‘He was untouchable before,’ he muttered.

Epikleos smiled bitterly.

‘Well, he isn’t now,’ he said. He looked closer at his friend, seeing anger there. ‘Are you all right? You have been out of sorts since I met you.’

Xanthippus waved a hand impatiently.

‘Agariste was … unwell. I had to leave her to come here. For this man.’

His gaze was fierce as he glared at Miltiades. Epikleos looked concerned, though it sprang in part from the fact that Xanthippus had mentioned his wife at all. In normal times, his friend shared nothing of his home life, considering it utterly apart in its privacy.

‘I hope she is well soon, brother,’ Epikleos said.

Xanthippus turned sharply, looking for any hint of levity. Epikleos seemed earnest. He nodded, falling silent once more.

The epistates that day was a man of Antiochis – the tribe of Aristides. Fresh in his post, he would have been appointed at the previous sunset. He climbed to the speaker’s stone to address the gathering, a tall and overly thin man in his early thirties with a pinched and waspish expression, as if something he had eaten disagreed with him.

‘Who will speak?’ he asked.

Even in the silence, his voice was thin and reedy. It lacked the boom of a Themistocles or even the hard tone of Aristides that could send other men scurrying to do his bidding. There was no reply, as every head turned to see how Miltiades would respond. He sighed visibly, his massive shoulders rising and falling like a man giving up. He rose to his feet with a grunt of effort, leaning on a staff that ended with a crosspiece under his armpit. His son Cimon stood with him, ready to steady his father if he stumbled or fell.

‘I would speak,’ Miltiades said, raising his head. ‘If you wish it.’

His beard had grown wild in the months apart, Xanthippus saw. It was still the man who had held back the wing at Marathon. The man who had almost sold his city into ruin.

‘I know you,’ Xanthippus said in a whisper.

Epikleos looked back at him, narrowing his eyes at the intensity in his old friend.

Two more men stepped forward to help Miltiades climb the last steps to the speaker’s stone. The crowd murmured at the sight, while the wailing of women and children could be heard beyond the Pnyx, the wind carrying the sound. They had gathered to learn all they could, of course, as desperate for news as any of the voting men above. Young and old, they filled the streets all around. In the distance, some of them clambered, dark as ants, on the rocky hill of Ares, where the Areopagus council usually met. On this day, the archons were all in the Assembly. No one had the will to send men to punish those people clinging there. They had all lost something with Miltiades that year.

When he was in position, Miltiades raised his head and breathed deeply of the breeze.