The Great King

2

Carthage enjoys one of the finest natural harbours in all the great aspis of the world, improved by the genius of man. The breakwater is longer and stronger than that of Syracusa, and the two beaches that flank the promontory like the guard on a xiphos’s hilt each have berthing for a hundred ships, and there are ship-sheds — the largest and best in all the Middle Sea — all along the promontory coast, an incredible fortune in quarried stone, and every shed holds a hull, dry, well stored, ready for sea.

The last time I entered that harbour, I’d been a half-dead victim of a month of the most extreme humiliations and tortures at the hands of Dagon, the mad or cursed helmsman. This was the first time I’d entered the magnificent harbour in command of my own vessel, and the view was better.

On the other hand, I could smell the roast-pork smell of human sacrifice rising to the gods. Down in the urine-soaked hull of a slave-rowed trireme, I’d never smelled it.

Listen, friends. The Greeks have been known to sacrifice men. I watched Themistocles do it once, and frankly, it sickened me, like a lot of the other crap that half-mad demagogue did. But it is scarcely the norm, for all that power-mad Agamemnon sacrificed his own daughter for a fair wind to Troy. I say again — Greeks can do such things, but most Greeks think them barbarous.

The whole trip to Carthage, I had Briseis on my deck. She would walk the catwalk like a queen, or settle on the short bench by the helm. We talked as we had not talked in many years.

At any rate, she sniffed the air and looked at me. ‘What is that, love?’ she said. ‘Pigs instead of sheep?’

I shook my head. ‘The Great King’s allies sacrifice children to Ba’al for fair weather and good sailing,’ I said.

In the face she made, I read the utter disgust of the mother. I seldom thought of Briseis in those days as anything but a lover, but in that moment I had to see that she had children whom she loved — perhaps loved far more than she loved Artapherenes. Or me.

‘How are your own children?’ I asked. ‘And dare I ask how you come to be here?’

She leaned back and let the fold of her shawl fall away from her face. ‘My children are wonderful,’ she said. ‘My two sons are tall and strong, and will be fine men.’

I laughed to see her pleasure in thinking of her sons. ‘Better men than their father, I hope?’ I asked. Her first husband had been, in my eyes, a coward and a fool — for all that he was, for a while, one of the most powerful men in the Greek world. I’d killed him, of course.

‘I hope that Heraklitus, at least, will not be the fool his father is,’ she said. ‘And Dionysus will be a scholar.’

‘You called your first after the teacher?’ I asked. ‘My teacher?’

She looked at the growing crescent of the Carthaginian harbour. ‘You have never asked his name before,’ she said. ‘You know that he is fourteen years old? He goes to the gymnasium of Sardis with the Greek boys, and throws his spears. He wishes to compete in the boys’ pankration.’ She raised her eyes and met mine. ‘He looks like you.’

That struck me like a sword-blow — like being hit with another man’s shield, right in the face, or like the blow of another ship hitting your own ship, so that you are knocked flat.

‘He’s. . what?’ I asked.

Briseis shook her head. ‘Why do I love you so?’ she asked. ‘You are sometimes the merest brute.’

Megakles was beginning the landing routine. A pair of pilot boats were pulling out from the main wharf, and two warships were being put into the water.

Someone had recognised my ship.

Sekla came to stand by me. Brasidas was fully armed, and so were all of his marines, and Ka had all his non-wounded archers in the bow, bows strung. Cyrus and his two friends were amidships, fully dressed in rather formal Persian robes over trousers and tucked into their beautiful red-leather boots, and Artapherenes reclined on a pallet of their cloaks, his beard neatly trimmed.

Sekla bowed to Briseis and turned to me. ‘Time to pay the ferryman,’ he said. ‘Or whatever you Greeks say when you are about to die. May I just say. .’ he pointed at the onrushing shapes of the two Carthaginian warships ‘. . that I told you so? I’d like you to accept that I told you this would happen before we died.’

I was still looking open mouthed at Briseis. She pulled a fold of her shawl over her face.

In the time it took the rowers to pull five strokes, everything about my life had changed.

Because I had a son. By Briseis. Named Heraklitus.

The pilot boats put an elder on my deck, and the two Carthaginians lay off, with burning fire pots prepared on their marine decks and bows strung. As soon as the old man came aboard, he faced me without a bow.

‘I am old and have grown sons,’ he announced. ‘No one will ransom me, and if I raise my right hand, this ship will be rammed and sunk with all hands, and no one will account me a loss. Understand, pirate?’

I nodded. ‘Sir, I am merely the tool of the gods, in this instance. My ship bears the tokens of an embassy, and I carry the Lord Artapherenes, who comes from the Great King of Persia to speak to the council of Carthage.’

I think his face must have worn the look I had when Briseis told me that her son was also mine.

I motioned to him, and led him forward to where Artapherenes lay among his attendants.

‘This is the Lord Artapherenes, Satrap of Phrygia, relative of the Great King,’ I said. ‘And his wife Briseis and men of his bodyguard.’

I suppose it might have been possible to impersonate such rank, but not in such numbers. The Carthaginian bowed deeply. ‘I’m sure that the tale of your presence here will bear some telling,’ he snapped at me. ‘But I will see to it your tokens of embassy are respected, at least until you clear the harbour.’

I nodded. I had my own plan, now that my duty was done. I went and knelt by Artapherenes, and I motioned Cyrus to attend. He knelt by my side.

‘My lord,’ I said.

His eyes were open and his face was stronger. I have known many men recover at sea and in deserts who might have perished on land. The sea is clean.

So he smiled. ‘Arimnestos. I knew you would get me here.’

I nodded. ‘Lord, these men are my enemies, and I don’t intend to give them the chance to betray their oaths to the gods.’

Cyrus smiled at me. He put a hand on mine, right hand to right hand. ‘You are a good man,’ he said. ‘Why must we fight?’

‘Change is the only constant,’ I said. ‘Some day, perhaps, we will be allies.’ I stood up. ‘I will have you swayed gently over the side, my lord, but the very moment you come to rest on that wharf, my men will back oars, and I will fly.’

Artapherenes nodded. ‘My heart advises that what you do, you must do,’ he admitted. ‘That man’s face held much hate. What have you done?’

I smiled. ‘They made me a slave. I paid them back.’ I rose to my feet and walked back to the helmsman’s station. I took the oars from Sekla and said, ‘Give me a moment here,’ and he smiled and walked away.

Briseis watched it all.

I put my ship on a long, slow curve towards the pier to which the Carthaginian harbour officer pointed from his pilot boat.

I made a hand sign to Leukas, and the oar-rate picked up. The Carthaginian ships had come to a full stop to watch our talk with their elder, and they were slower and heavier, and we shot away.

‘I am about to put your husband ashore,’ I said.

She nodded.

‘You could always come with me,’ I said. ‘I know you won’t, but I’ll curse myself for the next ten years if I do not ask.’

Briseis stood. Very softly, she said, ‘Some day, I will live as your wife. But you do not want to humiliate Artapherenes any more than I do.’ She smiled into my eyes. ‘I do not love him with fire, but I love him none the less, Achilles. He is a worthy man.’

‘He lay with your mother!’ I said. See, the adolescent is never far beneath the surface, and I was suddenly angry.

She recoiled, looked away, and flushed. Then she said, ‘You once swore to protect our family.’

Now it was my turn to look away.

She nodded. ‘If the world were a simple place, none of us would have to make the choices that define who we are. Even when our choices are folly and hubris.’ She shrugged. ‘And would you have me abandon our children?’

‘Children?’ I asked.

She laughed. ‘You are a fool, my Achilles.’ She rose on her toes and kissed me, to the scandal of all the Persians. ‘It is war,’ she said. ‘And in war, there is change. Didn’t Heraklitus say so? Not this summer or next — but soon.’

‘I will come for you,’ I said, as rash as an ephebe.

She smiled. ‘Good.’

We were three ships’ lengths from the wharf. And as usual, I had put Briseis ahead of all my other concerns. Thankfully. .

In many ways, despite everything that follows, it was Lydia’s finest hour.

First, because we rowed to within a ship’s length of the pier — and suddenly, without warning or orders, at a single whistle, the port-side rowers reversed their cushions and we turned in our own length, slowing in the process to a stop and then continuing sternward at a walking pace. It is a wonderful manoeuvre — try training men to it, and you will find that it can take a summer to get it right once. Only a crew that has been together for years can get it just right, without broaching the ship or capsizing or breaking oars or wallowing.

All the starboard-side oars for the first six benches from the stern came in, and our starboard side sternward bulwark came to rest against the stone of the pier as if we were a child accepting the gentle embrace of a loving mother.

Before we touched, every marine was ashore. And Briseis — bless her — her voice barked like a fishwife’s, and the women climbed the side and made the short jump while the lines were held. I clasped Cyrus’s hand while Arayanam and Darius lifted Artapherenes on a bed made of spears and cloaks, and they stepped from the rail to the shore like sailors.

The three Persians saluted with their hands in the Persian way.

Briseis smiled at me.

I broke free of her gaze and made a single hand gesture to Megakles at the helm, and then at Leukas amidships. Leukas roared, ‘Pull!’

Now, I don’t know that the men of Carthage meant to betray their oaths. But I saw no reason to linger and test them.

The two heavy triremes were two cables astern, just getting up to speed. Three more triremes were launching from the sheds, and there was a great deal of commotion along the shoreline, and my heavy crew — with all the best men in their seats — knew the drill.

In five strokes we were at cruising speed.

There was a shout from the ship-sheds.

A sixth ship got off the beach under the sheds. I watched him — Phoenicians’ ships are often male — and his oar-stroke was disgustingly ragged, and that made me watch him another few heartbeats. Only a certain kind of trierarch would have such a ragged crew. Phoenicians are generally superb sailors, but they have a few right fools and at least one evil madman.

Fifteen strokes and my oarsmen were pulling like the heroes in the Argo and I could see their oars bend at the height of the stroke. We were almost at full speed — ramming speed, as fast as a galloping horse.

I’ve said this other nights, but a sea fight seems to get faster and faster as you get closer to the moment of combat. I don’t know whether this is some effect of the hand of the gods, of the spirit men carry within them, or merely a flaw in the flow of time’s stream. Once thing I know — sometimes it is merely that the rowers pull harder as the ships close.

The two closest Carthaginians were suddenly five ships’ lengths away. And closing at the converging speeds of a cavalry charge.

I had a ship that had been built for me — a crew I’d led for two wildly successful years, and trained the way a swordsmith hones a sword. And the harbour of Carthage isn’t like the open ocean — it is like a mill pond. Flat. Weatherless. With no surprises. The moment I saw that badly handled trireme launch, I hoped it was Dagon. How many mad trierarchs could Carthage have?

I had a notion.

As we shot at the two Carthaginians, both altered their helms very slightly, to widen the gap between them so that I couldn’t oar-rake the two of them.

It was a wise precaution.

But I had no intention of touching a Carthaginian that day. I had come into this harbour as an ambassador, and I had already done a great deed — I had kept an oath, and followed the bonds of hospitality. Cimon, I was sure, would praise me as a noble man. I had no intention of sacrificing all that for a moment’s satisfaction in fighting. Let the Phoenicians break the truce and be cursed by the gods.

‘Oars in!’ I roared.

Always the last order before an oar-rake.

My oars shot in — my opponents might have asked why they came in so early, but no one ever does, in a real fight. The enemy helmsmen saw my oars come in and they each cheated their helms slightly inward and ordered their own oars in, ready for the clash.

Every one of my marines and deck crewmen — and my twenty spare oarsmen — went and leaned on the port side of our trihemiola’s deck rail. And I motioned, and Megakles put the helm hard over.

And we turned. Not the sharp turn of a low-speed rowing turn, like the one we’d just executed, where you turn on a single point, like a pivot — but a high-speed turn on the arc of the ship’s length, drawing a geometrical figure in the water.

I might not have tried in the open ocean with real waves, but on the still waters of their inner harbour, I trusted to Moira and my rowers.

We shot across the westernmost ship’s bow, so close that I could have hit their ship with an apple core. We were coasting, coasting. .

Ka held up an arrow and I shook my head.

Both of the enemy ships fell astern, turning as fast as they could.

‘Oars out,’ I called.

Have you ever had the moment come to you when you can feel the favour of the gods? When you are almost with them?

I had the sun and the sparkle of the sea — the stink of their barbaric sacrifices and the warmth of Briseis’ smile.

I looked off to the west, where the four triremes were struggling to get all their rowers seated and rowing.

Sekla sighed. ‘You’re grinning,’ he said. ‘Everyone’s scared, except Brasidas, who says you are like a mad priest.’

‘Brasidas didn’t say that many words.’ I looked at Sekla, and his dark brown eyes were laughing.

‘Whatever you are planning, I think it’s my duty to point out that if you’d just turn out to sea, we’d run clear in five minutes.’ Sekla pointed to the harbour mouth.

I nodded. ‘Give me five minutes,’ I said.

Sekla shook his head. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Revenge,’ I said.

We went west, no faster than a fast cruise. The wind was against us, and since our mast was a standing mast, the rowers had to work hard just to maintain speed. Leukas began to use the reserves to replace men as they tired.

I motioned, and Megakles cheated our hull south, towards the beach, by slapping his oars with the palms of his hands — just a few dactyls that would move the ship’s hull south a little and then back on course before we lost way.

I needed all of my opponents to remain fixated on me.

And the gods were with me.

When the time seemed right. . It was like working a problem in mathematics, with Heraklitus watching over my shoulder, or Pythagoras’s daughter Dano making little disapproving noises — I thought of her surprise to hear that a little man like me used her great father’s theory of triangles.

But this was sheer guesswork.

I assumed it would take a certain time to turn my ship, even at this slow speed.

‘Prepare to turn north!’ I called.

‘Starboard rowers, reverse your seats!’ Leukas roared.

The ship was alive beneath me, and as soon as Leukas’s hand came up to tell me that the benches were reversed, I pumped my fist — the starboard side oars touched the water, and Megakles leaned in his harness, pushing both steering oars together, and we turned.

The enemies to the west were slower. Those to the east — those we’d outmanoeuvred — were faster. Now I turned between them.

They all went to ramming speed with a clash of cymbals that carried across the water.

They were all very slightly astern of me, running at almost right angles, aimed a little ahead of me. I wasn’t going very fast — in a ship fight, nothing loses speed like a hard turn. Every one of my rowers had his oar poised at the top of its arc, but none of them was in the water.

Bah. This is like having to explain the punchline of a joke. I confess that had they not been blinded by the gods, they would have smoked the trick or at least realised that I wasn’t rowing.

Sekla said, ‘This is insane.’ He laughed aloud.

I lifted my hand. ‘Now!’ I roared.

Leukas’s spear hit the deck.

One hundred and eighty oars bit the water.

One.

The six enemy ships swept at us like avenging falcons. No doubt that they meant me harm. No doubt they were coming for the kill. Fixated on it like predators — four from the west, two from the east. And the middle ship of the four was Dagon’s — now I could see him standing amidships with a heavy whip in his hand. He had painted his ship red above the mid-deck oarsmen and white below, and the white showed brown and black stains — an ugly ship.

Two strokes. We were moving a little faster than walking pace, and the lead western ship cheated his helm a little to keep his ram in line with us.

Without a word from me, Megakles read my mind and steered a little bit to the west. I was looking at the sloppily rowed ship. There he was.

You know how you can pick out a woman you have loved or a good friend three streets away in a crowded city street — yes? The sway of hips, the particular way a man holds his hand or cocks his head, the slant of the forehead, the droop of a shoulder. .

There was Dagon.

I knew him.

I laughed.

There are fools who do not believe in the gods, but I have seen them. And that day, in the harbour of Carthage, I felt Athena at my shoulder as if I was Odysseus reborn.

Third stroke. We were now moving as fast as a man can run.

I raised my fist and waved it at Dagon.

Fourth stroke. We shot out from between the beaks of the Carthaginians, like a hare that gybes so fast that the claws of the eagle close on empty air.

Except that there were six eagles, and they were on converging courses.

I watched Dagon as he saw the two ships to the east which had been hidden by my hull. And his own greed.

All six ships tried to change course.

One ship evaded the collision, but the other five slammed into each other — our two pursuers from the east into Dagon and the ships immediately north and south of his. They all collided — oars snapped, and men died.

We rowed out of their harbour, smelling their barbaric sacrifices and listening to the screams of their broken oarsmen, as their ships fouled the oars of the others, splintering the shafts, and breaking men’s chests and arms and necks.

Brasidas came aft, and gave me his little smile.

Sekla was still shaking his head. ‘Did you plan all that?’ he asked.

I shrugged. ‘I made it possible for the gods to show their hands,’ I said.

The Spartan nodded.

I wasn’t going back to Sybaris or Croton or Syracusa. So I watered at Lampedusa and again at Melita, and rested my rowers there. I intended to run for Athens, but at Melita, Brasidas asked me — with grave courtesy — if I could take him home.

And there was a man on the beach, nearly beside himself with fury. He was an Italian Greek, and an athlete. I knew him — everyone did, in those days. Astylos of Croton. He had won the stade and the diaulos at Olympia. He had a statue in Croton, his home city, and I had seen him pointed out to me there by Dano, Pythagoras’s daughter.

He came to me as soon as we landed, put his hand out in supplication, and begged me to take him aboard as a passenger. The same storm that had dismasted Lydia had wrecked his ship on Melita’s rocky shores. And he was desperate because it was an Olympic year, and he was due to compete. Athletes are required by the games to come a full lunar month before the first sacrifice — to prove they are worthy to compete. He was already a week late.

And his trainer was Polymarchos. Do you remember him from last night? A freedman who had trained me in Syracusa. I won’t say he was the best swordsman I ever saw — that honour belongs to Istes, brother of Hippeis of Militus. But he taught swordsmanship better than any man I ever met, and he taught pankration as well, and running, and here he was on the beach at Melita.

He looked at me from under his heavy brows, like Herakles come to life — I’ve seldom met a man with the same weight of bone over his brow and yet such startling intelligence.

‘You ruined Lydia,’ he said. ‘Daughter of Nikedemos, who took you into his home and welcomed you — and you ruined her.’ He shook his head. ‘Come,’ he said to his athlete. ‘I would rather miss the games than travel in this ship.’

I could see that his athlete felt differently. I walked to him, planted myself in his path, thumbs hooked in my zone. ‘I have done evil deeds,’ I said. ‘But I have attempted to come right with the gods. Will you hear me?’

He turned his head away. His hands flexed at his sides, and his stance changed slightly — preparing to fight.

I knew his strength and speed. So I took a half-step back and touched my sword-hilt.

‘Speak,’ he commanded.

‘Lydia is married to Anaxsikles the smith, and they have gone to Croton to live.’ I frowned. ‘I helped Anarchos to arrange it. You must just have missed them. I provided the ship and the money. Polymarchos, I never intended that such evil befall her. But I accept that it was through my actions that she came to grief.’ I shrugged. ‘I have nothing more to say,’ I managed, sounding very young in my own ears. It is hard to talk to a man with his head turned away.

‘Nikedemos was a fool to turn her out of his house,’ Polymarchos said. ‘She was a fool to be so hurt by you, and you were a fool to play with a girl so young.’ His eyes met mine. ‘There are many fools in the world and I have been one of them. Are you sorry?’

Anger — anger born of resentment, anger at my own foolishness — bubbled up. I suppose my eyes clouded, and I’m sure my hands clenched, because I can still remember unclenching them. ‘I’m more than sorry. I. . lost something of what I thought I was.’

He rubbed his beard. ‘Well — I never had you figured for a scheming betrayer, for all you’re a subtle swordsman.’ He glanced at his athlete. The young man was all but begging him. ‘This pup will be much in your debt if you’ll run us across to the coast of Elis.’ He glanced at me from under his heavy brows.

‘I’ve promised to take one of my men to the port for Sparta.’ I pointed to Brasidas. He came over from his fire. He was candidly admiring the young athlete.

‘Brasidas, this is Polymarchos, a hoplomachos teacher, a pankrationist, a wrestler — a fine coach. Polymarchos, this is Brasidas — sometime captain of my marines. A Lacedaemonian.’

Brasidas nodded graciously. Polymarchos matched his nod almost exactly. Then he turned to me. ‘No matter how fast your ship — I’d have to ask you to run to Elis first, or even into the delta of Alpheos. The games are only a week away.’

I looked at Brasidas, and he smiled. He met my eyes and nodded.

‘We’ll take you,’ I said.

Brasidas caught my arm — an unaccustomed gesture from the Spartan. ‘I would see the Olympics,’ he said. Quite a speech, from him.

Ten minutes’ discussion on the beaches of Melita and it turned out that there wasn’t a man in my crew who didn’t want to see the Olympics.

Oh, what a pleasure it is to be rich enough and powerful enough to take a warship to sea with no better purpose than to go to the greatest games given in all the lands of the Hellenes! Mind you, I wasn’t completely a fool. I loaded seventy great Melitan amphora of the best Chian wine I could buy. I’d never been to the Olympics, but there were men in Plataea who had — old Epiktetus, for one — and they all complained about the shameful bad wine and the crowds.

I remember that trip — less than three thousand stades, with a fair wind — as one of the more pleasant of my life. We filled our bilges with wine amphorae and then tucked up the nooks and crannies with water and salt pork and some bread, and we did what only Phoenicians usually did — we sailed the blue ocean, a straight line from Sicily to Elis. It is hard to reckon distances on the pathless surface of the sea, but my estimate was (and is) that it is almost three thousand stades from Melita to Olympia. And never a rock or an islet to get fresh water or rest your crew after you depart Sicily. We built a small floor of bricks in the bow and laid sand over it for a brazier, but you cannot cook food for two hundred men on a trireme and you can’t even carry enough food for a week.

Still, our trip into the Western Ocean had taught us a dozen tricks for surviving in open ocean. One was that we knew we could go two days without food.

At any rate, Sekla and Megakles and I chose a course after some argument, and we put some scratches in the helmsman’s rail to indicate where the sun should be at dawn, at noon and at sunset. After that, all we had was the straightness of the wake and the position of the stars, because there was no beach to rest at night after the first. The first night we touched at Sicily — we landed on the so-called Carthaginian shore south of Syracusa. Polymarchos took his young man out for a run, and a dozen of us joined him — Brasidas, of course, and me, and Alexandros and young Giannis. We ran under Aetna’s crown, and smoke trailed away from the deeps within her. I have no idea how far we ran, but the young athlete effortlessly outpaced us all, even Brasidas. He was beautiful as he ran, and yet somewhat hangdog about it.

