He paused for a moment and bowed his head. In another man, it might have been artifice, but in that place, with the breeze in his hair, the memories were suddenly overwhelming.

‘We were met on the road by the people of the city, come to greet us. They brought flowers and wine – red amaranth blossoms. We came to the Pnyx and we gave thanks for our deliverance. Miltiades was a hero that morning – and as one beloved of Athens, he asked us for ships and men. Seventy ships, with three banks of thirty rowers on each side. One hundred and eighty free men of the city to cut through the waves. With each ship, a dozen others made up the roll – two cooks, three carpenters, sailmakers, a navigator and his boy. All from the demes and tribes of Athens. Alongside them were shield-men in bronze – hoplites with the equipment and weapons they had carried at Marathon, at my side, at the side of Miltiades. Some were from the left wing, others from the tribes of the centre, who were beaten back by Persians but did not break. Men who had re-formed in the face of a screaming, howling enemy bright with blood and sweat – and pushed back!’

Xanthippus had not appreciated how loud and stern his voice had become, so that the words lashed out across the face of the jury. He heard it then as the echoes returned to him. He took a moment to glance into the lower of the two urns, the one known as the clepsydra, or ‘water-thief’. Water brimmed along a line. He had used almost half his time already! He mastered himself, though Miltiades looked troubled and his scribes had their heads lowered to their papers rather than meet the gaze of one who had been there.

‘The heroes of Marathon went out with those seventy ships. Forty or fifty to a ship – volunteers all. Three and a half thousand of those who fought at my side while the sea hissed pink and red and bodies tumbled around my feet. They too were men of Athens, each one of them. All but twelve hundred were lost, a tragedy that leaves us immeasurably poorer, weaker. If the Persians come again tomorrow, we cannot send ten thousand out to meet them, not today. If their fleet comes, we cannot yet put ships in their path to defend Athens from a hostile landing. We are weak this year – and it is because of the arrogance of one man. Perhaps Miltiades thought he could not lose, in his pride. Perhaps he thought too little of the city that had raised him up, so that he did not mind her being stripped, left naked and afraid by his actions. Yet that is the result!’

Xanthippus found he was glaring at the jury, so that they too looked away. He tried to gentle his gaze, reminding himself he had to win them over, not harangue them! As he paced back and forth across the great rock, he saw others had come, standing outside the roped boundary. They risked falling off the sheer edge of the Areopagus to hear the trial. Yet they remained, and he understood that need to hear. It should not have been a surprise when his eye was drawn to Themistocles among them. Of course that man had come to watch the trial. He too had stood at Marathon. He had seen his lines thinned and the left wing held back, though the elite soldiers of Persia massed before him, the ones the king called Immortals. Xanthippus barely flickered an eye over Themistocles, but the connection was made even so. They knew one another – and Themistocles knew why he accused.