‘My friends, one thing is certain. If you are given a month’s pay in silver – sixty drachms to hold, you will know the value of that sum. If you wish, you will purchase goods to that value, neither over nor under. If it is food, it will be sixty drachms’ worth of food. If it is wood or the tiles Themistocles mentioned, it will be sixty drachms’ worth of wood and tiles. If it is whores, it will be sixty drachms’ worth of experience!’

He waited through the laughter and crude comments his words drew from them. He was like a fisherman in the responses he pulled out of the crowd, sending his hooks flying far. Xanthippus glanced across to where Themistocles stood pretending he was enjoying the reply. His smile was fixed and his eyes were slightly narrowed.

‘I don’t think Themistocles likes the way this is going,’ Epikleos whispered at his side.

Xanthippus nodded, but Aristides was speaking again before he could say anything more.

‘If you hand your sixty drachms to the Assembly to buy these new ships in a year or two, will you get sixty drachms’ worth in return? Or will it go to the salaries of other men, administrators and officials perhaps? Will it go to feed the carpenters, or the teams cutting pine trees in the mountains? No doubt they will be well shod and have fine coats this winter, but what will you see for your coins? Will you come down to the docks to watch the ships built – and point to a single rib or beam and say with pride, “That piece there. That is mine.” Perhaps. But I have never yet seen a great work spend its funds as efficiently as a man who values the coins he has earned.’

‘What about the Persians?’ a voice called from somewhere near the middle. Whoever had spoken was nowhere near Themistocles. Xanthippus wondered, though. It was not beyond the man to have salted the crowd with his own supporters.

Aristides flowed on as if he had planted the man himself, which was also possible. He and Themistocles opposed one another almost every time the Assembly met. The scores were roughly even and their struggle was the subject of betting and conversation across the city each month, with supporters on both sides coming to blows. Unfortunately, it did mean that Aristides would always speak in opposition, even when Xanthippus thought Themistocles was right, as he did that day. They needed a fleet. The idea was magnificent. Was this why Themistocles had courted his friendship after Marathon? For the first time, he considered speaking himself.

‘What of the Persians?’ Aristides replied. ‘Should we fear them? The Persians have never fought a battle at sea. They are creatures of the land! What good could it possibly do to chase them at sea – at risk of drowning and shipwreck – rather than wait for them to step ashore and destroy them then, on the good earth? That is what we did at Marathon, as Themistocles would do well to remember. My nameless friend, we do not fear Persian ships, any more than we fear their men!’