‘Why’s he so surly?’ I asked Polymarchos.

The old fighter shrugged. ‘We’re farther from the Temple of Olympian Zeus than we were fifty days ago when we started,’ he said. ‘He’s late. He may well be banned.’

It was the longest voyage I’d attempted on the Inner Sea — the longest made intentionally, with no storm to carry me where Poseidon willed. I sacrificed six sheep on the beach at Sicily — not far from where I’d once sat in the marketplace with Demetrios and Herakles, selling hides — and stuffed my oarsmen with mutton, good bread, olives and good red wine.

And with the dawn, we were off. Our course was almost due east, into the rising sun, and we had the perfect wind. By noon, Aetna was almost gone behind us, and by dark, we were out on the great deep sea without land anywhere. The newer oarsmen were plainly terrified, and we served out wine and stale bread and dates.

The old hands — the oarsmen who’d been out beyond the pillars — laughed at their timorousness.

‘You ain’t seen nothing, young squid,’ one old salt pronounced. ‘A calm night like this on the great green? It’s like being home in your bed.’

Polymarchos, that master of every weapon, looked green himself. He sat on the helmsman’s bench — where Briseis had sat just a few days before — and groaned. ‘I heard you say you were going into the open ocean,’ he admitted. ‘But I didn’t think it through. Do you. . know. . where we are?’

I laughed. ‘Yes,’ I said. I pointed overhead. ‘See the stars? Do you know they move?’

He nodded, eager to have his thoughts taken off the dark and moving waters.

I pointed at the Pole Star. ‘You know that the heavens have a linchpin, like the wheel of a chariot?’ I asked.

After watching for a while, he agreed this might be true, and I thought how odd it was that city men had so little idea of how the world worked. Perhaps a man has to live outdoors in all weathers to properly accept the role of the gods. And the way the world is made.

At any rate, after an hour or so, he accepted that I had a star that didn’t move.

So I showed him a little of the knowledge I’d learned in the hardest school, as a slave on Dagon’s ship, listening to Phoenician navigators talk about how to watch the stars. I showed him how to use a spear shaft, and how to use a cross-staff.

Finally, he laughed nervously — he, who could put me down in three sword-cuts.

‘I don’t know any more than I did when I started,’ he admitted. ‘But now I believe that you know.’

‘Isn’t that what you start with, when you teach an athlete?’ I asked.

He frowned. ‘Usually, that takes a year,’ he said. ‘It is a year before most young men really admit, inside their fool heads, that I can beat them — that they need to know what I have to teach.’

We both laughed. Then he put a hand on my knee. ‘Listen — you are a good man. Why did you do such a foolish thing? To Lydia? And then you name your ship after her? What does that mean?’

I busied myself with the helm for a moment. ‘It means that I refuse to let myself forget it,’ I said. ‘And I told myself a lot of lies about Lydia. I wanted two things. I wanted to sail to Alba, and I wanted the girl. But I can see now that she was the embodiment of something else that I wanted — a life as a craftsman.’

Polymarchos grinned, teeth white and shining in the darkness. ‘I never thought you was really a bronzesmith. Nah — that’s wrong. I knew you was. I just thought it was a hobby. You have aristocrat written all over you — even the way your muscles are formed. You’ve had gymnasiums all your life.’

Now it was my turn to laugh. ‘Polymarchos, I was a slave from age fifteen to age twenty, and again just before you met me.’

He nodded. ‘Sure. Many men spend time as slaves. Some it stamps indelibly, like a leatherworker’s tool, and some it merely teaches a little humility. Gelon could use a few months as someone’s slave.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘You left Syracusa.’

He nodded. ‘Gelon is a brilliant tyrant, and he will make Syracusa great. But he took my citizenship. Fuck him. I spent half my life earning my way out of the slavery a bunch of pirates put me in, so that one rich bastard could take it again.’ He glared at the dark water and the stars. ‘Now I’ll take this young Italiote to Olympia, and we’ll win. And then Gelon will know what he has earned for himself by losing me. I could have won this for Syracusa.’

The next day, we had another day of pure, sweet sailing — the wind almost dead astern, the mainsail set and drawing well, the bow skimming along the waves. I found it hard to measure our speed — always a problem in blue-water sailing. It is difficult to work the geometrical figures for speed and distance when you don’t know how far you are travelling or how fast you are going.

Leukas came aft for his spot at the helm. As soon as he had the oars, I took charcoal and began to draw on the deck, measuring the cord from Augusta Bay to Olympia by guessing the distance from Melita to Sybaris, based on a dozen journeys, and then making the same guess for the distance from Sybaris to Olympia. If, as I suspected, the two legs formed a right angle, then according to Pythagoras. .

Well, the figure I solved for was two and a half thousand stades. I figured it for an hour, and while I figured, I taught Leukas, who was coming along in his Greek letters, and Megakles, who could not read at all and wasn’t interested. Leukas had never multiplied anything, but Sekla had, and he joined in, and then we were using the cross-staff to measure the sun’s angle. It passed the time, and led the oarsmen to believe that we knew what we were doing.

We tossed wood chips over the side and tried to imagine how fast we were going based on how fast they fell astern. Our young athlete tried racing the wood chips down the length of the hull.

Astylos ran all day — even in the full heat of the sun. A trihemiola — a trireme with a flat deck and standing mast — has far more deck space than a trireme, but it is still only about one hundred and ten feet long. A stadion is six hundred feet long, so he had to run the length of the deck, turning constantly — and avoiding sailors and off-duty oarsmen.

At any rate — Astylos’s performance against the wood chips gave me the notion that we were making about thirty stades an hour, which put us at over seven hundred stades a day, sunrise to sunrise.

Well — Poseidon’s realm is immense. I knew that before I started figuring.

But from that day on, I began to see sailing and rowing as part of something greater, and this had many effects. First, because I taught Sekla and Leukas whatever I knew. Leukas was a far better natural sailor than I was — his guesses of our speed over water were far better than mine, and his notions of currents and his feel for the weather were better, but he was not very good at explaining things. However, he tried. Sekla knew the southern coast of the Inner Sea, and we began to discuss the possibility of exploring it. Greeks tend to know Greek waters. We’re limited to what the Phoenicians allow us. Or we were then.

Not any more. Heh.

The ability to cross the blue deep without touching — I began to think about that tactically. We had often used a small round ship — the sort of ship that could be handled by four to six men — as a supply ship, and I determined to get my hands on one.

And I began to think about what war with Persia would mean. The last time that Greeks had tried to face Persia at sea, the Persians had outspent the Greeks, created a fleet with almost six hundred hulls — and purchased the treason of the Samnians. They won the battle of Lade hands down.

And now all those Ionian Greek cities were in their hands. In effect, that gave them a thousand good ships. My friends — my Athenian friends, who were, I hoped, just over the horizon, or headed for Athens, because I hadn’t seen them in two weeks — my Athenian friends had told me that in my absence, Themistocles had seized the products of the Athenian silver mines and built a one-hundred-ship fleet for Athens with public money. A hundred ships was an incredible number for a Greek city. Rumour was that Aegina had another eighty.

Corinth might have another eighty.

Sparta would have. . none.

Even if the three mightiest sea powers among the remaining Greek cities united — they would have two hundred and fifty ships.

I looked out at the endless waves, and shuddered. In the whole of my life, Athens, Corinth and Aegina had never allied for any reason whatsoever.

The second sunset, and I saw seabirds. I was pleased, and said so to Leukas, who nodded.

Nonetheless, I was on deck all night. The night is a time when a man can think too much, and I had eight hours of darkness to smell the wind and think about Briseis. I could smell her hair on the wind, and I could feel her kiss on my lips, and I could wonder why I hadn’t gone to her at night on the beach. I could think a hundred conflicting thoughts.

I could remember that she had said that some day we would live as man and wife.

I could take my Phoenician cross-staff and measure the heights of stars and their movement, and I could watch my wake and the sea.

I remember — that night, or the one following — I recalled a moment of wry annoyance when I realised that I had sworn to Apollo to learn the kithara or the lyre, and I hadn’t done much with it. I didn’t even have a lyre on which to practise. The gut strings are no friends to the sea — or rather, the sea air is no friends to wood and gut.

I thought about Polymarchos, and I thought far too much about the young slave I’d killed with my first cut on the beach of Africa. He hadn’t deserved to die. He had mostly been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He was the same age as my son by Briseis. I had seen the boy, carried by a nurse, in Thrace, when I killed the man I had assumed to be his father.

I had a son.

The bow ploughed the waves, and I thought about what Heraklitus the philosopher said about dipping our toes in the river. And we rushed on.

The next day was very long. We were already low on water, and all the salted pork was gone, most of the dates, all the bread.

My veterans had done all this before.

The new men, the former slaves — they were plainly terrified. I began to worry that they would mutiny again — not because they had any real chance of success, but because such behaviours can become a habit.

But an hour before dawn, I could smell land. I had the most exact scent of a charcoal fire, and the very first grey light of pre-dawn showed me the coast. I ran along it for an hour as the sun rose, and I became increasingly sure that it was Zacynthus. I’d run down that coast only three weeks before. I was almost sure, and the oarsmen were openly begging us to land, when I saw the temple of Poseidon at Hyrmine gleaming on the opposite headland. Brasidas confirmed it, and the newer oarsmen looked as if they’d been granted a new lease on life.

Sekla slapped my back. ‘A brilliant piece of navigation.’ He grinned.

I shrugged. ‘Vasileos would have put the bow into the mouth of the Alpheos,’ I said.

Megakles just smiled, as Laconic in his fisherman’s way as Brasidas. But his smile was good praise. I was pleased. And before the men were too hungry, we landed on an open beach, bought sheep, sacrificed Melitan wine to Poseidon and a good cup too, and sacrificed the animals. We had a feast on the beach, and the new oarsmen kissed the sand, and the older oarsmen teased them.

But the shepherds were men of Elis, and they confirmed that the games started in four days.

We were still full of mutton while we pulled around the point and into the very narrow estuary of the Alpheos. There were a dozen merchantmen and almost forty triremes pulled up on the narrow pebble beach. Olympia nestles amidst mighty mountains, and the mountains seem to reach right down to the sea, as does Kitharon at home, and the beaches are steep and narrow and difficult.

Despite which, my heart fairly leaped with joy to see Cimon’s Ajax and Paramanos’ Black Raven and Harpagos’s Storm Cutter and all the other ships we’d lost in the storm.

I waited for the men of Elis to choose me a landing place, and I enjoyed seeing the alterations they’d made to the beach. The hand of man can alter almost anything. That year was the seventy-fifth Olympiad, and the people of Elis had had three hundred years to make the landing area as comfortable as possible. Hellenes made the pilgrimage from Ionia and from Italia and Magna Greca and Sicily and as far as Massalia in the west and Ephesus and Sardis in the east, from Thrace and from Chacedon and from everywhere in Boeotia and Attica and the Peloponnesus. And for a moment, as I looked over the shipping and the tents and booths, I thought of my son — my son, running his stades and throwing his javelins in far-off Sardis.

And then my grand thoughts were ruined by the pair of Elisian factors demanding that I pay their outrageous landing fees. There may be an Olympic truce on war and strife, but there is none on greed, as I can attest. And it is fifty stades up-country into the mountains to Olympia, and I had thought to rent a horse, but I had to count my drachma — the prices were exorbitant, and I was feeding two hundred men.

My mother was sometimes a harridan, a harpy, an old drunkard. But she had the soul of an aristocrat, and she did teach me one valuable aristocratic lesson — there is a time to pinch pennies, and a time to let the gold flow through your fingers. A man is lucky if he attends the Olympics once in his life. I don’t mean Spartans, or men of Argos — with a little effort, they can make the trip every year. But for a Boeotian, it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity — at any rate, I was on the beach, and I wasn’t going to be dissuaded.

On the other hand — I had two hundred men trained to a high pitch, and I saw no reason not to use that training, so we stripped the ship, made packs, and marched up-country carrying our own shelter and all of our amphorae of wine. I spent my Illyrian loot freely, but we camped rather than renting flea-ridden lodgings. When we arrived on the plain of Olympia below the temple complex, a pair of priests emerged from the town and led us to a site where we could camp. I asked after Cimon and the priest smiled — he was a pleasant fellow — and nodded.

‘Lord Cimon is present. The Athenians are on the other side of the treasuries. And your fellow Boeotians are just there, by the stream.’ He pointed at the nearly dry course of the river.

‘Thebans?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘Yes.’

I didn’t quite spit. ‘Respected sir, I am a man of Plataea, and I would walk a dozen stades to avoid a man of Thebes.’

He laughed. ‘It is a wonder that the Greeks have any common ground at all,’ he said. ‘Come — any man who brings two hundred followers to the games gets my attention. Are you the man who was at Marathon?’

I nodded.

He smiled. ‘I thought so. I’ll send a slave to tell Lord Cimon you are here.’

We’d come to the edge of the valley.

I had seldom seen so many people gathered in one place in all my life. I saw Cyrenes and Italiotes and Athenians and Messenians and Corinthians — and Spartans. More Spartans than you could shake a spear at. And with them, their women — tall, mostly blond, and all with the muscled arms and legs that mark Spartan women everywhere you meet them.

Women were not allowed to compete at Olympia during the main festival. They had their own festival later in the season, but in the Olympic year, this was the men’s event. Nowadays, there is talk of forbidding women from watching, but in those days, women came right into the sanctuaries and cheered — not just maidens and whores, either, but married women. I think this is because in Sparta, men and women were more used to each other’s nudity in games, and girls thought it no great matter to see a naked man. Athens is altogether more prudish. The men of Elis are of old allies of the Spartans and members of the Peloponnesian League, and they have many of their ways. At any rate, in that year, there were almost as many women as men in the tents, under shelters, or in the town.

Every house in the town had a porch built for ten or twelve beds. And sometimes rooms inside as well, and they would charge three or four drachma a day — for two wooden boards and some old straw, they charged a day’s pay for an Athenian hoplite or an elite rower. And the more enterprising men of Elis and the surrounding region would put up big tents and offer space in them at similar rates, or they would build temporary buildings, with each peg and each beam marked with a number so that they could be taken down and rebuilt, like the wooden theatre of Dionysus in Athens. There was one great inn where a room cost twenty drachmas a night and only great men like Aristides were welcome.

All of my recent ex-slaves were earning their keep by hauling the great amphora of Chian wine, and when we had our campsite, my two hundred ran up our mainsail and two boat sails and four more military tents, and the smallest tent was quickly fitted with stumps and larger stones for men to sit on, and we began serving wine before we had our own quarters up, with a pair of marines on guard — not in armour, as that would have been impious — and with Alexandros and Giannis, who had a flair for such things, managing the pouring.

I oversaw the tents myself — and had to pay two hard silver coins for wood to make pegs, as we’d left all of ours on the ship, like fools. It was hot work, despite the altitude, and I was pleased to see that Polymarchos and his young athlete pitched in, working themselves hard, pounding pegs, and holding poles until the work was done.

I took the trainer by the shoulder. ‘Come and have a cup of good wine with me,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘Later, Arimnestos of Plataea. For now I must take this young man to the temple of Zeus, so that he is officially entered for his races and events, or he will burst.’ He shrugged. ‘If they ask us about the storm — would you testify to the judges?’

I nodded.

I took the young man’s hand. ‘You have done very well with us,’ I said. ‘We measure a man by work, and not by good looks.’ In truth, he was a beautiful young man, and not all my oarsmen — or marines — were immune to his looks. I grinned at him. ‘You’ve hauled ropes, raised tents — you have been a pleasure to have aboard. So please consider camping with us, and you’ll have two hundred fans to cheer you when you run.’

Polymarchos nodded. ‘That’s no small offer — men from Italy never have anyone to cheer them.’

The young man bowed. ‘I am honoured.’

And they were off to the temple. I held it in his favour that he helped us with the camp before he went to face the wrath of the judges.

I went with Brasidas to get a cup of wine, and we were shocked to find that our canvas taverna had a line threading out of the door and all the way to the edge of the camp, with men pushing and shoving.

For complex reasons — reasons that this story will touch on, if you stay — it was one of the most crowded Olympiads in anyone’s memory, and wine was already in short supply, three days before the first event was due to be run, and a day before the priests would burn the preliminary offerings. We had sixty big-bellied amphorae, and another six of oil, and we were charging what I considered a fair price that would gain us a large profit, and here were a thousand men, give or take, waiting in line for a cup of wine, with men joining the line so fast that in the time I take to tell this, another fifteen had joined the line behind Brasidas.

Several places behind me was a handsome young boy with dark skin and slightly slanted eyes. Those eyes were not common on the Inner Sea, and I knew him immediately. I smiled. ‘Ganymede come to life,’ I called out. Other men turned and looked, and the boy flushed. He was Cimon’s hypaspist — a freeman, now, but originally purchased as a slave somewhere in the Chersonnese.

He bowed. ‘Lord Arimnestos,’ he said.

I shrugged. ‘You are not a pais any more, and you needn’t call any man lord,’ I said. ‘How is your master? Is all well?’

‘He will be the better for knowing that you rode the storm and lived,’ he said. ‘I should go and tell him, but he was most insistent on a cup of wine. There is none to be had except a very bad local wine.’ He looked almost tragically concerned, as young men are when they have been sent on errands.

I laughed. ‘Please tell Cimon that I will make sure he has wine, if only he’ll come and drink with me. Go — I’ll wait.’

The boy bowed and ran off.

I turned to Brasidas. ‘You don’t think power has gone to Alexandros’ head and he’ll refuse us more than one cup?’

Brasidas smiled. But his smile was the only answer I got.

We waited as long as it takes a man to deliver the whole of his accusation in a law court — the sun sank appreciably behind the shoulder of the mountain — before we made it to the front of the line.

One of Ka’s archers — the wounded man, Ata — was sitting cross-legged at a low table. He nodded without looking at us. ‘A drachma a cup — lordy. It’s the trierarch!’ He shot to his feet as he looked up and realised he was addressing me.

Brasidas smiled.

I leaned over the low table. ‘We’re charging a drachma a cup?’

Alexandros grinned. ‘Yes, sir!’ His smile faltered. ‘We’re making a fortune, sir.’

I shook my head. ‘We’re not so greedy, gentlemen. Cut the price in half. Save six amphorae for our own use.’

Men behind me in the line cheered.

‘Or double the price, and help fund the war against the Medes,’ said a voice by my right ear, and there was Cimon. ‘I’m a rich man and a eupatrid, and despite that, I considered leaving the temple precincts to run down the coast and buy any wine I could. Even if such behaviour is undignified.’ He smiled at my pais, Hector. ‘Handsome boy. Slave? I remember seeing him on the beach with you.’

I shook my head. ‘Free. The son of a friend. A citizen of Syracusa.’

Cimon inclined his head. ‘Forgive my use of the term pais, young man.’

My hypaspist, Hector, had been silent since the death of his father, and life on board ship — where he was mostly seasick and miserable — had left him literally unable to speak, but Olympus was recalling the boy to life and he flushed and bowed. ‘My lord,’ he said.

I put a cup of wine in Cimon’s hand — he’d jumped the line with the natural greed of a great lord — and handed another to Brasidas and another to Cimon’s hypaspist and yet another to my own, serving them all myself, like a good host. My mother had forced a few good manners on me.

‘If Alexandros was selling wine at a drachma a cup, he has discovered a way of life more remunerative than piracy,’ I admitted as we walked back into the magnificent red-gold light of the setting sun.

Cimon laughed — very much his father’s, Miltiades’, laugh. ‘As honest pirates, we know that there is no better life,’ he said. ‘My visit to the Olympic games is being paid for by your Illyrian kinglet.’

‘Is Paramanos here? Moire?’ I looked at the line. Paramanos was a Cyrene — now an Athenian citizen — and Moire was my own captain and probably needed to be made a citizen of Plataea.

Cimon nodded. ‘They’re camped with me. The prices are exorbitant! And your friend Harpagos has a young cousin competing in pankration. And Aeschylus’s young sprig. .’

I shook my head. We had had young Aristides with us in our brief foray into Illyria, and there wasn’t a man among us who hadn’t found him tiresome. But it was like belonging to a city or being part of a village — I felt at home, even on the plain beneath the shadow of mighty Olympus.

Giannis, my young friend from Massalia, was transported. In addition to helping Alexandros make a fortune, he was seeing all the great men of Greece, and he looked as if he was atop Mount Olympus, with the gods, not at the base, drinking wine.

Cimon drank his wine. I could tell he wanted to say something and all this small talk was merely his way — the Greek way — of working around to the main topic. Brasidas shot me a look, which I interpreted as his willingness to walk off and leave us to ourselves, but I just shrugged at him.

‘What are your plans from here?’ Cimon asked with that elaborate casualness that marks a man who has a favour to ask.

‘I’m for Plataea,’ I said. ‘But whether I go via Corinth or by way of Athens is dependent on many things.’

He nodded and looked away. His eyes followed a pair of eagles soaring high above us, well up the shoulder of the mountain. There is no better omen.

‘Those eagles say that you should ask your question,’ I said, in as light a voice as I could manage.

He bit his lip. ‘Themistocles is here,’ he said.

I nodded, the way men nod when they have no idea what other men are on about. ‘I remember him well,’ I said.

‘You have been gone a long time. Themistocles has summoned — has requested — that all the great men of Greece attend these games — to talk about the Great King.’

I laughed. ‘And I’m not invited? You could have told me straight out — I’ve outgrown the need to be the great man, Cimon. Your father always did it better than I ever will.’

But his face didn’t change. ‘No — I’m sure Themistocles will want you.’ His eyes were evasive. ‘Arimnestos — you are not an Athenian. And yet you are one of us — you led the way at Marathon.’

‘Spit it out!’ I said.

‘Themistocles is working on a sentence of exile for Aristides,’ he said. ‘Aristides was ever your friend.’

I made the gesture that Boeotian peasants — and bronzesmiths — use to avert witchcraft. ‘Aristides was ever my friend — but not yours or your father’s by any means.’ I tried to make my tone light. ‘Cimon — we’re at the Olympics. Could we suspend Athenian politics a while?’

Cimon turned and met my eyes. ‘I held my peace all the way up the Adriatic and on a dozen beaches,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t expected to find myself in the same camp as Themistocles while he bayed for Aristides’ blood.’

