The crowd cheered, the sound echoing across the entire city in ripples – those too far back to hear a single word nonetheless roaring their encouragement. He knows, Xanthippus realised. Themistocles knows exactly what happened, or at least he suspects. Perhaps he too had seen the way the crowd adored Miltiades, how they reached for his hands, just to say they had touched him! The man is beyond all criticism after such a victory. Whatever lies beneath, that is the truth.

Miltiades had been lowered to stand once again. He stepped forward, though to Xanthippus watching, it did not look as if Themistocles was ready to give way. Nonetheless, he did so with good grace, leading the renewed cheers for the hero of Marathon.

Miltiades beamed at them, basking in the approval. He did not let it go on for too long, choosing caution over vanity and patting the air for silence. Even then, the roars died away reluctantly. Xanthippus wondered what it had been like, waiting with slaves and metic foreigners to hear whether the army returning to Athens would be Persian or Greek. It was a reality – an agony – he had never known. He shrugged at the thought. Some men changed the world; some endured it. He knew he would always choose his fate, not let others choose for him! That was his right as a man – and a citizen of Athens. He put such thoughts aside as Miltiades spoke.

‘I was blessed to lead us. Only we and the brave men of Plataea answered our call … just eleven thousand against four or five times as many, against slingers and archers and Persian Immortals – the best soldiers of their empire. Against war crews and hard-faced oar-slaves. Against their king, watching us. The day has gone. It is already a memory. Yet we who are Marathonomachoi know the only truth that matters. In that hour, we were enough.’

The hush lasted a full beat as the crowd stared almost in reverence, then erupted once more. Someone had taken up drums and pipes and the noise of those competed with the crowd, making Xanthippus’ heart race at the sound of a battlefield, so fresh in his memory.

Miltiades had to wait a long time to speak again.

‘Some of you may have heard the Great King was accompanied by Hippias, traitor and tyrant of Athens,’ he said.

The sound of the pipes died with a squawk at that. A murmur of astonishment went around the crowd. Xanthippus too pricked up his ears, exchanging a glance with Epikleos at his shoulder. They all knew that name. Hippias had been forced out of the city years before, after attempting to overthrow the reforms that had given them the Assembly in all its noise and clamour. It was a debt they still owed the Spartans, for entering Athens at their request and surrounding the forces of Hippias on the Acropolis, forcing him to leave the city.

Xanthippus remembered that day well, though he had been just a youth of eighteen. The Spartans had wanted to remain, of course, claiming some rights over the city they had liberated, though they had been invited in as guests. Word they would not go had taken wing and, without speeches, without a vote even, the streets had suddenly filled with every young man of Athens, surrounding them. Perhaps the crowds that day had been shamed by their inability to stand against the tyrant and his soldiers. It did not matter. They had found their courage in the end. They would not be ruled by tyrants ever again! Even the Spartans had realised they could not prevail against so many determined men. They had looked like wolves confronted with armed sheep. Yet that had been the day Xanthippus thought that democracy might actually survive. He had not known there were so many who cared about it as much as he did, before that day. Yet if there were men willing to die for it, if they loved it more than life, perhaps it was worth something.