Themistocles longed for rest. His body craved it, so that he wanted nothing more than to lie on the deck and look up at the sky and just sleep. He could hear cheering across the strait and he closed his eyes for a time, then opened them as the galley lurched, the prow striking some heavy piece of debris. It would not do to be thrown overboard at the greatest moment of his life.

He, Xanthippus and Cimon had worked like dogs or rowers, from the first moments of dawn till the sun reached the west, turning the sky to fire. The squadron formations and tactics they had created had proved their worth. At least a third of the Persian ships that had rowed around Salamis would remain in that strait for ever. Some burned with the oily smoke of a funeral pyre, hissing as cold sea flooded in. Others floated just beneath the surface, a danger to ships passing above. Dead men stared up from those, slipping into the wake.

Themistocles shuddered. Someone came and hugged him, another pounded him on the back, though he was badly bruised there. Slowly, he went down onto one knee and rested his forearms on it. He made a noise as he panted, past mere exhaustion. He just needed to breathe, in and out, to fill himself with clean air and something more than dazed emptiness.

He thought he had become immune to corpses, over the years. He had killed men before with sword and spear. Not one of them had mattered, not a single straw, because they had tried to take all he was, all he had. There was no simpler cause than Salamis – to resist an invasion, while his wife and daughters sat and prayed! Yet even as he had the thought, he saw another drift of bodies passing under the keel, rolled down into the deep. It made bile rise in his throat. He had witnessed men drawn pale by the sea, their hair swirling grass. Many more struggled and yelled on the surface, churning it with their hands. They were all dragged under by their armour in the end, breathing out silver.

He shuddered. That was one death he feared, that he would be sent down and down, made to vanish with no tomb, no light, no coin for the ferryman or prayers said. He had endured that thought for days at sea – he could no longer be sure how many! His knees hurt, his joints had sand in them, his arms were too heavy to move. Slowly, his great head sagged. He closed his eyes once more, ignoring the sounds of the ship and the fleet. He just needed a moment and then he would be striding among them once again, laughing and congratulating and reminding them what Athenian heroes looked like.