I remember that I shook my head in disgust. Athenians are fine men — brave, noble, inclined to high ethics and beautiful rhetoric. But most of them would sell their mothers into the degradation of slavery in order to achieve political power.

‘Cimon — Aristides hounded your father in the courts. The only thing the two of them did together was to win Marathon. That, and to fight the Alcmaeonidae. Eh?’ I spread my hands.

He didn’t laugh. ‘Aristides is one of us,’ he said. ‘A gentleman. Themistocles is dead set to overturn the democracy and give power to the lowest orders. We will end with nothing — mark my words.’

I bit my lip. Really — viewed from outside, from Plataea — they’d be comic, these Athenian politicians, with their self-centred political greed dressed up as righteous political ethics — they’d be comic, I say, except that little Plataea needs its alliance with Athens, and when Athens catches cold, Plataea coughs.

And they were all my friends — Themistocles a little less than Cimon or Aristides, but he and I shared Marathon. And the defeat of the Alcmaeonidae.

Thinking of those events — six long years ago — put a niggling suspicion in my head. ‘Aristides is the head of your party?’ I asked.

Cimon nodded silently.

‘Is your party the aristocratic party?’ I asked.

Cimon paused. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Does your party include Cleitus? And the Alcmaeonidae?’ I asked.

Cimon shrugged again. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘Listen! Everything has changed!’

I surprised him, because I stepped forward through his protests and gave him a hug. ‘Cimon — I have always seen you as the brother of my youth. I will always be at your side in any adventure — and the same goes for Aristides. My sword and my purse are at your command.’ I grinned, and he grinned back.

‘Just don’t involve me in any of the shit you call politics. And don’t put me in the same sword-space as Cleitus.’ I delivered the sentence like a sword-blow. I meant it.

‘If you understood what’s at stake, you’d stand with us!’ he insisted.

‘Maybe he’d stand with us, instead,’ Themistocles said. He was standing about ten feet away, and he had one of my horn wine cups in his hand. ‘Considering that he’s a friend to the thetis and he’s been a slave. And he’s no friend to the Persians and the Medes.’

Cimon glared. ‘You can’t pretend in a year of your fancy rhetoric that anyone in my family is a friend to the Medes,’ he said.

Themistocles didn’t give a dactyl. ‘You come from a line of heroes back to Ajax,’ he said. ‘Your party serves the Great King and takes his bribes.’

‘You lie,’ Cimon said. ‘And no amount of lying will change the reality — Athens cannot stand alone against the might of the Great King.’

I made a sign to my hypaspist. He understood at once, and slipped away.

‘We can if we have allies,’ Themistocles said.

‘Allies like Aegina and Corinth? Our mortal foes?’ Cimon asked.

‘They are Greeks, like us. Cimon, you have fought the Medes all your adult life. Now you propose to make an “arrangement” with them.’ Themistocles had a superb speaking voice — he sounded like the soul of reason. Cimon, by contrast, sounded arrogant.

‘The Great King lives in Persopolis, half the world away, and he need never trouble me in my bed. You intend to overthrow the entire world so that you can have a fleet big enough to rival the Great King, and in the end, you will make Athens the centre of a maritime empire, where the rowers are the equals of the hoplites, and the hoplites are nothing but marines. A tyranny of the lowest orders, simply to row your fleet.’ He all but spat the words.

Men locked in argument often ignore the world around them. In this case, Cimon was speaking, not just to Themistocles, or me, but to an audience mostly composed of my oarsmen, who were serving as tavern workers.

They began to grumble.

Hector returned with a fine Lesbian amphora charged with wine.

I stepped forward. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘I am the host here, and I declare that both of you need another cup of wine.’

It says something about — well, about men — that I could agree with almost every word Themistocles said, and still find him a greasy politician; I could, as a non-aristocrat, feel insulted by almost every word that Cimon uttered, and still find him the better man. But if life were simple, we wouldn’t spend so much time arguing, would we?

My hypaspist filled their cups, and Themistocles bowed. ‘Arimnestos, you are the prince of hosts. I hope you will agree to come and sit at our council fire while we discuss the Great King’s demands.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Who have you invited from Thebes?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘One of their chief priests, and a dozen of their best men.’ He looked at Cimon. ‘At the Olympic games, one is seldom able to find any members of the thetis class on whom we all depend; but there is always a reliable number of conservative aristocrats.’

‘As it should be,’ Cimon said. ‘The best is for the best men.’

‘Really?’ Themistocles asked. ‘Wouldn’t you like excellence to be for every man? Isn’t that what Cleisthenes wanted?’

‘Cleisthenes sought to allow the best men of the middle sort to be counted with the sons of the gods,’ Cimon said carefully, but he was thinking through his words, and I think that shot from Themistocles went home.

‘Don’t you think that excellence breeds excellence? And that watching the best men in the Greek world compete could only make better men of every man?’ Themistocles said. He said something like that. I’ve lost the elegance of his words, but I agreed.

And I said so.

‘Cimon — you can’t condemn men based on their birth. I ask you — look at our helmsmen. Birth does not make you a good helmsman. Only time and training and years at sea make you capable of commanding between the oars — eh?’ I smiled.

He shook his head. ‘Arimnestos — allegories always go the same way. The leadership of a city is not like the piloting of a ship. But even if it was — are you as good at piloting as Harpagos? Or that Alban of yours with the milk-white skin? They were born to the sea.’

I scratched my beard. ‘You have the better of me there,’ I admitted. ‘But even though I was not — I can make a competent effort at taking my ship across the sea, or so men say.’

‘You are merely an aristocrat pretending to be a bronzesmith,’ Cimon said.

Themistocles frowned with real anger, I think. ‘You bastards say that of every man who defies your narrow ideas of excellence. You just promote him in your minds to being one of you.’

The sun was setting. Cimon’s face was red, but I thought it might just be the setting sun. Still, I didn’t think that the two of them were headed in a useful direction. I waved for their cups to be refilled. The line into my canvas taverna now ran all the way to the temple precinct wall.

‘I had Artapherenes aboard my ship a week ago,’ I said.

That got their attention.

Themistocles glared at me. ‘The Satrap of Phrygia?’ he asked.

I nodded. ‘The same. The storm wrecked his ship, and panicked the oarsmen.’

Cimon grinned. ‘You took the Satrap of Phrygia?’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘No — we’re guest friends.’

Cimon nodded. ‘Of course — I knew that. My father has spoken of it — and he is married to your — ahem — friend. Briseis of Ephesus.’ He coughed.

Themistocles sputtered. ‘Poseidon’s rage! Are you all friends of the Medes? You — the famous warrior, the hero of Marathon?’

I laughed — Themistocles was easy to dislike. Cimon, like a gentleman, immediately appreciated that guest friendship overran any thoughts of ransom. Themistocles couldn’t see beyond the advantage it would have brought to have Artapherenes.

I shrugged. ‘You know I was a slave in Ephesus. Yes? Arta-pherenes. .’ I smiled ‘. . was instrumental in my freedom,’ I said carefully. No lie there — just a carefully nuanced truth. I shrugged. ‘Later, he saved my life. And the life of many people close to me.’

Themistocles shook his head. ‘You have fought the Medes on many fields,’ he said.

I smiled. ‘And I count many of them among my friends, Themistocles. Almost as many as I have friends in Athens. Of the two, I feel the Persians are the more honest.’

‘So despite all your fine words, you will support the aristocrats,’ he said.

I looked at both of them. Talking about politics to Athenians is exactly like managing the helm of a trireme in heavy seas. ‘No,’ I said, right at him. ‘I don’t think that I will. But neither am I interested in a war for the emerging empire of Athens, Themistocles. This much I’ll tell you both. The Great King is determined on war. He is building his fleets and his armies and his targets are Athens and Sparta.’

Cimon shook his head vehemently. ‘No! If we send him tokens of submission — if we offer a small tribute-’

I had to take a step back to get his attention. ‘No, Cimon. Don’t delude yourself. The Great King is coming. It will not be next year — but it will be soon. Two years at the earliest, is what my friends say. Do you know that he’s building a canal through the isthmus of Athos? Do you know that he’s raising a fleet from the Ionian cities? Do you know that he has promised two great satrapies in Europe? And one of those to Mardonias, or that’s what I heard.’ I shook my head. ‘Cimon — you know what it is to decide on a voyage. You know how long it takes to gather your oarsmen, to get enough amphorae to ballast your ship in clay and fresh water, to lay in the sand, to gather salt pork, to find the right braziers and replace the broken oars-’

He held up a hand to indicate that he did, and my rhetorical device could be brought to an end.

‘Think about a fleet of a thousand galleys and a quarter of a million oarsmen and marines. Think of an army of half a million soldiers. How long would it take to gather the supplies and scout the roads? And once you have started — once you have spent the money and told your friends you are going. .’ I paused and took a breath. ‘Do you imagine that he’ll just stop because you offer a tribute?’

Cimon took a breath. ‘And you spoke to him in person?’ he said.

I nodded.

‘And Briseis, of course,’ he said, admitting to himself that I knew what I was saying.

‘She said so, too. She would know.’ I shrugged.

Themistocles looked at me suspiciously. ‘You can’t have convinced the eupatridae in one sentence,’ he said. ‘You are mocking me.’

Cimon was frowning. ‘Themistocles — do you think it is possible for honest men to disagree?’

Themistocles thought for a long time, looking for a trap. ‘Yes,’ he admitted.

‘I’m not pleased by what the Plataean has to say — but I have to believe it. I do not love your. . your democracy, Themistocles. But if Athens must fight for her life. .’ He shrugged. ‘If there is no hope of reconciliation with Persia. .’

‘Your father helped create this war,’ Themistocles said.

Cimon nodded. ‘That’s true. And because I know it to be true, I know it can be mended.’

Themistocles looked at me. ‘What side will you choose, Plataean?’ he asked.

I confess that I laughed. ‘I’ll be on the Plataean side, of course,’ I said.

Themistocles stalked off soon after. Even though I could see that Cimon’s mind was changing, Themistocles was such a domineering bastard that he wanted Cimon’s absolute agreement — his slavish obedience.

In my observation, demagogues are the harshest tyrants. And you’ll see how this comes out, if you stick with me.

I never liked Themistocles. He was too keen on his own power, and he made it a little too obvious to the rest of us that he was smarter than we and felt that we should leave him in peace to decide our futures — for our own good. I really, truly believe that’s what he thought, in his heart.

Now, let me confess something to you, my daughter. He was smarter than almost anyone. He alone saw all the ramifications of building a mighty fleet for Athens, and he remained true to them. Other men made compromises — Themistocles was above such stuff. But in the world of mortals, there are no absolute answers, and so, when Themistocles became the saviour of all Greece, he had already planted the seeds of treason.

Hah! Aeschylus might yet write a play. It has all the great themes, does it not?

It is one of the little tricks of the gods that, as soon as a man takes part in some great moment, discussing the affairs of all Greece or considering ethics or philosophy, in the next moment he either has to deal with an angry child, an intestinal ailment, or a bureaucracy. Or perhaps all three at the same time. Just when you feel your most godlike, someone will come along to remind you that you really live in a Cratinus play, not an Aeschylus.

The evening began well, with Paramanos and Harpagos and Moire and some of my other friends and former associates in piracy joining us for wine. It had only been a few weeks since we had raided Illyria, and we were all rich and full of ourselves — which, I can tell you, makes for a fine symposium. We had couches of straw laid out, and the slaves and my oarsmen built us a fine fire of wood they collected high on the slopes — I remember Leukas complaining about how far the men had to go to get wood. Truly, with twenty thousand people on the plain, wood was hard to find.

And the place stank — have I mentioned that? Humans are not the cleanest of animals. I had Megakles pace off our camp and we dug latrines. Most other people didn’t. If you catch my drift.

At any rate, I was just reclining on my elbow, with Hector pouring me some wine mixed three to one with water, while Harpagos was telling of our heroism at Lades. There must have been fifty men at our fire, and a few women — drawn not so much by my famous name as by the promise of free wine.

Out of the sunset came Polymarchos, like the proverbial ghost at the wedding.

He crouched by my pallet like a slave waiting on his patron. I could tell it annoyed him to be so subservient, and thus I could tell he needed something.

Power has many difficult aspects.

‘Relax,’ I said. ‘What’s the trouble?’

He shook his head. ‘They’re threatening to disqualify my athlete. You know he’s late?’

I nodded. Like any Greek, I knew that athletes had to be present thirty days before their event, to train — very hard. In effect, to prove that they had the right to compete. Young Astylos was only four days early. I shrugged. ‘He was shipwrecked,’ I mentioned.

Polymarchos hung his head. ‘Would you consider. . speaking to the judges?’ he asked.

I misunderstood. ‘I can speak about the storm, surely.’

He met my eye. ‘I suspect they’ve been bribed.’ He looked around. ‘There’re other men here who came late, and there have been many men admitted late over the years.’

Cimon, at my elbow, leaned in. ‘Bribed is such a strong word,’ he said with a smile. ‘You mean that someone has an interest — perhaps a political interest — in strict enforcement.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘What events are we discussing?’

Polymarchos looked annoyed to be interrupted, but he shrugged it off. ‘Stadion and diaulos,’ he said.

Cimon nodded. ‘Athenians in both events,’ he said.

Let me tell you how the world works.

In that one line, Cimon was saying that he — he, one of the most powerful men in Athens — had an interest in the two running events. It was all in the twist of his mouth, the light of his eye. But it was there.

As was — by implication — the question. Is this important to my friend Arimnestos?

I had become one of them. I understood the nuance of power. I was being asked — politely, one aristocratic pirate to another — if I was prepared to expend my prestige and patronage on Polymarchos and his runner.

No, pause and think. You must understand this, or you will never understand what happened in the years of the Long War, as we fought the Medes. Hellenes compete about everything. Small men will race turtles, and great, rich men and women race chariots, and those of us in between will compete with whatever comes to hand. So here was Cimon — a friend of my youth, a man I trusted absolutely — stating that he was not going to help me to help Polymarchos — unless I made it worth his while. And nothing bald had been said.

Greeks are not natural allies. That’s all I’m trying to say. Business and political competitors; always looking for advantage. In business, in politics, on the seas or in the stadium.

I met his eye. ‘I’d like to see this young man entered,’ I said.

Cimon smiled. He didn’t say anything as wild as ‘what would that be worth to you?’ but I was suddenly reminded of Anarchos. There were similarities.

He rolled to his feet with the agility of a trained man. ‘Let’s go and see the judges, then,’ he said. ‘I came through the storm, too. Perhaps they’ll want my testimony.’ He flashed me a toothy smile, and I knew I owed him a favour. He was going to help me put ‘my’ runner in the race, despite the fact that Athens had a competitor in that race.

But I owed Polymarchos. It is hard to say exactly why, or how. Part of my general debt to the gods for my mistreatment of Lydia, I think.

I had a name, then, but not nearly the name I have now. The same was true of Cimon. Yet, despite the fact that we were not yet truly famous men, it took us almost an hour to cross the camp to the temple. Night was falling — fires were lit across the plain. The smell of burning wood and the smell of dung — human and animal — and the smell of cooking onions and meat and the sweat of twenty thousand mostly unwashed and unoiled humans rose to the gods. Small clay oil lamps lit the camp, and sparkled in the falling twilight like a thousand tiny stars. It was a glorious night, except for the smell.

Polymarchos was impatient — he clearly thought that the judges would pack it in for the night. And he might have been right, except that I sent Hector running across the camp as my herald. So we walked, and men accosted us and offered us wine and praise, and asked us pointless questions so that we would speak to them, or asked us to make judgements on things about which we knew almost nothing. Such is the life of fame.

Eventually we made it to the temple, with Polymarchos all but bouncing up and down as we approached the broad steps. But the judges were still seated at their five tables, all lit by handsome bronze and silver lamps, and as we approached, most of the judges rose and bowed.

We were interrupting something official, that much I could tell. There was a man — a very handsome older man with the long, oiled hair of a Spartan aristocrat, and a woman — I assumed his wife, not beautiful, yet somehow magnificent, with arm muscles like an oarsman’s and hair, thick and black as the falling night, piled like a tower on her head. She had the oddest eyes — one very slightly higher than the other, and both very slightly slanted, as you see in some people from the Sakje and the Aethiops.

I am not doing either one of them justice. He was dressed in nothing but a simple scarlet cloak pinned with gold, and she wore a fortune in jewellery — but for both of them their principal adornment was their sheer fitness. They looked like gods.

They looked angry. Deeply angry.

So did the judges. Who also, let me add, looked afraid.

Cimon nodded pleasantly to the Spartan couple, and the man — he was over fifty, and he had the kind of dignity that I’ve only seen a dozen times in my life — returned a small, but very genuine nod. He said, ‘Under any other circumstance I would be delighted to speak to you, Cimon.’ Of course, he didn’t do anything but nod, but that’s what he meant.

There were two more Spartiates — Spartan aristocrats — standing behind them, a middle-aged man in top shape and a much older man who had the beard of a philosopher and the body of an athlete. When the Spartan woman turned away from the judges with a look that might have turned almost anyone to stone, the other two followed her mutely. They wore their resentment more openly.

Cimon put a hand on my arm and we stopped. Cimon, who bowed to no man, inclined his head — as he might have to the gods — and the man and woman both stopped on the steps above us and returned the compliment. I’d like to think I didn’t stop and gape, but honestly, they were. . it is hard to describe. They were like Briseis. Greater than mere mortals.

Then they swept by us. Cimon didn’t try to speak to them — it was quite clear that they had failed to gain their objective with the judges, whatever it was, and that this probably imperilled us, as well.

I didn’t know precisely who they were, but I had a good idea I was watching one of the two kings of Sparta — Leonidas, the younger of the two, and his scandalous wife Gorgo. He was the right age, and her mismatched eyes were a guarantee. Men whispered that if she hadn’t been the daughter of a king, Gorgo would have been exposed — killed — as a baby, because her face was deformed. Men whispered that she was a witch. A sexual deviant. A lust-mad, power-mad harridan.

Well, men whisper all sorts of crap when they are bored, and most of it is about women. Men also whispered that Leonidas was a usurper who had taken his throne illegally. No one ever expected him to be king — it is a long and particularly Spartan story, but he was not in line for the throne, and so he was sent to the Agoge, the particularly brutal school for aristocratic boys that characterises the Spartans. Where, let me add, young Leonidas excelled. And later, he was an effective warrior with an immense reputation throughout Greece. The day my father’s poor Plataeans held the Spartans for a few moments on the plain by Oinoe, Leonidas would have been in the front rank. For all I know, he and my father crossed spears.

I’ll digress, because although no one not born in Lacedaemon can pretend to truly understand the bloody Spartans, it is worth having a sense of their politics and their lives before I go on with my story. In my father’s time — when Aegina, the island off Attica, was a close ally of Sparta, Sparta and her ally Aegina, backed by the Peloponnesian League, had mostly dictated Athenian politics. The manner in which they did this was complicated. I’ve spoken of it elsewhere, but suffice it to be said that only twenty years before I was admiring Gorgo’s cleavage, which was superb, Athens had been, to all intents and purposes, a tributary ally of Sparta’s.

Now, Sparta always had two kings. All of Spartan politics is a matter of balance, and they claim that their great lawmaker, Lycurgus, ensured balance in every form of government. Two kings to watch each other; a council of old men called ephors to watch the kings; an assembly of free men to watch the ephors, and whole nations of slaves — the helots — to do all the work. Sparta rules an area that had once been three separate states, and had enslaved two whole Greek populations. To some Greeks, this was hubris on a major scale.

To others, it was an ideal form of government.

At any rate — please pay attention, this is essential — the two kings of my boyhood weren’t just rivals, but deadly enemies — Cleomenes, who was the father of Gorgo, and Demaratus, who will come into this story again and again. And the focus of their rivalry was about their relations with Athens and with Aegina. Well, that and everything else. I leave the everything else aside for the moment.

Just before the time of Marathon, Persia sent ambassadors throughout Greece, requesting that every state in Greece offer earth and water — tokens of submission to the Great King. In fact, this was just after the time of my wedding. Aegina voted to send such tokens. Athens and Sparta had intense internal political disagreements about what to do. In Sparta — so men say — King Cleomenes, whose forceful and militaristic policies had animated Sparta for twenty-five years — had the Persian ambassadors thrown in a well, and told them they could get earth and water from it if they could climb out. By doing so, of course, he committed a gross impiety — the murder of an ambassador is an offence to the gods — but he also guaranteed that Sparta could do nothing but fight.

Still with me?

In Athens, the Persian ambassadors behaved with astounding arrogance. It was the talk of my wedding. I’ll add that it is very un-Persian, and I suspect that someone in Susa or Sardis sent the wrong men. At any rate, there was a rape — and Persians were killed. I have heard a dozen self-justifications from men who were present. The murder of ambassadors is always a crime against the gods, no matter how you tell the story.

I’ve heard Miltiades suggest, in his cups, that it was done for the same reason that the Spartans did it — to make it impossible for Athens to do anything but fight.

Be that as it may be — it was the winter before the first coming of Datis and the Medes, and the men of Aegina were threatening to allow the Persians to use their harbours to conquer Athens. Cleomenes of Sparta forbade them to do so, and took hostages from the leading men of Aegina. Demaratus, his fellow king, felt that he had acted with hubris, and above the law.

Just to be a barracks lawyer, he was right, and any Spartan worth his salt will admit it. Cleomenes had a clear vision — right or wrong — of how Greece should be, and he was determined to resist Persia, and once set on that course, he was like a runaway chariot.

When the dust settled, Demaratus — the rightful King of Sparta — had been framed in a case that claimed he was illegitimate and not the King of Sparta. It was all a put-up job — a scandal at the time — but he was exiled. He ran to Persia, where he sat at the right hand of the throne of the Great King. More than a few Spartans left with him. There was an enormous split.

His younger brother was Leonidas. Leonidas was installed overnight, and after immense political manoeuvring, married off to a woman about a third his age — Gorgo, the wry-faced daughter of overbearing, hubris-filled Cleomenes.

Follow that? It’s like a particularly juicy play about the gods at their worst. That’s everyday life in Sparta. Murder, scandal, back-stabbing, all with lots of pious sentiment and high moral tone and some ruthless athletics.

I’m not a fan. Mostly, their kings don’t die in bed — or on the battlefield. They die in exile.

