vote of ostracism, enough hands were raised to begin a formal decision. Many in the crowd looked at each other in disbelief. They had wanted to protest, not bring him down.