He waited while a rumble of anger rippled across the thousands present. They were sweating and dirty, most of them. They had worked hard all morning, with lunch waiting. They were desperate for news. Aristides regarded his people, gathered in that place. His gaze fell across Cimon, standing with his friends, his young wolves; then briefly, Themistocles, registering his presence there.

‘Sparta will do what is best for Sparta,’ Aristides said. ‘Our task is to make sure it is also what is best for us. We need them. Understand that. Without the Spartan ten thousand, we cannot stand against the Persian host. I have watched them pass and I can say there is no army like it in the world. I do not think there ever has been. It is an army of forty nations like ours, a force so vast, it will take all we have to send them home. Do not think I am complacent, gentlemen. Even if Sparta comes out, if we take the field, it will be a straw in the wind how many of us come home again. They have cavalry armed with spear and bow, archers of great skill, regiment after regiment of foot soldiers. I stood at Marathon! I saw how good Athenian hoplites could beat two or three times as many – with formation discipline, with a spear-thrust and a good shield. Yet these are four or five times the number we might bring to the field, perhaps more. I have eyes on them in the north, with relays of fast horses on the hills between. If they move, we will know. When they move, I believe we will triumph – Athena stands with us – but it will be hard. There will be sorrow in the spring, amidst the horns of victory.’

The crowd were silent, though a breeze arose, flapping robes and cloaks. Themistocles turned at a disturbance further down the hill. He watched Xanthippus come up the last steps, the crowd parting for him. Some of the men patted him on the back as he came, so that he smiled. Themistocles nodded, feeling a sourness in his stomach he knew was petty and vain. Was the world so small that he had to begrudge another man the crowd’s acclaim? Or was it that they seemed to lionise Xanthippus more than the one who had actually saved them all?

‘Speaker here,’ Aristides said. He stepped back.

The epistates beckoned, bowing his head to Xanthippus as the call was seconded. The strategos rose like a stone from the sea of heads, coming to stand above them. Themistocles found himself glowering and forced a more benign countenance.

‘Assembly, thank you for hearing me,’ Xanthippus said.

He smiled at them and Themistocles thought how tanned and fit he looked. It could hardly have been more irritating.