Like Athenian aristocrats, come to think of it.

Greeks. Power-mad fools.

The Spartans brushed past us and went off into the firelit darkness, and I was left pondering. . well, everything I just said.

Hector appeared. He bowed, and Cimon paused, so I paused too.

Cimon smiled at the boy. He was good — like his father, he was never too great to charm someone rather than merely command them. ‘Speak, boy. What was all that about?’

Hector looked at me for approval. It was the oddest thing — we were on the steps of the great temple of Zeus, with all the judges of the games standing just above us in the lamp-lit interior of the great stone building, looking like supernatural judges themselves. Cimon decided to keep them waiting.

Cimon was far more an aristocrat than I.

I nodded to Hector.

‘The King of Sparta,’ Hector said carefully. He paused. ‘Actually, the king’s friend. But the king-’

‘One of the kings,’ Cimon said. ‘Sparta is blessed with two.’

Hector nodded and bobbed his head. ‘Yes, sir. One of the kings, and his wife, wanted to enter their friend’s chariot. Late. Apparently they did not want to train their horses here, but chose to exercise them in Lacedaemon. To be truthful, sirs, I had trouble following the argument.’ He shrugged, as boys will, even when being polite. ‘The king claimed he had permission, and the judges refused him, and his friend.’

‘Because he is late?’ Cimon asked.

Hector bowed his head. ‘That’s what I understood.’

Cimon frowned. ‘Arimnestos, why do these things happen to you? Now this is a matter of state. Not just about a few men pushing their athletes. You understand?’

I understood. Turning Polymarchos and his athlete down — that might be a small matter. Cimon and I had been prepared to put pressure on the judges. That made it a larger matter, but still small enough.

The King of Sparta?

That was a very big matter.

And bureaucrats hate to back down.

We climbed the rest of the steps. Young Astylos stood, disconsolate, by the end table. There were twelve judges, and they stood at their tables — some had scrolls, two had tablets of wood, and the archon stood alone.

A herald recognised Cimon. He’d clearly already spoken to Hector, so he raised his rod and announced us formally.

The judge-archon nodded. ‘What matter brings you to the tribunal of Elis?’ he snapped.

Polymarchos bowed. ‘Sir, these are my witnesses to the power of the storm that shipwrecked us on Sicily. This is Arimnestos of Plataea, who rescued us, and this is Cimon, son of Miltiades, victor of Marathon-’

‘I know who they are,’ spat the judge. He looked like a man who had had a long, difficult day. He glanced at me.

‘Sir,’ I said. ‘It was one of the worst storms it has been my ill-luck to encounter. I was blown all the way to the coast of Africa. Sir, I have sailed outside the Pillars of Herakles, my ancestor.’ That’s me, laying it on thick. ‘This was as bad a storm as I have seen.’

Cimon nodded. ‘I concur with everything he said. On the one hand, a heavy storm, and on the other, the coast of Sicily would have been a worse place from which to be blown than our position in the Illyrian Sea.’ He smiled at his little rhetorical flourish — his one hand, other hand construction.

The judge narrowed his eyes. ‘It seems to me that if Poseidon sends such a powerful storm, it is because he doesn’t want an athlete to be at the games.’

Cimon nodded. ‘The gods may have such disagreements. But Zeus is the god of judges as Poseidon is the god of the sea, and it is in the hands of Zeus-’

‘Are you telling me the will of Zeus? Or my duty as a judge?’ the man spat.

I had a brief flash, by all the gods, of the edge of my sword carving the man’s neck. Why is it that small men, given a little power, will behave like petty tyrants? For a few days, this elder of Elis, a tiny city, had power over men like Leonidas of Sparta and Cimon of Athens. Instead of being honest and humble. .

Pah. I could see what he’d look like as his head fell off my blade. He made me that angry.

I thought Polymarchos was going to burst into tears. All that training, wasted — because of a storm, some rapacious Sicilians, and a dozen fools in the Peloponnesus.

Astylos had given up. I know how it is — when the fates are against you, and you know that you cannot win. He managed a smile.

I decided to brazen it out. ‘I can name a dozen athletes who have been allowed to enter late — even this late,’ I said. To be honest, I couldn’t name one, but I was willing to bet that Cimon could. ‘Unless you have some personal interest, sir, I think you need to explain yourself in detail.’ I snapped that at him in my storm-at-sea voice.

Cimon raised an eyebrow, but he let me play my dice.

‘Personal interest?’ The old man’s saliva actually struck my shoulder, he was sputtering so hard. ‘Are you accusing me of. . acting against the will of the gods?’ He shook his head. ‘I am the archon of the games. I do not need to explain myself to you.’ He waved his hand.

‘Yes, you do,’ I said. ‘Or I’ll come back with Themistocles.’ It was an odd threat — but I knew he’d invited many famous men — to discuss the Persians — and I suspected he’d have more power with these men than Cimon.

Cimon, in the meantime, leaned down and spoke in the ear of the Italian athlete.

Then he nodded to me, and turned on his heel.

The judge said, ‘How dare you — stop that man!’

But he was too late. Everyone had watched Cimon’s expression of contempt — turning his back on the judge — and they’d missed Astylos slipping through the columns into the temple proper. He was in the sanctuary — from which he could not be removed by force.

Cimon spoke in a voice of iron. ‘He will stay in the sanctuary until we have been heard. In an hour, every Hellene on the plain of Olympia will have heard that you are barring competitors to influence events.’

‘I will return with Themistocles,’ I promised.

We walked down the steps. They were shouting behind us — but not at us, or at Astylos. The judges were shouting at each other.

‘It’s about the chariot race,’ Cimon said as soon as we were clear of the temple. ‘It must be. No one cares about anything else these days. The Spartans have kept their entry a secret. It must be a powerful entry. But the pretext used to disqualify them is the late-entry thing — I’m sure of it. Your man is simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘By about thirty days,’ I admitted.

Polymarchos had the good grace to look abashed. ‘Gentlemen — I’m sorry to have involved you in this.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s not really about you. I’m for Themistocles. You?’ I asked Cimon.

Cimon made a very odd face. ‘I will present myself to the King of Sparta,’ he said.

It was a busy night.

Athletes had to be entered before the parade, which happened before the opening sacrifices. That gave us two more days, but Cimon said, in parting, that he thought we’d have to make our case as the sun rose.

I went to Themistocles immediately. Sometimes the gods smile at the affairs of men — I found his tent with some difficulty, only to be told that he was drinking with the Plataean, Arimnestos. So I walked back to my own camp with my feet aching — a sailor can lose his love of the land very quickly — and I found him singing — very well, let me add — and at the centre of the party I had left some hours before.

I waited until he was done and had been well applauded before I cornered him.

‘I was surly earlier,’ he began. ‘I came back to apologise and found you gone, but your man Harpagos-’

‘Not my man any more. Very much his own man.’ I couldn’t help myself.

But Themistocles the democrat applauded. ‘Yes — these are foolish notions of patronage of which we should rid ourselves. Well put. He is his own man. Exactly. But at any rate, he insisted I was welcome — that any Marathon man was welcome.’ He smiled, somewhat the worse for drink. ‘I tried to do my bit.’

I laughed. Drunk, Themistocles was still a pompous arse, but somehow a much better man. He had a ridiculous garland of ivy on his brow and a big bronze wine cup — a Boeotian kontharos cup — half full of wine. My wine.

‘I need a favour,’ I blurted, ‘but I suspect I’ll do you one, just in asking.’

He nodded. And smiled. Greeks love a bit of messy logic.

‘Is Leonidas of Sparta your ally?’ I asked.

He played with his beard. ‘Yes,’ he admitted.

‘He has arrived with a late entry into the games — a chariot in the four-horse event,’ I said. ‘The tethrippon.’

Themistocles was suddenly very sober. He sat up, his garland of ivy a little askew, and narrowed his eyes. ‘And the judges have declined to let his team race,’ he said. ‘Look, I may not have loved the man, but he was brilliant. He saw it in a moment. Syracusa or Aegina — or both. They both have teams in the four-horse race. And they both hate Sparta.’ He met my eye. ‘At least, right now.’ And he leered. ‘And other reasons,’ he added enigmatically.

‘A friend of mine is trying to enter the foot racers, but he’s being prohibited on the same grounds,’ I said.

Themistocles took his garland off and put it carefully on the ground. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘You are correct, Plataean. You have done me a favour. With a little care, I have the power — the friends — to remedy this, and thus do a favour for Sparta and for Leonidas.’ He met my eye. ‘I won’t forget this.’

I sighed with relief. ‘Themistocles, all I ask is that my man, Astylos, be allowed to race. I don’t know him. But I owe his trainer.’

Themistocles rose to his feet. He lacked much of the immense dignity of Leonidas, but he was fit, with muscles upon muscles, and he, too, looked much younger than his years. They shared something, those two.

He walked off into the darkness. I turned to Polymarchos.

‘What can be done is done,’ I said. ‘Have a cup of wine.’

In the dawn, we were all arrayed together in our best — I wore my Tyrian red cloak embroidered with ravens, and Cimon wore a garment so deeply died it seemed to vibrate — somewhere between red and blue. Themistocles wore a deliberately humble garment, a plain boy’s chlamys in soft white wool — to show his body. And Leonidas of Sparta eclipsed us all, just by the way he stood.

We were waiting for the dawn ritual to be completed in the sanctuary — where, even then, my young athlete had been awake all night, clinging to a cold pillar — hardly the best training regimen for a man in his prime. But Cimon put my hand in the king’s.

‘Leonidas,’ he said. ‘This is Arimnestos of Plataea, son of Chalkoteknes, son of Simonides. He led the Plataeans at Marathon. .’

The King of Sparta seized my arm in a two-handed embrace. ‘What a pleasure it is to meet you in person,’ he said. ‘I am told that you, too, are a son of Herakles?’

I was almost speechless. The King of great Sparta knew of me? I think I stood there for two breaths, my mouth working like that of a fish out of water.

But Leonidas was too well bred to let me flounder. ‘You are perhaps the most famous fighter against the Medes of all Hellenes,’ he said. He smiled at Cimon. ‘With the possible exception of your father, of course.’

I can’t do justice to the way in which he said these things — forcefully. No one could mistake his comments for flattery. He spoke like a judge at a murder trial — and yet, there was almost always a wicked gleam in his eye, as if he knew a secret jest. Or perhaps found himself funny. He claimed he never wanted to be king, and I think that may be true. Perhaps he found it. . odd, and comic, to be king.

I recovered. ‘Oh, my lord, I am merely another spearman,’ I said, or something like that. ‘The hero of the Plataeans is not Ajax or Achilles, but only Leithes, who gathered other little men around him to stem the rush of mighty Hector.’

He nodded. ‘I remember the Plataeans,’ he said. He smiled pleasantly enough and then extended his great right arm to show a scar on his bicep. ‘A Plataean spearman gave me that,’ he said with a rueful laugh. ‘In the Agoge, they told us that boys learn better from pain.’

As it proved, that was quite a long speech for him.

We walked up the steps, but the deal was done. The judges — with a great show of humility — admitted the Spartan team to the four-horse contest. Everyone made sacrifices to the gods.

It was all done in an hour, and the sun was a red disc on the horizon. Except that nothing had been said of my athlete.

Themistocles didn’t make me ask. He nodded easily to the chief judge. ‘I think there is another athlete who has been awake all night awaiting your clemency,’ he said.

The judge wavered for a fraction of a heartbeat — long enough for me to realise that this vain old man was considering poor Astylos out of pure spite.

Themistocles raised an eyebrow. ‘I would hate to have to bring all these men together again,’ he said. His eyes were hard as rock — as hard as those of a man killing his way through defeated enemies. There was no mercy in them at all.

The judge considered resistance.

‘But I will,’ Themistocles said, his voice mild. In that moment, I saw who he truly was — a man who loved the exercise of power. For itself. I have known men — aye, and women — who live for the release of sex, for the balm of music — for the moment when you elude an enemy’s spear and plunge your own into another man’s guts — aye. All those.

In that moment, I saw that Themistocles lived for this.

The judge flinched. ‘Of course your Italian boy can run. If he can stay awake.’

Themistocles smiled at me, as if to say: Now you owe me.

See? Hellenes, at the games of the gods. All fair and above board.

To be honest, age dims the memory. They were beautiful days, once I got used to the smell, and if there is a better life than lying in the sun with a broad straw hat and all your friends watching young men run their hearts out, I don’t know what it is. After we won our case with the judges of Elis, I was elated — it is hard to describe — and I went and spent money in the market. Then I went for a run of my own, because I knew I had too much spirit. I ran a good distance — thirty stades or so, up and around the mountain and back. And went back to the market, collected my ivory Athena and my pair of fancy gold brooches from a delighted craftsman, and went to my tent to strigil and oil. I felt like a god.

Of course, most men were just waking up.

At any rate, the good mood didn’t leave me all day. I lay on the bank of the stadium where the town of Elis now maintains tall grass banks for the spectators — so much more comfortable than wooden stands, or stone benches. I watched some boys wrestle, and then Harpagos and Sekla nudged me because they saw horses, and we gave our spots in the stadium to a group of Corinthians who were grateful to us and we walked down to the hippodrome, where we watched horses trot around and around. The trainers eyed each other, and none of the horses ran full tilt. It was much the same with the men — they watched each other, and tried to have bursts of speed without the others seeing.

By two days before the sacrifices to open the games, almost all the competitors knew each other like wicked brothers, and they had clear ideas of who was fastest, strongest, most dangerous. In sports like pankration, it often happened that most of the competitors would drop out, leaving only three or four remaining. Why get badly injured when you know that you can’t take that big bruiser from Megara?

A few of the boxers sparred a little, and, as I say, a few of the young wrestlers, but most of the men and boys simply lifted weights, drew bows, and ran. They didn’t want to match themselves against each other until the great day.

That afternoon, as it began to cool, I saw the chariot teams.

You may recall — if you’ve been listening — that I know how to drive a chariot. I’m not good at it — I’m far too large and I don’t really love horses. But when I was a new-caught slave in Ephesus, I was trained by top men to drive a team, two-horse or four-. I don’t know enough to win a race, but I know enough to judge a team, and this was a superb team.

That year, there were six teams. The Aeginians came out first that day, and many men cheered. Their horses were all white, matched with manes that stood up like the crests on men’s helmets. They looked like Apollo’s horses, and every man in the crowd thought the same. I’m no fan of Aegina, but I cheered those horses.

Then came the team of my friend Gelon of Syracusa. His team, as if in deliberate competition, was all black, and they were the largest, longest-legged beasts I think I have ever seen. I understood later that they were Persian horses, purchased by an ambassador, and they stood a fist taller than any other horse in the race, black as Hades. I suspected, while looking at them, that they were the most expensive team.

The third team was Athenian. It was a fine team of mixed horses — a dark chestnut with black mane and tail and three unmatched bays. They were the least remarkable looking of all the teams. They looked dowdy by comparison with Gelon’s team.

Of course, no wreath of laurel is awarded for the ‘best-looking team’.

The Corinthian team was driven by a black man — that alone was worthy of comment — and their horses were matched bays with their manes carefully dyed red. Perhaps most noteworthy, their African charioteer let them run — and they ran like a summer storm. He took one pole-

Have you never seen a chariot race?

They run on the same kind of course where men run. One stade, with two posts. You have to drive down the course and then turn at the post and come back. Not a round course — that would, apparently, be too easy. Not an oval. A straight track, a terrible turn, and a straight back — twenty-seven times. It is not a short race. In fact, the chariot race for four horses is the longest race at the Olympics, and horses have been known to die.

At any rate, the African took the turn on one wheel, and his offside chariot rail brushed the pole and he didn’t even look at it. He was. .

Damned good. The Corinthians looked confident, and had that nice mix of showy and competent that suggests a winner.

The fifth team out of the pens was the Rhodian team from the islands, and they were too small and, frankly, looked like they needed to be fed. Sea trips can be very hard on horses, and these horses had seen better days. They were all piebald black and white, and they were a fist smaller than all the other horses.

And finally, while I was stretching and considering a cup of watered wine, the Spartan team came out.

They were good horses — unmatched, but well muscled, with square heads and big chests. I remember saying to Harpagos, who was with me, that they looked like Spartans — heavily muscled and red.

They made quite a stir. At first, I thought it was just because of all the bureaucratic uproar about entering them, but the man driving the Spartan team was, in fact, their owner, Polypeithes, a Spartan citizen. This hardly ever happened. Drivers were mostly professionals — freedmen or even slaves. The driver wasn’t considered to be the competitor, in chariot racing — it was the owner who was the competitor. But most owners — the super-rich — didn’t bother to get dusty.

This Spartan gentleman seemed to feel differently.

He drove his own chariot, and he drove well.

I rolled over to Harpagos and pointed.

He shrugged and handed me the wine.

‘Watch the African driver,’ I said.

Harpagos nodded, and motioned to Moire, who was with us. He nodded.

The African driver only watched the Spartans, and mostly he watched the Spartan driver. And when the Spartans were halfway down the track on the far side, the African cracked his little hand whip, and his team leaped — I swear it — from a high trot to a gallop, and tore down the track going the other way.

The Spartan had just let his horses go, and they were at full gallop as the Corinthian team thundered down the course in the opposite direction.

The African was testing the speed of the Spartan team in an indirect manner.

The two teams shot past each other, a chariot wheel apart. The Spartan raised his whip in salute, and the African matched it.

We roared. I’d say there were three thousand men in the stadium and we’d seen a great thing. It went by in a second, but it was great.

The Spartan team thundered to the post and so did the Corinthian.

The African leaned a little, just as he had before, and put his chariot up on one wheel, and it made the turn with all four horses leaning so hard you’d have thought that they were running sideways. The spectators had to look back and forth to see both ends of the stadium — the Spartan was farther from the post and his horses didn’t lean as close. The Corinthian team was around while the Spartans were still slowing to make the tight turn, and the African reined in, sparing his horses. He knew what he wanted to know.

The Spartan came through the turn and he allowed his team to slow, aware that he’d been the slower of the two. But he didn’t show any temper. He merely reined in his horses and saluted the crowd and trotted around the track a few times. I saw Leonidas with half a hundred Spartans sitting together, like a phalanx — and I saw Gorgo sitting with her knees drawn up while a helot held an umbrella over her head against the sun. Polypeithes saluted Leonidas, and then, as he drove down the course, he rolled to a stop by Gorgo. She was sitting just off the course, in technical obedience to the prohibition about women that wasn’t really enforced anyway, but Spartans are often sticklers for religious observance.

She rose, the helot scurrying to keep up with her, and walked over to the chariot, and had a quick chat with Polypeithes. He bowed, and drove off. She shrugged and tossed a comment to her slave, who laughed.

I liked her instantly. Any man or woman who has laughing slaves is probably favoured of the gods. Trust me, thugater, I’ve been a slave.

That night we had another fine feast. Our food was already running short, and I was told there was nothing to hunt for ten miles — so my ill-got Illyrian gold went to buy mutton and kid. The farmers of Elis must be the richest shepherds in the aspis of the world.

That’s not really what this story is about. But old men like to complain.

At any rate, I was the host, and I had half the famous men in Greece at my fire that night, and it was a delight — Polypeithes the owner and charioteer chatting with Brasidas, and Narses, the Corinthian charioteer, chatting with Ka. We had a dozen pankrationists with an admiring audience of amateurs listening to their every word, and for an hour we had two of the finest poets and their musicians singing comic elegies to non-existent athletes. Simonides of Ceos, whose verses I had always admired, was in sometimes friendly competition with my friend Aeschylus of Athens, and the two of them mocked each other — and everyone else — as the wine flowed.

It was a good night.

I fell asleep sober, and woke just as the first rosy fingers of dawn touched the sky far to the east. I remember — and the whole history of the Long War probably pivots on this moment — I remember that I had a desperate urge to piss. So, cursing the chill of dawn, I threw off my cloaks and rose from my warm bed and, disdaining even sandals, pushed out of my little tent and went to the latrine.

Of course, to reach the latrine, I’d have to traverse about half of our camp, and I’m sure I’d have set a bad example, except that other men were just rising, and I didn’t want to be seen to disobey my own strictures.

I used the carefully dug trench and straightened my clothes and went back across the camp, still determined to see whether there was any warmth to be discovered deep in my cloak, when I saw. . Well, I shan’t go into much detail, but I saw Gaia and Sekla, doing what men and women will do in the first light of dawn.

That was the end of sleep. Or perhaps it was the will of the gods that I wander out of our camp. But a glimpse of a couple making love — the expression on her face — and I was suddenly desolate. It wasn’t that I desired Gaia.

It was that I desired not to be alone.

I think I probably groaned aloud, like some tormented soul in Homer. And then, embarrassed lest they had heard me, I ran.

And having started to run, running a good distance in the dawn seemed as logical a pursuit as any. I think I decided to run off my woes and start the day with good exercise. I pulled my chiton over my head and tossed it into my tent and ran down towards the river and then east into the rising sun, running along the valley of the Alpheos. There wasn’t much water in the river, which left a perfectly flat flood plain clear, and in the cool of the early morning, it was easy running.

I was not the only one to think so. By the time I was breathing hard and having to concentrate a little on my run — perhaps six stades or so — I heard hooves behind me, and in about as long as it takes for a man to recite a hundred lines of Homer, a pair of horsemen passed me — naked, but already wearing big patassos hats to protect them from the sun. They waved and rode on — both entries, as it turned out, in the young horse events.

After they returned — with further salutes — I had the valley to myself. I ran along, avoiding the occasional goat, for another ten stades, and I felt better. In fact, as I turned at the base of a breast-shaped hill, I felt so good that I determined to run back to camp and find myself a porne. A flute girl.

So I was running west along the edge of Alpheos — I won’t call it a bank, because there’s almost no channel in Hekatombaion, a full nine moons after the New Year. I probably had a broad smile on my face.

I heard hooves.

I had time to think that whoever it was, was a fool for pushing his animals at full gallop this close to the races, and then the low dust cloud at the edge of the river disgorged a racing four-horse chariot without a driver.

I think I ran six or seven more paces at it before I realised that the driver was still in the chariot. The gods had decreed he not die — he was fallen in a curled ball in the base of the car, his head lolling dangerously over the back lintel.

Chariots are very light. The base of a good racing chariot is nothing but sinew woven as tightly as possible to provide a springy floor for the charioteer, who, if trained the way I was trained, drives standing with his toes on the yoke bar and his heels on the sinew.

