Over the previous week, the Athenian fleet had gone out in armed squadrons, with orders to bring back grain or any live thing. The Persians had stripped their city, though some stores had been missed in their eagerness. Themistocles had put guards on a basement still filled with sacks of wheat. It had been toasted a dark brown and the bread made from that flour was very bitter. There were still mouths to feed, however.

The sheer complexity of a city was something few of them had considered before. Athens had grown up over centuries, street by street. If enough people needed shoes, a cobbler opened a little shop. It was a hard thing to get started, however, like a great stone rolling downhill.

The thought made Themistocles look across to where Aristides was waiting to speak. The man had brought his hoplites back to keep order in Athens. Themistocles suspected Aristides had no choice in that, with the Persians gone and winter upon them. The people of the city were in desperate need. Those who had taken up shield and spear would have wanted to return to their families, while Aristides rejoined the Assembly.

Themistocles forced his smile a touch wider as the rest of them fell silent. Aristides had never been liked exactly, but he was certainly respected. It had been hard enough having him banished the first time. That would not work again. Themistocles was stuck with the man, at least for the duration.

‘Speaker here!’ someone called by Aristides.

The epistates for the day beckoned him up and stood back, awed in the presence of a banished man returned. Aristides had not shared in the naval victory at Salamis, Themistocles reminded himself. The Assembly had no reason to look on him with such reverence.

‘Thank you,’ Aristides said.

He wore no armour in that place, choosing instead his habitual robe, a ragged old thing that looked as if it might be the one he’d owned from before his banishment. Themistocles raised his eyes to heaven or the Acropolis as Aristides began to speak.

‘I cannot report any progress with the Spartans,’ he said. ‘Their regent knew of his father’s oath. He did not seem … particularly bound by it. They feel too secure, the men of Sparta and Corinth, safe behind that fortress wall they have built, as if armies of Persia are no concern of theirs. I have not found a way to shake that misplaced confidence, not yet.’

‘Will they take the field in spring?’ someone called.

Aristides paused, stroking his upper lip with the pads of his fingers.

‘I cannot say,’ he replied.