‘You honestly think it lies in this crowd?’ Pericles asked. To his credit, he was looking at the people on the Pnyx with fresh eyes, searching for something like nobility in them. He glanced back when Aristides chuckled.

‘By Athena, no! Except where the laws grant it to them. Do not mistake me, lad! There is petty vice and spite here, jealousy and corruption. There is weakness and fear. If they all call for justice, I will look for the one who folds his arms and remains silent. I will buy his wine for him with the last coin I have.’ He shook his head. ‘They are my people, but they are hard to love. No, my point was not that they are better or more noble, but that no one else has authority to rule. No one. We are all flawed, Pericles. We are all … small men. Cleisthenes knew that, as Solon did. Yet when enough of us stand up, to praise or condemn, we have as much chance of being right as any other code. It does not make us right – anything of man is always imperfect. But it is still the better choice, always. Trust the people, Pericles.’

It took many hours to prepare and observe the votes, then to count them. Themistocles climbed the hill once more for the final tally, his pale hair darker where he had bathed and left it loose to dry. He betrayed his tension as he stood there, rubbing one hand over the other, unconscious of the reddening skin. The piles of voting pieces were tallied with chalk on slate, checked over and over and set aside by officials of the council. The sun had set by the time they had counted thousands, though the hill was still packed. When word went round that four thousand had been reached, there was a disturbance further down and voices calling, in alarm or jeering, it was not clear.

The family of Themistocles came through the crowd, a large enough number on their own to have the Scythians bustling over. Yet it was just a group of four young men and five girls, the children of two marriages. Themistocles’ second wife came to stand at his side, a slender woman of some beauty, with her hair so tight to her head it gleamed like a piece of silk. There was grumbling from some in the crowd, but there were others, too, still willing to support him. They waited, breathless for the result.

When the count passed six thousand, the count was halted. The remaining piles were pitiful little things. It had been close, with just hundreds in it. Yet the law was clear and certain.