Something had gone wrong. And the horses were utterly panicked — eyes wide, flecks of spittle all over their chests, sweat pouring down.

And it was the Spartan chariot.

Runaway chariots were a steady part of my young life on Hipponax’s farm. We actually practised boarding and recovering galloping chariots. It happened all too often. One moment’s inattention — horses are the dumbest brutes in all creation — and you are flat on your back on the dirt, and your team is vanishing over the distant horizon.

So I turned and ran south, away from the river — and then made a tight turn in, so I was running east again, into the rising sun, parallel to the river but ten horse-lengths away. The team was galloping right along the bank — horses can be like that — and while the offside leader knew I was there, the rest of the team was too busy being afraid of their own shadows.

While the chariot was still behind me, I ran — diagonally — across its front. I timed it well — by Zeus, I’d done it often enough — and the horses were tired already and slowing. I put up a hand, got a fistful of mane, caught the leather of the collar and leapt. In a heartbeat, I was astride the surly bastard — I mean the horse.

I had them walking in twenty strides. I was worried for the charioteer — I’d never seen a man fall inside his own chariot — but I was worried for the team, too. I turned them on the flat plain — from astride the offside horse. They were as happy to halt as I was to halt them, and then followed a fairly ludicrous time as I sorted out the reins and tried to calm them. All before I could look after the poor charioteer, who was, of course, young Polypeithes, the Spartan.

He had a bruise the size of an egg on the front of his forehead and he was breathing badly, and I discovered he’d swallowed his tongue. I got it out — I’d seen it done — and laid him on the grass by the river and splashed him with water, which accomplished nothing but getting him wet.

After a wait, I lifted him carefully — I still thought he might have a broken bone, or, worst of all, a broken back — and put him on the floor of the chariot, and then I drove it — slowly — back towards camp.

I came to the place where the valley really widens, just east of the hippodrome, where I could see — and smell — the camp, and it looked as if someone had kicked an anthill. The entirety of the Lacedaemonian delegation was out — a dozen on horseback, and the rest running or walking into the hills or along the river.

The one who found me was Gorgo. She was astride a horse like a man — or a Scyth — and she cantered easily along the river bed as soon as she spotted me, and reined in half a horse-length away.

She wore a man’s chlamys over one shoulder and was otherwise naked. It must be noted — Spartan women do not live like Athenian women, and they train in public, take exercise, and apparently think nothing of nudity.

The ephors were quite right for not exposing her to die as an infant. Her body was. . remarkable. I’m not sure I’d ever seen a woman so graceful and yet so fully muscled. And she could ride.

I struggled to meet her eyes. There was so much of her to enjoy.

‘How is he?’ she asked as soon as she saw that I had the young charioteer.

‘Nasty bump on his head,’ I said. ‘Deeply unconscious.’

She dismounted, threw the reins over her horse’s back, and knelt at the back of the chariot, looking at the fallen man. She peeled back his eyelids with a Laconian practicality, and nodded.

‘Doctor,’ she pronounced. She sprang on to her horse. ‘Follow me.’ Then she paused. ‘Will I start a riot?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know a doctor.’

‘Good. Come and tell me.’ She paused. ‘Please.’

Well, if you can’t see the comic aspect to this, I think you’re dead.

At any rate, I drove the four-horse chariot right to the door of a tent where Dionysus of Ceos — one of the men who’d been drinking my wine the night before — was just towelling his hair. He tossed his towel to a slave and knelt by the chariot for a moment, pulled up the eyelids just as Gorgo had, and nodded to me.

‘I don’t think he has any broken bones,’ I said.

Dionysus ran his thumbs very gently around the edges of the contusion and then around the rest of the head, and nodded. ‘Get him out of the sun,’ he said. He looked at me.

I shook my head. ‘I found him, and the cart,’ I said. I pointed at the still-swelling contusion. ‘Sling?’ I asked.

Dionysus nodded. ‘Oh — you’re the famous soldier. I guess you’d know. Yes. Sling stone, or something like it. It might have been thrown, but it was perfectly round. Or near enough.’ He scratched his beard. ‘Who is he? A competitor?’

‘Competitor and owner,’ I said. ‘Spartan. I met him last night. Polypeithes.’

Dionysus had the good grace to look impressed. ‘His father was a famous wrestler. I’ve stitched him up a dozen times.’ While he spoke, his slaves brought cold water and laid cloths on the young man’s head. Four of us — two slaves, the doctor and I — laid him on the doctor’s bed and made him as comfortable as we could.

The doctor was looking at my leg. ‘Wound?’ he asked.

I nodded.

He shook his head. ‘Beyond me. If only there was a way of stitching up sinew the way we can stitch flesh.’

I grinned. ‘I can still run. Not fast, but far.’

He nodded. He was back to his patient. ‘You are right — trust a soldier — no other breaks. Nasty bruise on his hip — that’s where he fell.’ He looked at me. ‘You his friend? Partner?’

I shook my head. ‘I met him last night. But I’ll tell the Spartans. I promised their queen I’d report.’

‘Who — Gorgo? Damn, there’s a woman.’ He grinned. ‘Like an anatomy lesson come to life.’ He laughed.

‘You know her?’ I asked.

‘Everyone at the Olympics knows her. She’s one of the best patrons here. Lacedaemon funds many events here, and medicine is not the least of it. If it were not for Sparta’s involvement, Elis wouldn’t always be able to pay the bills.’

He looked at the young man at his feet. ‘He’s with the gods, but unless I miss my guess or he is awfully unlucky, he’ll be awake in an hour and have nothing worse than a sore head and a patch of missing memory for a few days.’

I left with a hand clasp and drove — still naked — around the stadium to my own camp, where I was much mocked by my so-called friends for driving a chariot naked.

‘Ares come to life!’ Megakles laughed. ‘Or are you hoping some young girl will come and play Persephone to your Hades?’

Men made the horns against ill-luck because Megakles mentioned Hades, which he did at least six times a day.

Ka admired the team. ‘Those are horses,’ he said. He grinned at me. ‘I could teach you to drive better.’

I laughed. ‘Almost anyone could. Hector — a chiton and a chlamys, so I don’t look like a beggar for the King of Sparta!’ I motioned to Brasidas, who was stripped for exercise. ‘Come with me. You can translate their silence,’ I mocked.

Brasidas shrugged. He snapped his fingers at his body slave and the man ran for his clothes.

Brasidas joined me. His face was serene — as almost all Spartan faces are, at almost all times — but his body communicated his tension. ‘I am not the right man to accompany you to the kings,’ he said.

It occurred to me — not for the first time — that Brasidas’ Laconic comments on the subject of his exile might have left out a great deal of detail.

I drove cautiously. Ka had watered the horses, but they were done — so tired that they only kept their heads erect with difficulty. Panic affects horses as much as men, and nothing tires a man like terror. Sometimes, I think that fear and fatigue are the same animal.

So I moved no faster than a man walking, and Ka ran along with us, talking to the horses — I began to suspect that Ka preferred horses to people — and we must have made a strange little party. Except that it was three days until the opening ceremony of the Olympics, one the greatest bloodbaths in the Hellenic world, and there were forty thousand men, women, children and slaves on the plain of the Alpheos, and every eccentricity in the Greek world was in easy sight. We probably weren’t the strangest thing by a long chalk.

But we were odd — and magnificent — enough: a Spartan warrior, a Plataean in a magnificent cloak, and Ka — the essence of grace.

We crossed the plain to the Lacedaemonian camp. Unlike all the other camps, it was neat and orderly — almost four hundred small tents and a number of simple awnings and a few larger tents. I made the natural assumption that the small tents were for the ‘average’ Spartans and the larger tents for — whom? The royals and the ‘nobles’?

In truth, like most Greeks, I knew nothing of Spartans or how they lived.

But as the chariot rolled to a stop in the small square in the middle of the larger tents, I recognised where I had seen the layout of their camp before.

Crete.

I’d spent a year training Neoptolymos — may his shade burn bright and go to Elysia! He and his father, old Achilles, were typical Cretan lords — rich, but living hard, in squads or ‘messes’ of ten aristocrats, doing nothing but making war and hunting. This is the Cretan way.

Around the central square of every town in Crete are the barracks of the aristocrats. Most of the aristocrats never go home — their wives live with the slaves, mind the children and the money, and the men hunt, and make war.

I thought all this in the time it took for the wheels to stop and a pair of helots to leap out from under a low awning and take my reins with a matched pair of surly bows.

One of the helots snarled something at Ka. Ka ignored the man and came over to stand by me.

‘I’ll go back to our own camp now,’ he said. I nodded, and he ran.

By the time I turned my attention back to the helots, Gorgo and Leonidas were there, as was Polypeithes’ father, Calliteles. He was tall and broad with a heavy forehead and an enormous nose; he was one of the few ugly Spartans I ever met. Of course, he’d won the Olympics — and the Nemean games — for wrestling, so no one minded his heavy, dog-like face very much.

Brasidas dismounted from the chariot. He didn’t say anything, nor did he turn white or allow his hands to shake — despite which, he gave me the impression of a man who’d have preferred to run back to our camp with Ka.

Gorgo put her hand on my arm with the familiarity of long association. In fact — and this is one reason that Spartan women are so very confusing to Greek men — I’m not sure that any other well-born Greek woman has ever put a hand on my arm in such an intimate fashion. Jocasta — wife of Aristides — might be accounted my friend, and I’ve sat in her exedra or at the edge of her kitchen many times, telling a story and even holding wool for her as she weaves, and never — never — has she touched me.

I’d known Gorgo for less than a day, and she put a hand on my arm with a disturbing warmth. This is why non-Spartans believe all Spartan women to be licentious. They are not — they are merely without so-called ‘womanly’ reserve.

Perhaps I go on too much, but you must understand what an impact the Lacedaemonians had on me. I affected to despise them — no, in reality I did rather despise them. But to walk among them was rather like a man walking among the gods. In a gathering of fifty Spartans, there was no man with flesh on his belly — no woman with sagging breasts. Their arms showed the muscle of high training. All of them. Their skin glowed with health and expensive oil. Their hair was long, impractical and scented — all the time. I suppose that I had considered Brasidas an exceptional man. Here — among his own kind — I realised that he was ‘merely’ representative of a kind.

Well.

Gorgo put a hand on my arm, and Leonidas smiled. ‘Welcome, Plataean!’ he said. He offered me his hand, and we clasped hands and then the hulking mass of Calliteles all but obscured the sun. But in that moment, Gorgo saw Brasidas. And the king saw her head move and the flicker of emotion around the corners of her mouth, and he looked. His lip twitched.

Then all I could see was the mountain that was Calliteles.

‘I gather my son owes you his life?’ he said. His voice was flat, eyes giving nothing away.

The pressure of his hand on mine, however, told a different story. Since I wasn’t a Lacedaemonian, I smiled and shrugged. ‘I suspect his chariot would have stopped,’ I said. ‘By the favour of the gods, he had fallen well — on to the floor of the chariot.’

Gorgo looked at me and raised an eyebrow. Let me say that now she was as well dressed as any matron in Athens — a superb wool chiton worn in the old Dorian fashion, heavily embroidered, especially on the fall of the peplos. She wore a lion-head bracelet on her right arm and a simple white linen fillet in her hair.

I took her raised eyebrow for interrogation, and I nodded. ‘The doctor — an admirer, may I add, of you both — reports that until the young man awakens from his sleep, he is with the gods and there is nothing to be done.’

Calliteles nodded, face under control. ‘Thank you, stranger,’ he said.

I glanced around. There were twenty Spartiates in the square, by now, but they stood at a distance — I had only Brasidas, the king and queen, Calliteles and a pair of helots within earshot. I looked at the helots.

‘Unyoke the horses and see to them,’ Gorgos said without so much as turning her head to the slaves.

With a rattle of harness and wheels, the chariot moved off, the tired horses swishing their tails to keep off the flies.

‘He was hit with a sling stone,’ I said. My words were well covered by the movement of the chariot, but Gorgo and Leonidas heard me. The king’s eyebrow went up. Gorgo smiled.

That was an odd reaction.

The silence went on. Lacedaemonians can be uncomfortable ‘friends’ in a social situation. They speak very little, and I had learned with Brasidas that one had to exercise a great deal of patience to have a conversation.

So I consciously relaxed my muscles and stood easily, waiting.

‘I understand that you speak Persian?’ the king said.

That was unexpected. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Thank you,’ said the king, inclining his head very slightly.

I nodded. Emulating the Lacedaemonians is a chancy business at best. But if they weren’t going to be more talkative than this — well, I didn’t particularly need them, either. And you’ll note that they had not spoken to Brasidas or recognised him in any way. This annoyed me.

I suppose that I allowed my annoyance to show. I am, after all, a Boeotian from Plataea, and I have not been schooled my whole life to give nothing away on my face.

Far from it.

As I turned away, the king extended his hand, palm down — a rhetorical gesture that came naturally to him, I think. I paused.

‘Why do you bring this man into my camp?’ he asked.

‘He is my friend. And a Lacedaemonian. It seemed natural enough.’ I knew I was at the edge of being insulting. But I was, as I say, annoyed.

The king’s eyes never left my face. ‘Perhaps he was born in Lacedaemon,’ the king said. ‘He has chosen not to be a Spartan.’

Bloody Spartans.

‘I’m sorry I took you,’ I said.

Brasidas smiled. ‘It might be best if you didn’t take me again,’ he said.

‘I gather this means I’ll have the continued pleasure of your company commanding my marines?’ I asked.

‘You use so many words,’ he said. And shrugged. ‘Yes.’

Astylos slept for a long time, and then he ran. He ran short, fast distances and then some longer ones — then he stretched, with Polymarchos helping him, and then he did it all again. I watched him, and I learned a great deal about stretching.

When the heat of the sun was gone, Polymarchos had a brief conversation with Ka, and Ka stripped to a loincloth — the Africans lack our views on nudity — and ran with Astylos. The Greek man was faster, but the African could stay with him through almost anything, and Astylos had to work very hard to put more than a stride or two between them.

Polymarchos stood with me. ‘Really, it is a pity we can’t find some way to make Ka a believable Greek,’ he said.

One of the few requirements of the Olympics was that a man had to be free-born and Greek. The definition of Greek was sometimes elastic and sometimes very rigid — these things come and go. But at minimum, it required that a man speak Greek perfectly. The colour of a man’s skin was not nearly so important.

Ka’s stumbling attempts at sentences longer than five words would not have made him welcome anywhere — well, except perhaps a Spartan mess.

That night, Themistocles gathered almost a hundred men at his own fire. Cimon was there, and Aristides. I embraced the man that most Athenians, even those who hated him, called ‘the Just’. He sometimes looked at Themistocles with undisguised loathing — but he was there.

So was Leonidas of Sparta. There were a dozen Corinthians, there were Megarans, there were two aristocrats of Aegina and a few Thebans. While I was controlling my urge to spit, the eldest among them came forward from the stool on which he’d been sitting. He was a bent old man with no hair on top of his head, and it took me a moment to recognise him, and then I crushed him in an embrace, despite his Theban ways.

‘Empedocles!’ I shouted — so loud that the King of Sparta turned his head. I’m sure the Spartans thought me a buffoon.

Empedocles laughed noiselessly. ‘You are here? You live?’ He shook his head. ‘There will be some very disappointed men in Plataea, my son.’

His words gave me a chill in the warm summer air. ‘Disappointed?’ I asked.

‘Your cousin’s younger son has your farm,’ Empedocles said. ‘But there are men here who can tell you more than I. It is enough for me to clasp your hand — I feel ten years younger — nay, twenty!’

And behind the old priest in the firelight were a dozen Boeotians that I knew well. Perhaps best of all, I knew my own brother-in-law, Antigonus. He was standing a little aloof, looking at me.

I walked straight up to him and threw my arms around him. There was little he could do but respond.

At my shoulder, Cimon said, ‘I told you!’

Antigonus just shook his head and crushed me to him. ‘We all thought you. . were dead,’ he said. ‘By all the gods, Arimnestos — where in Hades have you been! Your sister mourned you for a year.’

He was still balanced between anger and love — like a mother whose child has vanished on a summer day, and comes back hours later.

‘The Carthaginians made me a slave,’ I said.

‘And then he sailed around the world on his way to hurry back to Plataea,’ said Cimon, always one to throw oil on a fire.

Antigonus looked away, and then turned back, and he had tears in his eyes. ‘You bastard,’ he said, but then he crushed me to him again.

Then I had to repeat the whole performance with Lykon of Corinth. He’d been in my wedding party — indeed, I’d expected my wife to prefer him. He had been the handsomest youth of his generation, tall, blond and beautiful, as well as good at sports and war and gentle, too. Easy to hate, except that he was so decent.

Now he was six years older, solid and dependable in the way no beautiful young man ever will be. I’m pretty sure he used the word ‘bastard’ too.

And finally, there was Old Draco — who must have been the oldest man at the Olympics, or close to it, but the wagon builder was still strong, and he walked without a stoop.

‘If you weren’t such a famous killer of men,’ he said, ‘I’d give you a punch on the nose, young man. Gone all the time — farm in ruins — no one exercising our phalanx — not a fucking decent bronzesmith between Thespiae and Thebes!’ He glared at me.

Now, at that campfire, I was the great Arimnestos — hero of Marathon, veteran pirate, probably as well known as most of the warriors of my generation. Draco was a wheelwright who built wagons in an obscure town of which half of Greece had never heard.

But I quailed like a nine-year-old boy caught stealing apples.

Draco stepped forward, pushing me back by sheer moral authority. ‘When are you going to stop playing boys’ games and come home and do some work?’ he growled.

I’d like to say I laughed, but I didn’t. I all but cowered.

For some men, you are always a child. ‘As soon as the Olympics are over, I will come home,’ I heard myself say.

‘Hmmf,’ Draco grunted. ‘None too soon,’ he said.

The only other Plataean was Styges, of all people, and his greeting was far warmer. He hugged me, and shook his head.

‘We knew you were alive,’ he said. ‘But seeing is believing.’

So much to my own embarrassment, I had to spend time telling the story of my enslavement and my eventual escape and the trip to Alba and back through Gaul. I love to tell a story, but not under the eye of the King of Sparta and half of the elite assembly of Athens.

Despite which, it’s a good story, and when I was done, Draco shook his head — frank disbelief on his face. The old man thought I’d made it all up.

Empedocles put a hand on my shoulder. ‘You are touched by the gods,’ the old priest said.

I shrugged, embarrassed. ‘I made some good things in Sicily,’ I said. Empedocles had given me my first steps as a smith for the god, and I showed him the sign for a master — in Sicily. He all but glowed. ‘So you have not spurned Hephaestus for Ares?’ he asked.

‘Never!’ I said. ‘I am no scion of the bloody-handed god.’

Empedocles nodded again. ‘Will you really return to Plataea?’ he asked. Men were crowding around in the firelit darkness, and the King of Sparta was at my elbow.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘May I come and sanctify your forge?’ he asked. And then, teasingly — ‘And see if your mastery is good enough for Boeotia?’

I bowed. Greeks don’t bow often — mostly to gods. Sometimes to great athletes, or great beauty in men or women. Never to army commanders and seldom to kings.

But he was a great priest. An suddenly, out of nowhere, the craft-longing was on me — to make something.

‘I would be honoured,’ I said.

The King of Sparta was on my right and Antigonus of Thespiae on my left. I grinned. It is not every day that you can out-aristocrat your brother-in-law.

‘Antigonus of Thespiae, may I introduce Leonidas of the Agiad Dynasty of Sparta? Leonidas, may I introduce my brother-in-law, Antigonus Melachites.’ It is not every day you can introduce the King of Sparta to your friends.

They clasped arms. It was an informal night — the air was full of mosquitoes and the fire was too hot and the wine was terrible, despite which we were all very conscious of why we were at Themistocles’ fire.

Antigonus had the King of Sparta engaged — about horses — in moments. Leonidas could be made to talk, but I didn’t know enough about any of the subjects that interested him.

Well — except one, as it proved.

At any rate, I was just turning to Styges to get an account of my cousin’s usurpation of my farm when Themistocles stepped into the firelight and we all fell silent.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I have called you all together tonight to save Greece.’

We talked for four hours, and decided nothing.

I suppose all the thinking men in Greece could, by then, have been divided into four factions. A few were openly in favour of the Persians. Those were mostly old aristocrats who — publicly — accepted the Great King as a sort of ‘first among equals’ of the whole human race.

The second faction would be those who didn’t see a crisis. Who refused to see that the Medes and Persians were on their way — that the war had begun. Because men are men, this group was by far the largest — at the fire, on the plains of the Alpheos, and throughout Greece.

The third group disliked the Great King and all his works, and believed that he would invade. But felt that it was hubris to attempt to resist, and intended to offer submission as soon as it was politically expedient. And wished Athens and Sparta, which could not submit, well.

And finally, there was the fourth group, who believed that the Great King was on his way, and intended to resist. The men who represented that faction were at the fire. Leonidas of Sparta was the chief — he continued to represent his mad half-brother’s policy of aggression against the Medes. As the leader of the conservatives in the most conservative state in all of Greece, Leonidas was an odd ally for Themistocles.

But Themistocles — the leader of the popular party in Athens, the most persuasive orator of our day and the bitter enemy of aristocrats everywhere — was the other pillar of the idea of resistance to Persia. And truly, I think it unlikely that either would have succeeded without the other.

The men at the fire were, for the most part, committed to resistance. We couldn’t agree on when, or how, we should resist. As an example — I will not bore you with a full relation — Cimon and I held the rostrum for half an hour, outlining the advantages of a forward naval strategy that would burn the Great King’s fleet in its bases on the Syrian coast.

Back then, we thought the Persians would only come by sea, as they did in Marathon year.

I think we spoke well, but our views were ridiculed.

‘The Great King has a thousand ships — by your own admission!’ said a Corinthian. ‘And yet you think that with a hundred ships you can reduce his fleet.’

Cimon scowled. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘And get rich into the bargain,’ I added, which may not have been the wisest course.

More men were for forming a great league, and marching into Thessaly to fight the Persians.

‘If they ever come, they will come by land,’ insisted a Corinthian aristocrat. ‘An army the size of the Great King’s cannot be transported by sea.’

‘Or fed by land,’ muttered Cimon.

