The Great King

Epilogue

No — I’ll leave you there. You know what happens next. But it is always darkest before the dawn, and that night, with King Leonidas dead across the straits, his corpse defiled by King Xerxes in a fury of unmanly pettiness, every Greek thought the same.

But when next we meet, I’ll tell you more — of Salamis, and Plataea. Of how I met the Great King one more time.

Of what we did, we men of Greece.

But tonight, drink to Leonidas of Sparta, who died for Greece — aye, and Antigonus of Thespiae and all his men, who died with the Spartans. And all the men — Corinthians and Plataeans and Athenians and Aeginians and Spartans and Hermionians and Tegeans and every other man of Greece who fell into Poseidon’s waters off Artemesium, fighting for Hellas.

Here is to their shades!