Leonidas watched it all, looking back and forth like a man watching an athletic contest, offering nothing.

At length, the same Corinthian rose — Adeimantus, son of Ocytus. ‘I agree that we should resist,’ he said. ‘But these are Athenian tactics — the tactics of lesser men. In Corinth, we will not enfranchise the little men who are no better than slaves, just to have more rowers for our ships. We will not let ships decide the destiny of Greece.’

Most men growled or openly cheered. So much for a forward naval strategy.

‘But,’ he went on, ‘how do we know the Medes are coming?’ He raised a hand. ‘The Persian empire is vast — yes. But it has its own rebellions and its own problems. Are we so sure? And if we are sure — I think every man here would like to know how much time we have?’

Themistocles glanced at me. He was standing quite near me — I think in support of my forward naval strategy.

‘Arimnestos of Plataea can tell you more than I,’ he said. ‘As he had Artapherenes on his ship as a guest not a month ago.’

That was like kicking a hornets’ nest.

But it was true. And I happened to look at the King of Sparta before I began — and in a glance I realised why he had asked me whether I spoke Persian. It was because he had already heard this tale.

So I began. I told the story simply — that my ship had been caught in a storm, and emerged to find the wreck of Artapherenes’ ship close at hand and in the throes of a mutiny. I spoke of taking the satrap into Carthage and sailing out again, and I left out the difficulties.

Men frowned.

‘Surely Artapherenes would have made a mighty hostage,’ Adeimantus said. ‘Or are you some sort of secret Persian lover?’

There are insults that must be avenged in blood — although as I get older there are fewer and fewer of those — and then there are insults so ludicrous they deserve no more than a laugh. I laughed.

‘I love Persian gold,’ I said. ‘But I find it easier to take it from them than to ask for it on bended knee.’

Cimon snarled.

‘So you say!’ Adeimantus shot back.

‘If you had been at Marathon. .’ I said, and let it go.

The king smiled at me. ‘I saw the bodies,’ he offered. ‘At Marathon.’ As usual, a short speech, but one that conveyed all the meaning he needed. He raised an eyebrow — just as his wife had. ‘But — why?’

I shrugged. ‘He was an ambassador, and his life was sacred. And — I owed him my life.’

Leonidas nodded. ‘Good,’ he said.

‘And he told you that the invasion was imminent?’ the Corinthian asked. I could see Lykon looking at the older man with distaste.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He told me, his wife told me, and the captain of his guard — an old friend of mine, a guest-friend — warned me.’

The men around the fire spoke for some time.

I raised my voice. ‘The Great King intends to build a canal across the isthmus under Mount Athos,’ I said. ‘And bridge the Hellespont.’ I shrugged. ‘So says his Satrap of Phrygia.’

Adeimantus was openly derisive. ‘Bridge the Hellespont!’ He laughed. ‘I think you are trying to shock us with marvels, Boeotian.’

Even Cimon paused. ‘That’s laying it on a bit thick,’ he murmured. ‘A bridge over the Hellespont!’

Leonidas, on the other hand, looked at me with real interest. ‘That would be. . glorious,’ he said. His gaze was distant. Then his eyes snapped to me. He seemed an inch taller. ‘You believe this to be true?’ he asked slowly. ‘I mean no offence. Different men will use words to sway other men.’

I nodded. ‘A man I trust told me, and I believe him,’ I said.

The King of Sparta nodded sharply. ‘Then he is bringing a land army, and he means to have a real contest.’ His eyes went to Themistocles. He implied that a sea battle was not a real contest.

Of course, to the Spartans, it was not — because it depended on the rowers and the helmsmen, not the hoplites.

Later, when the drinking was done and most of the men had gone to their beds — or their piles of flea-infested straw — I sat in the pleasant fireside air, blessedly free from the flies and mosquitoes which had descended like some curse of the Olympians at sunset and eaten us alive for three hours. Aristides sat by me — and Styges, and Lykon of Corinth and Cimon, Empedocles of Thebes, Calliteles the Spartan and a dozen other men. Brasidas was with me, too — ignoring Calliteles, who was studiously ignoring him.

The king had made me angry. I didn’t realise it until he left in a swirl of red as his cloak settled about him. The arrogance of his cloak — was that it? I admired him as a man — and yet, the way he entered and left, as if he were king not just of the Spartans but of all Greeks. .

I was stung by the words a real contest.

I lay on my cloak, allowing resentment to penetrate my maturity.

Finally I turned, ignoring what Styges had just asked. ‘Why does your king call a land battle “a real contest”?’ I asked. The king, of course, used the same words that we use for a race at Olympia. ‘You are a Spartan, and you have seen a sea fight.’

Brasidas looked off into the darkness for so long I thought that he wouldn’t answer. And why should he? It was an angry, rhetorical question.

But he coughed, and sat up. ‘When I was young, and had just finished the Agoge,’ he said, ‘we went to war with Argos. It wasn’t much of a war, really. We knew we would win, and so did the Argives — good fighters, but not like us. And we had more hoplites.’ He turned, to make sure he had my attention. He looked into the fire. ‘Cleomenes was the king. He was attempting to breathe new life into the Peloponnesian League and to let the allies have more say. One of the allied leaders made a suggestion about tactics.’ He shrugged. ‘And Cleomenes allowed the allies to follow this man — even though his brother, Leonidas, derided the notion as un-Greek and unworthy. So the allies marched off slightly to our left, and at a set command, they moved at an incline — very rapidly — like this.’ His right hand was the Spartan phalanx, moving forward, neither slow nor fast, but inexorable.

I had seen it. Faced it. Nothing, in the aspis of the world, is more to be feared than the Spartan advance.

His left hand swung out wide to the left and then accelerated in from the flank.

Total silence had fallen. Brasidas never told a story — even those who did not know him paused to hear him. And Calliteles nodded, almost imperceptibly supporting Brasidas — yes, it was as he says.

‘As soon as they saw themselves outflanked, the Argives broke and ran,’ Brasidas said.

Many men nodded. Cimon looked like a boy who knows the punchline to the joke.

I shrugged. ‘Outnumbered, facing Spartans, and outflanked?’ I said. I nodded. ‘I’d run, too.’

Brasidas nodded. ‘They ran a stade — out of the jaws. Then they stopped. They reformed their phalanx.’

His eyes flicked to Calliteles, who was older. He was an Olympian, and that meant, I knew, that he’d probably been in the Hippeis — the Spartan Royal Guard — with Cleomenes.

He raised one eyebrow. ‘Then they mocked us.’

Calliteles nodded.

‘They sent a herald. They said, “O Spartans, mighty in war — have your arms lost their strength, that you stoop to trickery? Meet us chest to chest and shield to shield in a real contest, or march home and be damned.”’

Brasidas allowed himself a small smile. ‘We told the allies to stand aside. We marched down the field, and the Argives came to us, and we fought.’ He nodded. ‘We defeated them, of course. They sent heralds to offer submission and to request permission to bury their dead. We granted it.’ He nodded.

Calliteles nodded also.

Cimon nodded in his turn. ‘I know that I have heard this story told a dozen times,’ he said. ‘I was at dinner with Leonidas and Gorgo one night and an ephor told the story. I thought the point was that the Peloponnesian allies had wrecked the pincer movement by being too slow. I said so, and Gorgo looked at me — well, the way a wife looks at you when you say something foolish at temple.’ He raised his eyebrows and spread his hands like a mime.

Brasidas looked at the ground.

Calliteles looked at the stars.

Styges had grown to manhood with Idomeneaus. He understood immediately — as did I, thanks. I had been with the Cretans. He leaned forward — a young man, and thus not quick to offer his views — but after several breaths, he said, ‘I understand.’

Brasidas looked at him. ‘Yes?’ he asked. He sounded tired, as if using so many words had exhausted him.

‘There’s more to victory than occupying ground,’ Styges said. ‘My. . mentor, Idomeneaus, says that victory and defeat are. . in men’s minds. Some men die, and yet are not defeated. Other men kill, but at the end of the day, they allow themselves to feel defeated.’ His dark eyes searched around the fire — looked at me, looked at Cimon and then Brasidas. ‘I have seen it, too.’

We all nodded. ‘The Argives were completely undefeated by the clever trick. Angered, but not even shamed. They had come to test themselves — man to man — against the Spartans, not to dick about with manoeuvre.’ I had it, by then. ‘Leonidas wants the Greeks to measure their spears against those of the Medes. Man to man. Like the Argives.’

Brasidas nodded. ‘Not the Greeks,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Or perhaps. But mostly, the men of Lacedaemon.’

Calliteles had worked hard to avoid appearing to speak to Brasidas, but now he couldn’t help himself. He nodded emphatically, and his right fist smashed into his left hand. ‘To see who is best,’ he said simply.

I went to sleep and dreamed of Herakles. I remember it well. Herakles was striding the earth, with the club on his shoulder, and he was coming to Olympia to compete. It was a beautiful dream and it was followed by another that had Gorgo, naked, riding a horse.

I don’t need a priest to interpret either.

I awoke and went to piss, again, and again I passed from anger to joy at the very early morning and the camp. I was used to the smell. There was a gentle sea breeze creeping up the valley, and I dropped my chiton and ran. My old wound hurt — it was my third day of running — but I was determined, and I ground along the river.

After six stades or so, my right ankle began to hurt. By my tenth stade, it hurt a great deal.

It is one thing to endure pain, and another thing to fear real injury. Most men can endure enormous pain if they know the consequence. What makes you a coward is the fear — the fear of permanent injury, laming, rupture, loss.

My ankle didn’t look bad, but I moved farther from the stream, into the meadow where the ground was softer.

It grew worse.

Gorgo rode round the bend in the valley, her horse at a dead gallop. I knew her immediately, because she was a woman on a horse with no clothes on, and there simply couldn’t be so many of them. Even at the Olympics.

I forgot my ankle. This is how simple the male animal is. I forgot my ankle and flew.

Well. I thought that I flew.

She reined in by me. ‘Arimnestos, if I didn’t know that you had taken that wound fighting the Persians at Lades, I’d say that you were the most shameful runner I’d seen in many years.’

I grinned, suddenly delighted to have an excuse to stop.

‘I see that in one way, at least, the Spartans are like other Greeks,’ I said.

Gorgo shrugged. She backed her horse a step. ‘How is that?’ she asked.

‘Women are more talkative than men,’ I said.

She laughed. ‘Shall I leave you to hobble home, then, Plataean?’ she asked. ‘I had not taken you for the sort who prefer to pretend that women have no wits.’

I stopped and laughed. ‘No. But no man likes to be told he hobbles, when once he was young and fleet. Achilles never hobbled.’ I held up a hand like a pankrationist who submits. ‘Spare me, Queen! I’ll walk by your side and endure your jests. Truly, my ankle is killing me.’

If she offered me any sympathy I didn’t see it. ‘You speak Persian,’ she said.

‘It is true.’ Unbidden, the phrase ‘nice tits’, often used by Persian soldiers in Ephesus, came to mind. I turned my head to hide my smile.

She nodded. ‘You have many friends inside the border of the empire?’ she asked.

‘And a few enemies,’ I admitted. It is very, very difficult not to posture in front of an attractive woman. Luckily, she was above me on a horse.

We went along in companionable silence for a stade.

‘I gather from my husband that I can welcome you to our League,’ she said.

‘League?’ I asked.

‘The conspiracy to save Greece,’ she said.

I stopped and bowed as I would to a priestess. She was — hard to explain — like a priestess of Greece, if Greece were a goddess.

‘I wonder if you would consider. .’ she began, and then frowned.

It was deliberate. I saw through it, because I knew women — not all women, but a woman like Gorgo. I knew Briseis. This was a woman used to getting her way from strong men — not by flaunting her sex, but by using her mind. The body was there to be admired, but it was only the bait.

Nor did I imagine that the wife of the King of Sparta was. . licentious. I can be a boy of nineteen with Briseis, but I am not utterly a fool. Gorgo wanted something.

It pleased me to play the Spartan, and walk along the valley with her, and act as if I hadn’t heard her.

The camp came into sight.

‘How did you come to count Brasidas among your friends?’ she asked.

I thought this was a digression, but I liked the way it led. At least she had named him. ‘I found him at liberty on the dockside of Syracusa,’ I said. ‘I needed a good man to captain my marines.’ In truth, I had a good man in Alexandros. Brasidas was more like a force of nature.

She smiled. ‘My husband hates him,’ she said. ‘Although it might be said that Brasidas hates my husband, as well.’

She smiled at me, daring me — I thought — to ask.

I had a hard time reading her age. But if Leonidas was fifty, she was thirty — with the body of a twenty-year-old. And the mind of an ephor — always scheming. Later I learned that she had one of the better spy networks in the Greek world, and when she and Cimon became allies, they, together, had the best information networks anywhere — equal to that of the Great King or the temple at Delphi.

I wasn’t going to ask. You learn early, as a commander, that you do not want to know. If they tell you, well and good. If they choose not to tell you — well and good. And time saved, sometimes.

She shook her head. ‘I gather you are immune to my charms,’ she said.

I smiled up at her. ‘I don’t think your charms are on offer, Queen of Sparta? Or am I to imagine myself the new Paris — and seize you and carry you to my ship?’

She laughed and made an attractive face — pretending fear. ‘It sounds exciting,’ she said.

I shook my head. ‘Look how it came out for them,’ I said.

She laughed again. Gorgo’s laugh was like Leonidas’s voice — sharp, incisive, no quarter asked or given. ‘And yet I hear you are a great lover of women?’ she said. ‘I told the king I could wrap you around my finger.’

‘Did you?’ I asked — flattered, in a way.

‘I tend to melt Greek men,’ she said, without immodesty.

‘I am melted,’ I said. ‘If my ankle didn’t hurt, I’d. .’

I met her eyes. There was something deadly serious there. The witty flirtation wasn’t right.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve missed the tone. May I help you and the king in some way?’

We went along for half a stade.

‘I wonder if you would consider,’ she asked carefully, ‘taking a pair of Spartan heralds to the Great King?’

‘To Persia?’ I asked. I was. . shocked.

She sighed. ‘I have handled this badly.’

‘Brother, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost,’ Cimon said when I hobbled back to camp. By then, my ankle was swollen. ‘You’ve talked to Gorgo?’

That snapped me out of my state. ‘What do you know?’ I asked.

Cimon shrugged. ‘Quite a bit,’ he admitted.

‘Poseidon, Cimon, if the Spartans are sending heralds to Persia, Athens is doomed.’ I couldn’t stop myself from saying it.

Cimon raised an eyebrow. ‘Arimnestos, sometimes you do sound like a provincial hick and not like a cosmopolitan man of the world. Leonidas is the heir of Cleomenes and his aggressive foreign policy. He’s unlikely to submit to Persia.’ He looked at me and smiled. ‘Is he?’

I had to admit that he had a point — and I knew enough to know that the cunning son of wily Miltiades would know more than I about what was going on. ‘Gorgo just asked me to take the Spartan heralds to Susa,’ I said. ‘And to use my good offices with the Satrap of Phrygia to see them well treated.’

Cimon scratched under his chin. ‘Yes. Well, you do speak Persian.’ He looked away. And then back. ‘Do you trust me?’ he asked.

I smiled. I remember thinking of all the things about Miltiades that I hated, and those I loved. ‘I’d be very careful of you if we were talking about Athenian politics,’ I said. ‘Outside of that — yes.’

Cimon grinned. ‘No offence taken, Plataean. So — will you accept for the moment that I’m a member of the war party?’

I suppose I shrugged. As he was the leader of the conservatives who wanted war with Persia, it was not a sensible question. ‘Of course.’

He sat back on his elbow, his long, aristocratic legs stretched towards my fire. ‘You know what it will mean if the Great King actually marches — yes?’

I probably frowned. I do now. ‘Yes. Hundreds of thousands of men marching over Greece and a ten-year war to push them out.’ I nodded. ‘Yes. It will be horrible.’

Cimon said softly, ‘It will be the end of Greece as we think of Greece.’ He waved a hand in the direction of the stadium and the hippodrome. ‘They will cast down our temples and burn our cities and cut down our olive trees — destroy a generation of farmers, and loot us until we are even poorer than we are now.’ He paused. ‘And that’s what will happen if we win.’

‘If it is a land war,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Your bridge — over the Hellespont — that idea frightens me, because I think. . I think it’s true. I didn’t believe you at first. Now — I can see it. A roadbed laid over sixty or seventy triremes.’

‘Two hundred,’ I said. ‘It’d take two hundred triremes to bridge the Hellespont.’ I laughed. ‘Think of it as two hundred ships we won’t be facing.’

‘None of them will take the pirate’s way and fight the Persians down at their end of the sea,’ Cimon said. ‘And when we suggest it, all they see is two men who will make their fortunes-’

‘I already have my fortune,’ I said.

‘As do I,’ Cimon muttered. ‘But. .’ he paused.

I waited.

I remember that Hector came out of his cloak, and brought us wine, and I remember that Cimon stopped talking altogether while the boy waited on us. And that told me a great deal.

Finally he pursed his lips grimly. ‘The ultimate in forward strategy is to go to the Great King directly — and see if something can be done short of war.’

I sat back, deflated. ‘We surrender?’

Cimon looked at me as if I were a fool. I had had a long day and too much wine and I suppose I was. I know a great deal about war, thugater, and one thing I know is that war is always bad. Good for broken fools and pirates and beautiful for young men who fear to be thought cowards. Horrible for women and children and everyone else.

It is one of the harshest truths that, in youth, the things you value — revenge, bloody honour, retaliation on your foes, manly prowess — as you grow older, you learn how hollow they are. Revenge? For the weak. Strong men have other things to do with their time — like live, till the ground, make babies, worship the gods. What is Arete? Are you excellent when you have another man’s life on your blade?

I think not. And I have taken more lives than most men.

Cimon drew a bloody picture that night, as the Great Bear sailed over our heads — a picture of our world in flames. And the excellence that made us what we are — as sailors, as bronzesmiths, as athletes — even as warriors — burned away in the hot fire. With nothing left but the ability to fight — not like Greeks, but like desperate slaves.

Finally he shook his long hair. ‘If they come — I will fight with my fortune and my hands. But better if they don’t come.’

I nodded.

‘How do we stop them?’ I said, convinced.

‘We prepare for war,’ he said. ‘And we appear as powerful, and as united, as we may. Only a strong front and the threat of a real fight will give the Great King reason to hesitate. And a good offer.’

It was my turn to scratch my beard and think.

‘The new Great King — Xerxes — is young. We hear he is very. . emotional.’ Cimon looked at me.

I shrugged. Artapherenes and Cyrus hadn’t so much as mentioned him. My impression is that they didn’t think much of him and had probably backed another contender. No one came to Cyrus the Great’s throne without blood on his hands, and Xerxes killed his brothers to get to the throne — as was usual in the East. And, of course, contemptible to us.

‘Are Persians religious?’ Cimon asked me.

I frowned. ‘Of course. Why ask me? You know as many Persians as I do!’

Cimon shook his head. ‘I wish I did. I didn’t grow up with them, and the Persian renegades at my father’s court were not the men you describe. Renegades are seldom the true representatives of their culture — eh?’

I sipped wine and watched the fire. ‘In truth, Cimon, their best men are very like our best men. Despite the stupid trousers.’

Cimon nodded. ‘It will be dawn all too soon. I’ll make my point. And Gorgo’s. Do you remember Marathon year?’

I laughed. ‘Isn’t that a foolish question?’

‘I prefer to think of it as a rhetorical question. You recall the Persian envoys?’ He looked at me and I winced. ‘I don’t — but I have heard they were killed — in Athens and in Sparta.’

Cimon nodded. ‘Cleomenes ordered them thrown in a well. You must know the story.’

I did.

‘Most Spartiates believe he committed an act of gross impiety and that the gods are very angry at Sparta. I could list you off a dozen things the gods have withheld from Sparta — four bad harvests, a dozen minor failings, a bad earthquake. .’ I was about to speak, but he held up his hand. ‘Spartans are very religious, Arimnestos. Never, ever doubt it. I’ve been in and out of their messes all my adult life. There is nothing about superstition and religious observance that a Spartan doesn’t believe.’

I nodded. Brasidas was a case in point. As usual. It put another face on his exile — of course, he was also cut off from full religious observance. I thought about that a moment, and lost the thread of Cimon’s discourse.

‘At any rate,’ he said, ‘the Spartans believe they are under a curse because of the murder of the heralds.’ He leaned forward. ‘One of the greatest signs of the displeasure of the gods is that Sparta has not won a single athletic event — not at the Isthmian games, not at Nemea, and not here — since the murder of the heralds. So — in the great sacrifice tomorrow, Leonidas will swear an oath to send his own heralds to the Great King — to do with as he pleases. Cleomenes is dead, but Leonidas may — I do not know — offer to send the Great King the men who killed his heralds.’

‘A symbolic act short of submission,’ I said. ‘No earth and water, but-’

‘And an act of piety to Zeus, showing that Sparta will atone for the stain. What is worse than the murder of heralds, sacred to Hermes and Zeus?’ Cimon nodded.

I shook my head. ‘I should sleep,’ I said. ‘There are too many secrets — Aphrodite, Cimon — and someone is throwing sling stones at Polypeithes!’ I got up.

Cimon understood at once. ‘Polypeithes’ injury was. . the act of a man?’ he asked. ‘Son of a whore.’ He looked away. ‘That chariot is the best chance the Spartans have to win the laurel here. And we need them to win, Arimnestos. We need the old, conservative Spartiates to back Leonidas. Because Sparta has a pro-Persian party. .’

I nodded. ‘Of course. There’s a King of Sparta living at the Persian court!’ I got it all, now. It was, as a plot, essentially Greek. It was as if Aeschylus were writing us our doom. The Spartans were the greatest military power in Greece. We all required them. And their house was deeply divided — Hades, Cleomenes only murdered the heralds to make it impossible for his rival king Demaratus to make peace!

Round and round. Plot within plot. Consequence within consequence.

Just the way we had been before Lades, when the Persians destroyed us and a third of our fleet defected.

I spat. ‘We’re contemptible,’ I said. ‘Not just the fucking Spartans. We’ll fight among ourselves and plot for our own ends and the Persians will march in here and eat us.’

Cimon got up, too. ‘Perhaps, and perhaps not, brother. But tonight, at the sacrifice, Leonidas will promise to send his heralds. As Delphi advised him. And they have asked you to take them — all the way to Susa if I have my way.’ Cimon shrugged. ‘And then, if one of the Spartan athletes can manage a win, I’d say we were on the way.’

‘And someone here is trying to stop us,’ I said.

Cimon shrugged. ‘Not someone,’ he said. ‘Almost everyone.’

Too little sleep and too much wine. And a throbbing ankle, so I couldn’t run. I needed exercise, and I walked out through the camp just after dawn. Slaves and poor men were cooking, and the rich were standing about looking tousled, or lying at ease in their blankets.

It was the great day. The day of the opening of the games, when we would all participate in the greatest set of sacrifices in the Greek world — more than a hundred oxen, all simultaneously on the vast altars. I could hear the beasts lowing, and I could smell them.

Walking doesn’t heal a man the way running may, and it doesn’t affect his essential daemon in the same way — taking a man to a greater height of spirit, I mean. I wanted a run. Instead, I had a hobble.

Nor did I see Gorgo, although I confess that I went closer and closer to the well-ordered Lacedaemonian camp and I suppose I had my reasons.

At the edge of the camp were twenty Spartiates, naked in the dawn. All of them had their sword-belts on. Every one of them had a chlamys over his left arm. They stood like statues, and then one of them — there was no obvious leader — barked a single syllable. It sounded very strange to me — not a Greek word at all.

Twenty hands went to twenty scabbards. Their swords — their short stabbing swords — appeared in their hands as if by magic, and as they drew, they cut — overhand, the blade rising up the body and flickering past each man’s left ear and out — like the tongue of an adder — as their right foot glided forward, flat to the ground.

I had seen Brasidas practise the same movement. In fact, I had played with it myself. But I had never seen it done by twenty Spartiates.

‘He!’ grunted the leader.

The end of the down cut became a wrist rotation — a stomp of the right foot — and twenty swords thrust, point first.

‘He!’

Every man pivoted on his hips and pushed with his aspis — in this case, each man used his chlamys draped over his left arm as if it were an aspis. I could see the attack — as a strong man steps with his left foot, he can slam the rim of his shield into you like a second sword. As a weapon, the rim of an aspis can break an arm or a leg or crush a skull.

The shield-thrust covered the flicker of the short sword up into an arc over each man’s head. .

‘He!’

The swords whispered down, this time on a steep angle that would have cut from eyebrow to hip, right to left — the opposite cut from the first cut. Every blade made a hissing sound passing through the air. Go and try it. Take a Laconian blade and try to make it whistle through the air. See how much strength and fine control it takes.

‘He!’

Every man cut up, into the adversary’s thigh and his manhood, the blade reaching under the locked shields.

‘He!’ he grunted, and twenty hands returned twenty blades to the scabbard. No one looked or fumbled or used their left hand — of course, you can’t, with an aspis on your arm.

I can do that. A lifetime of practice. I’m a professional warrior and I can, on a dark night or with my eyes closed, put my sword back into the scabbard under my arm without pinking my own breast or fumbling.

But every Spartan could do it — even the young man of twenty who was running against Astylos.

When they were done they were all still for a moment, and then they relaxed and became human — one man stretched an arm and laughed, and another murmured something and the three men nearest smiled.

A middle-aged man glanced at me, frowned — and looked back. He snapped his fingers and his helot ran to his side, and he pointed at me.

The helot ran all the way to my elbow. ‘Sir — move along. Please. No trouble, sir — these gentlemen do not want an audience.’

I smiled at the helot. ‘Then they shouldn’t practise in a field at the Olympics.’

The helot didn’t even take a full breath. He stepped in and put a hand on my shoulder. .

And I threw him.

He rolled. Rose easily to his feet, and nodded. Almost companionably. He wasn’t angry. It was as if he was saying, ‘Nothing personal.’

He came at me again, now bouncing slightly on his toes.

My hands came up in a pankration stance and he reached to grab them — like lightning, let me add.

Well.

I stepped under his grab — passed my arm across his neck and swept his legs. He was a trained man, but not a really well-trained man.

To be fair, he was the best-trained slave I’d faced outside of Italy.

Now I had his arms. I put a knee deep in his armpit and he couldn’t move. He was face down, and his left arm was hyper-extended.

‘Ready to walk away?’ I asked.

‘No!’ he shouted, and tried to flip. Which must have hurt his arm. He screamed with rage — and pain — and still couldn’t overcome his position.

‘If you keep trying, you will dislocate your shoulder,’ I said. I blessed Polymarchos for showing me this wonderful pin. I’d expected to use it on drunken friends, but the helot was the perfect target.

Once more he bellowed — and he got enough purchase with his hip that for a moment, I thought he was going to make it off the ground — and then his shoulder gave.

‘He has to keep trying,’ said a low voice. I knew that two Spartans had come out of the group — I was very aware of them, and their swords.

‘He knows he’d be killed if he showed fear or gave up,’ the other said, conversationally.

‘Why don’t you tell him to stop trying?’ I asked.

‘Why?’ he replied.

I stood up suddenly, stepped cleanly away from the helot — even desperately injured, he made a grab at my leg — and turned to face the two naked Spartans.

‘Why don’t you go away when you are not wanted?’ the nearer man asked.

‘I don’t take orders well — especially from slaves. And rude men who are their masters.’ I dusted some sand off my chiton. ‘I am interested in your Pyricche.’

‘Leave him, Bulis,’ the bigger man said to the handsomer. ‘He’s some troublemaker.’

Bulis — I assumed that was his name — stepped inside what I would call my comfort zone — the girdle around me where a man can kill me.

I raised my left hand slightly to catch his eye, and succeeded. My intention was to take his sword out of his scabbard with my right hand. His was to strike me with his right hand.

It would not have gone well for one of us.

‘Arimnestos!’ called a woman’s voice. ‘Hades, Bulis, are you a complete arse!’

The Spartan paused.

As soon as he began to step back, I stepped back.

My hands were shaking.

So were the Spartan’s.

For a moment, I couldn’t think. I had been. . there.

So had he.

‘You know the queen?’ he said.

‘And the king,’ I added.

Bulis took a deep breath.

Gorgo — fully dressed, may I add — appeared just out of our range. ‘Bulis?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘I thought he was an arrogant piss-ant of a xenos, but I gather he’s another of your friends,’ he said.

‘He’s Arimnestos of Plataea,’ the bigger man said. He smiled. He was older — almost forty — and had wide-set eyes and was missing a third of his front teeth. His missing teeth made my name sound exotic.

Bulis smiled — not the reaction I’d expected — and raised his eyes to the gods — and his hands. ‘Ares’ balls, sir. My apology.’

The helot was trying not to whimper.

The man missing the teeth knelt by his side, felt his shoulder and then — without any hesitation, and as fast as the strike of a snake — cut his throat, the draw from the scabbard flawless, the blade pulled across the helot’s throat as if he were a human sacrifice, and just like that, the man was dead.

‘He was a brave one,’ he said, as he carefully wiped the blood off with the dead man’s chiton. Then he poured oil from a flask — an arybollos, an exercise flask — and cleaned the blade and oiled it.

Spartans.

Gorgo put her hand on my arm. I think that she — as a woman — understood non-Spartans better than the men, and had — because she so often accompanied Leonidas — got an idea of what the rest of Greece thought about Sparta.

‘He was badly injured,’ she said calmly. ‘And might never have been able to work again.’

‘And you declare war on them every spring,’ I said. I knew a few things about Sparta. Every spring, the ephors reminded Spartans to shave their moustaches — and to remember the war against the helots. The Spartans have a secret military organisation — like our religious bodies — to track and kill any helot whom they deem ready to revolt. They act quite regularly. They killed helots. In the night, in secret.

‘Every man is at war with his slave,’ she said. ‘In Sparta, we tell the truth about it.’

I nodded. ‘That, I understand, Despoina.’

She smiled. ‘This is Bulis, son of Nicalaos. This brute without teeth is Sparthius, the son of Aneristus. Both front-rank men.’ She nodded, and both men stepped forward. ‘Spartiates, this is Arimnestos of Plataea. He is the man we have asked to transport you to the Great King.’

Sparthius had the good grace to groan and turn his head. Bulis smiled again. His eyes were a little mad. He reminded me of Idomeneaus in many ways.

‘Well, now that they’ve tried to threaten me, I suppose we can all be friends.’ I smiled at Bulis.

He didn’t move. ‘I never threaten,’ he said. ‘Threats are for the weak. There is only fight and not-fight.’

And again, there we were.

Gorgo sighed. ‘It is a wonder women agree to mate with you,’ she said. ‘Bulis. .’

He bowed, elaborately. And backed up three steps. ‘I make the Plataean uncomfortable,’ he said. ‘I’ll speak to him from a safe range.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I can’t hear you.’

Sparthius laughed, a great booming laugh. ‘We’re going to be together on a ship? Delightful. I will learn so much. Bulis — heel, boy!’ He mimed jerking a leash.

Bulis shook his head at me. ‘No.’

‘No what?’ Sparthius asked.

Bulis came for me.

He came from three paces away, which is a long way in a fight. He was naked, and wearing a sword. I was wearing a chiton, but no sword. I think he was so contemptuous of my skills that he gave me three steps.

I was ready. He hadn’t ever given a sign that he was turning off the fight — hence, I hadn’t stopped being aware of him.

I don’t usually kick, but he had long arms like an African ape and I didn’t want to try him in a grapple — at least, not right away. I snapped a kick at his shin and pivoted and he reached with both hands.

My kick caught some of his shin and changed his balance, and his reaching hands caught my chiton at the pins but his balance was already compromised and I punched and he blocked and then we were circling. He had mostly ripped my chiton away.

Sparthius was swearing.

Gorgo just stepped back. I didn’t see her, but I suspect that she had the look on her face that women wear when men behave like children.

I was aware that all the Spartans were now watching.

He had long arms, and he was quite content to box. He threw a flurry and I backed away. He threw another flurry — four punches in each. I turned. He threw another flurry. .

I tried to catch his left fist as it came towards me — the last punch in the third flurry. I missed, but my weight was committed, and we were locked in a grapple. His right hand went for my eyes.

They do that, in Sparta.

I passed my hands inside his and pushed his right elbow up and went for the throw, and he pivoted — Hades, he was fast — and tried to pass an arm around my waist. I raised my knee as if to strike his balls and my right fist backhanded him across the nose and I was away.

His smile didn’t falter, and he didn’t back up a step. His nose gushed blood.

I feinted a punch and kicked again. Again, I caught a piece of his shin — this time it was a better kick, and he had to back away, and I rotated, stepped forward and punched hard, forcing him back another step and then. .

I went for him. It was my best flurry — punch, punch, kick. The kick was a point-blank kick I got from Polymarchos, and unless you are a titan, you back away from a flurry.

He took one more step. .

. . and went down over the cooling body of the helot.

I had planned it, so the moment he went backwards I leaped like a predator and was atop him. I caught his attempt to get a knee between my legs but the blow to my parts still stunned me — but my arm was across his throat and I had his right wrist.

He punched me with his left. It was like being hit with an axe.

I have been hit by an axe.

I pushed my right thumb up under his jaw.

Like the helot, he did not submit. He slammed his left into me — again.

I saw stars.

I really didn’t want to kill him. It seemed. . unwise.

But I didn’t really have another choice, and I didn’t need another blow to my temple, so I shoved my thumb. .

His whole body went limp.

I waited perhaps ten heartbeats and then staggered to my feet.

I swayed.

And sat heavily. The world was swimming all around me.

Bulis hit hard — and that was his left hand.

No one applauded, but then, no one gutted me while I sat and breathed. My chiton was ruined — ripped from me early and now a rag on the ground. I picked it up and began to wipe myself down.

Bulis stirred.

I had hoped he was merely unconscious, but unlike many other things I’ve learned from fighting masters over the years, I had never actually used the thumb to the throat to put a man out. There’s learning and then doing.

He coughed, rolled over, and threw up.

All the Spartans laughed.

While they were laughing, I tried to get up again, and I did better. My head hurt, but not with that feverish feeling that goes with concussion.

‘Well fought,’ Gorgo said.

‘He’s hardly our best,’ Sparthius said. ‘But Bulis is not bad. I’d say you were his match.’

‘An even match,’ Calliteles said. He stepped forward from the ring of onlookers — Spartans and helots. ‘An even match in skill, but not in cunning.’ He looked at the gathered Spartiates. ‘How often do I tell you that a fight is what it is? There is no “unfair”. Arimnestos saw the body and used it. Bulis should have known it was there.’

He had been an Olympian — the best wrestler in the world. I assumed he taught them.

Gorgo narrowed her eyes. ‘You knew he was coming for you,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You might have tried to dissuade him,’ she said.

I managed to raise an eyebrow. ‘Dissuade a Spartan from violence?’ I asked.

‘We’re not Ares mad,’ she said. ‘We are a race of warriors, not a race of murderers. You might have. . smiled.’

‘Backed up a step or two?’ I asked. ‘Perhaps I might have sent him a couple of heralds.’

She sighed.

I bowed politely to her and to Calliteles. ‘If you’ll pardon me, Spartans — I thank you for my morning’s exercise.’

A helot produced a strigil. And an oil bottle.

Well — a gesture is a gesture. And Spartans love them. So I strigiled the dust and dirt and sweat off, scraping carefully, taking my time, and I oiled myself, while Bulis lay, barely able to move his lips. Then I handed the tools back to the slave and smiled my thanks.

My head swam from time to time — I had waves of dizziness, and then, suddenly, I’d be better. I put my hand to the side of my head and found that the left temple was mushy with blood.

I used my now-ruined chiton to fix that.

‘I feel like a new man,’ I said, lying. ‘Anyone else?’

Gorgo’s hand went up in front of my face as if to strike me. ‘He does not mean that!’ she said, as they all stepped forward. ‘He is not challenging you. He does not know our ways.’

They looked disappointed.

Zeus, the Agoge must be something.

A little after noon, everyone — all free men, that is — begin to gather in the sacred enclosure. I wore a good himation — it was a formal occasion, after all. I led all my rowers — all free men, and with Draco’s permission, cheerfully given — suddenly all Plataean citizens and thus eligible to attend. My head hurt.

Most of my oarsmen didn’t even have a himation, but some did, and I put them in front, and we formed a contingent with old Draco and Styges and the two other Plataeans, both competitors — Antimenides, son of Alcaeus of Miletus who fell at Marathon, and Teucer, son of Teucer of Miletus, who also fell at Marathon. We went together to the stadium with twenty thousand other men, and then we processed to the temple.

At the temple precinct, an old priest was standing with Empedocles. Empedocles pointed me out, and the priest of Zeus pushed his way over to me. He was a man of Elis — older, but very fit, and clearly very rich from the gold chain he wore as a zone.

‘Arimnestos of Plataea?’ he asked.

I nodded. ‘Reverend sir?’

He nodded. ‘Empedocles of Thebes tells me you are a servant of Hephaestus, an initiate of the highest degree.’

I bowed. ‘I have that honour,’ I acknowledged.

‘Empedocles says that you are the right man to make the sacrifice for Hephaestus. Indeed, we have six bulls for the smith god, and only three men to make the cuts.’

Empedocles had made his way to us — he was old enough that men would actually be polite and move aside for him.

‘I’m a little old to swing the sword myself,’ he said. ‘But I’ll say the words. You make the cuts for me.’ He met my eye with a mischievous glint. ‘There are not so many initiates of Hephaestos who can swing a sword, eh?’ he asked.

‘No, sir. Mostly we make them,’ I said.

Both priests laughed.

I turned to Hector. ‘Run and fetch the Raven’s Claw,’ I said. It was one of my first weapons — a heavy kopis, not long, but curved down like the beak of a big raven or any raptor, and sharp as flint.

The boy must have sprinted all the way to the tents. He came back scarcely able to breathe, bursting with pride. That pleased me — hard to say just why.

I took the sword and put the cord over my shoulder, and followed the priests out of the procession — or rather, to the front. There, the hundred or so men who would commit the sacrifices walked in splendour. It was almost the only occasion throughout the world when a man might wear a sword in public with a himation.

I was glad I’d worn so dignified a garment as a himation. I was in the same rank as the King of Sparta, and he smiled and winked as I was placed between two other Boeotians. The men around me were mostly hereditary priests, with a sprinkling of professionals — great aristocrats and powerful men. There, for example, was Adamenteis of Corinth, next to Leonidas.

It is, of course, an enormous honour to be asked to give a sacrifice at Olympia.

Just for a moment, I thought of my dead wife, Euphonia, who had been an aristocrat’s daughter in Attika, and who would have loved to know that her bronzesmith husband would sacrifice alongside Aristides of Athens — five men to my left — and the Agiad King of Sparta.

I hadn’t thought of her — just as a person, not an object of grief — in years. The thought of her simple pleasure in my achievement made me. . stronger. It was itself a gift from Aphrodite. I was not afraid. I was the husband of noble Euphonia, and I had every right to sacrifice in public as a priest of Hephaestus.

And something inside me healed.

We marched to the sound of flutes and horns, and we climbed the great steps.

Friends — what is life?

It is not the edge of the sword.

It is not all forbidden love and piracy.

That night — climbing the steps of the great temple of Zeus at Olympia with Leonidas of Sparta on my right and Aristides of Athens on my left — with Themistocles and Lykon of Corinth and a hundred other men I didn’t know as well — with a sea of torches going back across the plain to the stadium and the camp — going to sacrifice to the immortal gods. .

I was with Greece.

Friends, this is hard to say. Someday, I will die.

Every man who was there will die. Most are long since dead.

All our children, all our wives, all our slaves. All will die.

But this must never die.

Why did we fight the Persians?

So that, rather than one man walking alone into his temple to sacrifice for his people to his gods — like the Great King. .

So that all men might walk into their temples and sacrifice to their gods. Together. Quarrelling about precedence and complaining about the mosquitoes, all the way.

That is Greece.

I was elated, but my hands shook.

Bulls are enormous.

Leonidas of Sparta sacrificed the first animal. By right of kingship, he was the senior priest of Zeus present. He raised his hands, no sword visible, and made the great prayer to Zeus.

And then, in front of twenty thousand Hellenes, he swore to send two hereditary heralds to the Great King. He swore it at the great altar of Olympia. He swore it to make restitution for Sparta’s impiety. He didn’t say as much, but there was a collective gasp as he recited his prayers, asking for the forgiveness of great Zeus, god of kngs and kingship, and Hermes, god of heralds and messengers.

I happened to catch sight of Adamenteis of Corinth at that moment. I marked him down as a Medizer. He glared at the Spartan king with unconcealed hatred.

If Leonidas saw him, he gave nothing away. With all Greece watching, the Agiad King of Sparta walked up to his animal — all white, as tall as his shoulder — and he placed his left hand on the animal, and it stopped calling to its mates. It raised its head slightly. .

The sword came from under his arm with the fluidity of water flowing. He never let the bull see the weapon — the sword rose and fell, not two movements but a single beat, and the bull — headless — fell to its knees.

Twenty thousand men roared to Zeus.

Not every man killed as cleanly as the King of Sparta, but every man killed his animal. Aristides — my friend, the priggish man of justice — was the only man to kill his bull as elegantly as Leonidas. He was of an age with the Spartan king, and as an Athenian aristocrat, he’d trained just as hard, and his cut flowed like water from a broken dam — sudden and yet smooth like planished bronze.

And then it was my turn. Forty thousand eyes on me.

I did not attempt to draw and cut like the king. I had my kopis loose in my hand, and raised my arm and rolled my hips and my animal fell to its knees, its head cleanly severed, and there was a roar — a beautiful roar.

Empedocles slapped my back with surprising strength. ‘Beautiful, lad! Now follow me.’

I was. . not quite of the earth. Listen to twenty thousand Greeks roar their prayers to the gods and try to be calm.

He led me past Aristides, who clasped my hand, and past Lykon, who was still waiting his turn and didn’t even see me — well down the line.

To another bull.

I think I grunted. The blow had taken a great deal from me — not just from my sinews, but from my heart.

I said, ‘Another?’ I looked at him. ‘Isn’t there some other man who wishes this honour?’

Empedocles shrugged. ‘For Apollo, we have fifty candidates for every bull. Even for Ares, five. But poor Hephaestus. .’ He smiled. ‘I think the aristocrats feel he’s not clean enough. Too much like a workman.’

I shook my head.

The bull could smell the blood on my blade. He began to move — he was chained by his neck, but he had lots of room. It is always better to kill early in a sacrifice. The later your turn, the more afraid the animals are.

Empedocles leaned over. ‘Eight more to go. No one has failed yet.’

In a mass sacrifice like this, eventually someone fails. A blow is inept, or weak, and the animal is not killed cleanly. It is a bad omen. Not a shocking one — it happens all the time.

But in a great year, no one fails. That is a wonderful omen for the four years to come.

I had killed twelfth. No one had failed by then. Now I was down in the seventies — I couldn’t keep count, and besides, just six places away on the great mound of ash and stone, an animal fell to its knees, head dangling by a thread, and blood gushed hot.

The crowd roared a prayer.

Quite spontaneously, many men — perhaps thousands — had begun singing the paean that all the Greeks sing when they are together. That sound — which I had last heard at Marathon — it raises the hackles on your neck. It is the sound before you commit yourself to death.

And yet, it is the sound that makes us Greek.

Euphonia and her Aphrodite — Hephaestus’ wife, for all she was faithless — they got me through the first bull.

But the paean rose and my chest swelled.

The maddened bull flinched. .

And fell, head cleanly severed, the neck dropping away and the long spurt of blood from the main artery leaping from the still-living heart.

I have no memory of the moments in between, but I swear — I swear — that Hephaestus entered into me for those moments.

The paean swept on, roared by ten thousand voices.

I looked to the left. There were just six bulls to go on my side — six men. Even as I watched, the closest man to me made his cut beautifully, and the bull went to its knees, already dead, and the man wore the same look of elation I think I must have worn.

At the end of the row — the last man on my side — was a thin man, a mere stick figure. He was clearly afraid. It showed in his shoulders and his neck and jaw.

There was nothing I could do.

Third from the end cut, and his beast went down as if hit by an axe.

The smell of blood was everywhere, the roar of twenty thousand Greek men like waves of the sea on a stormy day, and the fires on the altars suddenly leapt as if the gods themselves inhabited them as a great gust of wind struck the fires.

The next man cut. I thought he’d failed — he certainly didn’t behead his beast, and the animal seemed to turn its head aggressively — but then, with the grace of the dying, it fell forward and crashed to the floor, and the song went up.

Only the last man, whose arms appeared too thin to kill anything, remained.

As his arm went up, I tried to drive it for him. My hips rolled with his to put power into his stroke. He had a heavy blade. He knew how to use it.

It fell like the stoop of an eagle, and the beast dropped.

Far off to the right, there was another cheer — the two cheers crossed the crowd and met in the centre.

I had thought the song loud before, but presented with the spectacle of a hundred dead bulls — no one had failed — the crowd roared and they were half again as loud as they had ever been.

Temple servants brought us water scented with perfumes, and we washed the sacred blood off our hands — and our blades. A slave handed me a piece of sheepskin dipped in olive oil, and I used it to carefully clean and oil the blade before dropping it back into the scabbard. I must have taken too long, because Themistocles came and slapped me on the back.

‘Two sacrifices in a single event — you must be blessed of the gods,’ he said. He leaned close. ‘Men pay a thousand drachma to be allowed to make a single cut.’

‘Only for the fashionable gods,’ muttered Empedocles.

Themistocles smiled at him. ‘I like your wit, sir. Your accent is from Boeotia?’

‘Not just the accent,’ Empedocles said, and offered his hand.

Aristides came and we embraced. ‘Two cuts!’ He smiled and shook his head. Then, to my surprise, he embraced Themistocles, who returned his hug with every evidence of friendship.

I must have gaped like a peasant, because Aristides laughed.

‘I only hate his foolish politics,’ Aristides said.

Themistocles grimaced. ‘There — something on which we can agree!’

The athletes processed into the temple — mostly they came by event, but not all; a few famous men came first, to the maddened applause of the crowd, and then the boys — the young boxers and pankrationists and runners. They would be the first to compete.

After the boys — who were cheered as much for their beauty, as such things are reckoned, as for their coming fame — after them came the charioteers. They wore the long chitons that chariot drivers have worn for two hundred years, and the Cyreneian gleamed like polished stone, and the Spartan, Polypeithes, seemed steady enough, which pleased me.

After the charioteers came all the men who would ride horses, and then the handful of athletes — at least that year — who would compete in the pentathlon. Now, different men hold different events to be the most important — most aristocrats believe the chariot racing is the central event, because of old Pelops and the story of his chariot — most hoplite-class men prefer the running events, and many men prefer the pankration. The new race in armour — this was only the fifth time it would be run — was gaining tremendously in popularity with active soldiers — this is before men started using lightened shields and greaves as thin as parchment.

But the pentathlon is the best event. The men who win it are not just good at one thing, they are good at five things — running, throwing a discus, throwing a javelin, wrestling, and long jump — and all are each difficult events. A man who can do all five is a great athlete.

Once, before my leg wound, I could run. I’ve always been able to wrestle. My javelin-throwing is average at best, but average among men who are excellent. I have thrown a discus well enough to place with experts — but I cannot execute a good long jump. I have tried with and without weights, on sand, on dirt. .

Never mind. I love to watch it, and I think the men who win are the greatest of all athletes.

After the pentathletes came the men who would run the foot races — the stadion, the diaulos, the long, brutal dolichos — and then the combat athletes, the boxers, wrestlers and pankrationists (wild applause), and finally the warriors from the last event that would occur on day four, the run in armour, the hoplitodromos.

And at the end, a trio of priests — the men who would officiate at the closing ceremonies and herald the next team of men of Elis who would prepare the temples and the city for the next Olympiad.

The high priest and the men of Elis led the athletes in swearing their oaths to the gods — they swore by Zeus to uphold the rules, to play with fairness in spirit as well as law, to act in such a way as to bring pleasure to the god.

Many of us made the oath with them.

And the flames rose into the gathering night, and the first sacrifices were thrown on the great fires, and the Olympics had begun.

The dawn of the second day saw the boys’ events begin. It was a good day — full of heartbreak for some, such as the young boy from Crete who broke his arm from sheer exuberance and high spirits and missed his wrestling event — and full of wonderful drama, such as Epicradios of Mantinea’s incredible win against much larger boys in boxing. He was as nimble as an Egyptian cat, and as quick, and in every fight he dodged and twisted and manoeuvred — and then suddenly his catlike one-two would lick out, and he’d be another step closer to victory. And when they put the laurel on his brow, he burst into tears.

Simonides wrote a poem about him, which we all heard that night at the fires. We ate beef — there was a lot of beef around, after the killing of a hundred bulls, and we had another hundred to go — and Aeschylus composed an epigram in his honour, and the boy wandered from fire to fire with his father and his trainer — he was the day’s hero, and everyone wanted to applaud him.

I sat with Megakles and Leukas and Sekla and Aristides and Cimon — an odd mixture of races and classes, but that’s the Olympics for you — and we toasted the boy and a dozen more, and finally I turned to Aristides when the newly famous athletes had passed my free wine and my fire, and said -

‘I hear a rumour you are threatened with exile,’ and smiled to take out the sting.

He shrugged. ‘I have been on the verge of exile since first I raised my voice in the assembly,’ he said.

‘Men call you Aristides the Just!’ I said. ‘Why does Themistocles seek your exile? Why is anyone else foolish enough to vote for it?’

He drank. And smiled. ‘Perhaps Jocasta seeks a rest from wearisome guests who prate endlessly about politics!’ he said.

Cimon leaned forward. ‘Last year, Themistocles put it to the vote — ostracism for Aristides. And he had the nerve to do it while Aristides was serving on the boule — standing right there, counting the votes. This thes — this lower-class arsehole — comes up and asks Aristides to help him write a name on the ostricon — the shards of pottery we use as voting slips. . Do you know what I’m talking about, Plataean?’

‘We vote, even in boorish Plataea,’ I said. No one likes being patronised, even by great men.

‘You are spending too much time with the Spartans. So this fellow is illiterate, a potter or a vase painter of something, and he says, “Help me write Aristides.”’

We all laughed.

Aristides looked at the fire, as men do when annoyed.

‘And,’ Cimon went on, laughing so hard he was spitting, ‘and old Aristides here scratches his own name, just as deep and easy as if it had been Themistocles, eh?’ He laughed. ‘And when he’s done, he says, “What do you have against Aristides, sir?” to the fellow, who clearly has no clue who he is.’

You must imagine that by this time we’re all roaring with laughter.

‘And the man shakes his head and says, “I don’t know who in Hades he is, but everyone calls him ‘the just’ and that makes me feel unjust, and I hate him!”’

I spat my wine. It wasn’t that Cimon’s story was so funny — I mean, it was, but it’s a pretty well-known story now — but the way he told it and the agonised expression on Aristides’ face. . Aristides hated being talked about, while his enemy Themistocles loved it.

Hector moved around, pouring more wine, and Aristides raised an eyebrow as if to say if you people are quite finished and drank. ‘As I was saying. .’ he began.

It was something about his priggish air and his aristocratic manner, but that set us all off again, whooping and laughing.

I loved the man — but he could be an arse.

At any rate, when we were all done, he turned to me. ‘Like Cimon, I believe that a naval solution to our problems is possible. Unlike Cimon and Themistocles, I think that such a solution would be a disaster for Greece, almost equal to failing to resist the Medes. We must best the Medes in a fair fight, man to man. Only that way do we prove ourselves worthy of the challenge — and only that way do we hold on to our political rights. If the oarsmen win the day, the oarsmen will be the new hoplites — won’t they?’

Megakles looked away and smiled. Leukas didn’t really understand Aristides’ quick Greek amd Sekla pretended interest in the hem of his chlamys.

But I didn’t. I sat back. Hector gave me a roll of bread with some olive paste and anchovies — a sort of opson-laden snack — and I ate it, and then I shook my head. ‘Cleisthenes gave every Athenian heroic ancestors, didn’t he? If the ships beat the Persians, surely all those thetes-class men will merely prove themselves worthy of the gift they have been given?’

I thought Aristides would snarl, he looked so angry. Cimon grinned.

‘Well put, Plataean. Damn it, I should make you a citizen just to hear you argue with Aristides.’

Aristides frowned. ‘I already have fifty men to do that, thanks.’

Cimon leaned in. ‘Besides, Aristides is rich and from the oldest aristocracy, and Themistocles is rich and from new money, so they are bound to tangle. They represent different interests in every way.’

I looked at Aristides. ‘At the time of Marathon, you were the enemy of any kind of faction.’

Cimon had the good grace to look away.

Aristides nodded. ‘I feel the state is threatened.’ He shrugged. ‘To be fair, so does Themistocles. We agree on many things — but not at all on how to solve them.’ He looked at me. ‘One of us must go. I’m sure it will be me. I promise hard times and hard labours, and he promises free silver and an overseas empire.’ Aristides managed a thin smile. ‘Who would you exile?’

‘You,’ I said. I laughed.

Cimon nodded. ‘But then. .’ He looked around. ‘I know Sekla. Can I trust these others?’

‘I only trust them with my money and my life and my honour,’ I said. ‘Other things you have to be wary about.’

Cimon nodded again. ‘If Aristides is exiled. .’ he began, and Aristides actually reached out and put a restraining hand on him.

‘Not even here,’ he said. ‘Not even to Arimnestos.’

I tried for half an hour to pry the secret out of them, and failed.

We all went to bed.

The third day dawned clear, bright and desperately hot. I went for a good run, my leg hurt me less than usual, and I didn’t see Gorgo. And yes, I was disappointed.

I did run past the Lacedaemonian camp. And Sparthius waved at me, dropped his chiton and joined me for my run. Despite his lack of front teeth, he was a good talker and in top shape, and we ran along the river and he made more conversation than I’d probably heard from Brasidas in a thousand stades of ocean sailing. Mostly about chariot racing.

I left him at his camp before the sun was really hot, bathed in the shallow, clean waters of the river upstream of the temples and the camp, and then walked back and put on a clean linen chiton for the events. And then I went to see the games.

The third day is, in some ways, the first full day. The whole of the pentathlon is performed on the third day, and I watched it — indeed, I devoured it. I’m not sure I can tell you exactly why, but I walked back and forth around the stadium, watching the events — javelin, always my own weakest event, held me riveted to the spot like a hilt to a blade. The races were splendid, and the jumping was felt by many to be the best in twenty years.

No Spartan placed higher than fifth.

All the Spartans tend to sit or stand together in a single block, and they move together — like a taxeis of infantry, really. It can be imposing, until you understand that they feel themselves to be different and, like many different people, they are shy with outsiders. Sparthius, for example, having run with me, showed no reserve at all — he grinned when our eyes met and took my hand. He introduced me to four other men from his mess, and they seemed a pleasant, if silent, crew.

None of them spoke to Brasidas, but then none of them attacked him, either.

I went back to my campfire that night to find that we’d sold all of our wine, that I had a nasty sunburn despite my huge straw hat, and that I still hadn’t had my surfeit of the Olympics. I was in love with the whole thing. I don’t think that I had ever seen so many men demonstrate arete in so many ways. I don’t think I had ever been so proud to be a Greek.

Themistocles, as is often the case, said it best that night. Aristides gave a dinner — note that I could afford to give men free wine, but Aristides could afford to have two hundred men to dinner — and when Themistocles spoke, it was about what it was to be a Greek. He was funny — there are, I promise you, many comic aspects to the Greek race — and sometimes trite or bigoted, but in the end, he said:

‘Look around you, brothers! Where else will you find this — the contest of men against men, for nothing greater than honour — judged not by kings, but only by men like we ourselves. Here we are, at the shrine of the gods, and what we do here — this is who we are.’

He was a little drunk, but I thought it was well said.

And yet — I suspect the Persians said the same, when they raced their horses and shot their bows.

We all lay on rented kline in the oil-lamp-lit darkness and swatted the voracious insects and complained about the wine. I remember I was lying with Cimon, and we were debating whether to press our forward naval plan on Themistocles one more time, when a breeze made the lamps flicker and a group of Spartans approached. I was delighted to find that the young man who wished to speak to me was Polypeithes himself, and that he had made a full recovery.

‘I owe you my life. We take this seriously, in Lacedaemon,’ he said.

It is the special gift of the Spartans to give every utterance a spin that makes other men angry. I was tempted to tell him that we took such things seriously even in Plataea, but he was young and earnest and I merely pressed his hand.

‘Will you race tomorrow, or use a charioteer?’ I asked.

He smiled. ‘Sir, I would rather come in sixth in control of my own team than win the laurel with another’s hands on the reins.’

Cimon applauded. ‘That’s a proper spirit,’ he said. ‘If you go on in this vein, I’ll have to cheer for you and not for Athens.’

While he was perched on my couch, I leaned forward. ‘Any idea who hit you with a sling stone?’

Spartans are dreadful liars. He looked away and said, ‘No!’ and hung his head.

‘Have you spoken to the queen?’ I asked him.

He nodded. ‘That is a Spartan matter,’ he said stiffly, and rose from my couch.

I waved goodbye and let him go. His friends bowed respectfully — oh, it is such a pleasure to be a famous man! — and withdrew.

Later, at my own fire, I asked Ka to make some enquiries, and I raised the whole matter with Moire and Harpagos and Paramanos, all of whom agreed. I suggested to them that it was in our interest to figure out who had done it.

Paramanos’s beard had a lot of white in it, suddenly. He looked old and wise. He sat back, accepted more wine from his own boy, and met my eye. ‘Twenty thousand suspects,’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘More like fifty thousand,’ I said. ‘Slaves can use a sling, too. Even girls.’

They all shook their heads like the chorus in a tragedy.

‘On a positive note, whoever did it is probably within half a mile of us right now,’ I said. ‘We know a few things. The guilty person was up very early, and went out along the river — that has to limit our potential group. I assume the attack was paid for by people who want Persia to triumph — or who want Sparta to submit.’

Harpagos grinned like the Chian fisherman he really was. ‘Or someone who wants Athens to be defeated,’ he said.

Moire laughed. ‘Well — that’s about everyone here.’

I already knew who I suspected. But I had no desire to poison their efforts — I knew that none of my captains could resist such a challenge, and I knew that all of them had rich resources in friends and business partners and foreign contacts.

Before I went and rolled into my cloak — alone, again, damn it — I had a whispered conversation with Sekla, Brasidas and Alexandros. We made our plans — to protect Polypeithes. It was — and is — funny to consider the four of us plotting to protect a Spartan, but something told me that not all Spartans were united in this.

In the morning, I took a staff and went for a long walk. I went up into the hills and talked to some sheep and came home by a roundabout course intended to put me on the plain in time to meet the Queen of Sparta out for her morning ride. I am as male as most men, and sometimes more so, and I won’t deny that I looked forward to seeing her, but I had some business to transact, as well.

I saw her in the distance, already done and turning back, and I came down into the valley to meet her, as if by chance. I waved and she rode to my side.

‘Good morning. You look like. . one of the more equestrian goddesses.’ I smiled too broadly, and she frowned.

‘Wouldn’t it be a better compliment if you named one?’ she asked.

I shook my head. ‘No — that would only offer you more opportunity to disclaim the compliment and the giver. Aphrodite? No. Hera? Too presumptuous. Athena? Un-Spartan. Artemis?’ I shrugged. ‘In truth, you do not remind me of Artemis.’

Gorgo laughed. ‘You are not like most Greek men,’ she said.

I shrugged. ‘I travel. Listen, o Queen. Do you have an idea who tried to kill Polypeithes?’

She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Will he try again?’ I asked.

She shrugged.

‘You don’t care?’ I asked.

She looked away. ‘I cannot be seen to care,’ she said. ‘For some very complicated reasons that have little to do with the matter at hand.’

I nodded, although in truth I didn’t understand. ‘Adamenteis of Corinth?’ I guessed.

She blushed. Almost all of her.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘How do you know?’ she asked.

I shrugged. ‘I don’t, but I saw the look he gave your chariot the other day, I saw his charioteer talking to Ka and asked Ka to ascertain a few things — and I saw the glare he levelled at your husband.’

‘He hates Themistocles ten times as much as he hates my husband,’ she spat. ‘He wants his team to win any way he can arrange it, and he has accepted a fat bribe from the Medes.’

I nodded. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘My second question is purely personal. Why do you want me to take your heralds to Susa?’

She looked at me as if I were a fool. ‘So that they won’t be killed, of course,’ she said. She smiled — it changed her expression from serene self-possession to a nymph-like wonder. ‘Do you really think that a pair of Spartan gentlemen who can make themselves disliked merely by walking are going to be a triumph at the court of the Great King? They are my friends, and my cousins. They are my husband’s friends. They are making a brave sacrifice for our city — I’d like to keep them from paying too high a price.’

I looked into those laughing, nymph-like eyes, and somehow failed to say ‘no’.

By the time we were entering the main valley, Gorgo and I, it was plain that something had happened at the edge of the encampment. Gorgo raced away — for the Spartan tents. I ran as best I could.

The cluster of men in the early light proved to be gathered around a corpse — a dead man with three feet of black arrow protruding from his head. He was quite dead. A pair of Olympian priests were already mourning him, and complaining that the blood shattered the truce and defiled the games. Even while I stood there, more priests came, and some of the judges. They were angry — even fearful.

A killing in the Olympics was no small matter. The impiety — the sacrilege — was so intense that men in the crowd spoke of the games being cancelled.

No one knew who the dead man was until one of the Argosian trainers identified him as one of the Corinthian grooms.

I said as little as possible and kept moving after that, because the dead man had a heavy south Egyptian arrow in him, and it virtually had to be one of Ka’s. I jogged back to my camp, cursing my wounds, and found Sekla directing operations.

‘I’m releasing the last two amphorae of wine,’ he said. ‘I’ve sent Ka to the coast to buy more.’

I understood immediately — Ka was out of camp and thus difficult to catch or question.

‘I arranged for him to have a horse,’ Sekla continued.

While Sekla spoke, I noted that Leukas had a sword under his chlamys — a long Keltoi sword — and several other men were unobtrusively armed. Sittonax was lounging on a spear, his wrist and left leg both curled lovingly around the shaft. Some men still used spears as walking staffs back then — Sittonax was taking advantage of that.

‘What happened?’ I asked quietly. I took Sekla by the arm and towed him into the back of the wine tent.

Quite loudly he said, ‘It’s foolishness to keep two amphorae for our own use. We can get a drachma a cup today.’

Then he lowered his voice. ‘The man had a sling, and he went to use it on the Spartan charioteer. That’s all I know. Ka made the call and killed him.’

It was an act of gross impiety — an attack on the Olympic grounds, during the truce. On the other hand, as far as I know, Ka had never believed in our gods, so perhaps he is immune. But if the attack were traced to me. .

It is a difficult thing, having men who serve you. I gave them orders to protect Polypeithes. They did. Ka acted as he thought was correct, and now we had a corpse and some very angry Elisians.

‘What is done is done,’ I said. ‘On my head be it. How is the Spartan?’

‘I doubt he even knows there was an incident,’ Sekla responded. ‘Leukas followed him all the way to his encampment, dressed as a slave. He says the Spartans have thrown a cordon around their camp since the chariot returned.’

I poured myself a precious cup of our wine and sat on a leather stool. I beckoned to Sittonax, Harpagos and Leukas, all waiting visibly close. They came into the small back area of the tent.

I popped out and walked all the way around the tent to make sure we were alone. I caught Hector’s arm — he was carrying a basket of bread for Gaia — and sent him to watch the tent from a little distance, to make sure we were not overheard. I took Alexandros off his duties running our watch against theft and placed him at the door of the tent. I summoned Brasidas to our meeting. Behind me, Sekla and Leukas continued a fairly unconvincing haggle about what to charge for wine.

Committing an act of impiety at the Olympics raised the stakes enormously. Suddenly, it was all life and death.

‘Gentlemen,’ I said when I went back. ‘This is family only. Oikia, yes? Not for Cimon. Not even Paramanos.’ I looked around, and everyone nodded. ‘If Ka were to be taken, he would be tortured and then executed.’

That got to them. The south Egyptian was a very popular man.

‘Sekla — well done getting Ka away. Now — what’s our next step? It is five hours before the chariots run.’ I waved at the Spartan camp in the distance.

Brasidas did not hesitate. ‘Put a watch on the Corinthians. We have the manpower to do it.’

I had thought in terms of protecting Polypeithes. I had to smile at the Spartan-ness of his solution. I was prepared to defend, and Brasidas was, in effect, ready to attack.

‘We watch them, but what more can we do? If two slaves leave their camp. .’ I shrugged.

Sekla smiled. ‘Every one of theirs who leaves camp is followed by a couple of ours. Do we have to be secret? Why not make it obvious? There are fewer than a hundred Corinthians here.’

I scratched my beard. ‘We could end with a war between Corinth and Plataea,’ I said.

Brasidas shook his head. ‘Look — send a few men — led by me — to watch the Corinthian camp. And some boys as runners. Do the same for the Lacedaemonian camp. If the chariot leaves their camp — then we can act.’ He shot me a hard smile. ‘I doubt the Corinthians will try again, but if they do — we need to catch them at it.’

Hector’s high-pitched voice shouted outside, ‘Lord Aristides, master!’ and I was outside in a heartbeat, smiling falsely.

Aristides looked as angry as an outraged husband. ‘I would hate to think. .’ he began, and I came out to find that I had half the noblemen of Athens in my camp. I sent Hector for stools and wine. Cimon gave me a sign that I needed to talk fast.

‘They are saying in the camp that the Spartans killed the Corinthian groom. Other men say it was a Plataean. Others that it was an African,’ Aristides said. ‘This impiety must be punished.’

The problem with Aristides is that he was completely honest, and thus, he saw most issues in simple terms.

‘I saw the corpse,’ I said. ‘Heavy arrow. Not anyone local.’ I shrugged. ‘Perhaps a Cretan or a Cypriote.’

Cimon’s eyes applauded my lies. ‘Cretans do use heavy shafts like that one,’ Cimon drawled. ‘I had forgotten that.’

Other men responded with the sort of spontaneous expertise that every man is capable of when he knows nothing — suddenly a dozen of them were experts on Cretan arrows.

Aristides didn’t sit. He put a hand on my shoulder. ‘I feel in my bones that you have something to do with this,’ he said. ‘I saw you look at the corpse. Tell me immediately, please.’

I shook my head. ‘I can tell you only that the Corinthians have been trying to harm the Spartans,’ I said quietly.

Understanding flooded Aristides. His body stiffened. He narrowed his eyes.

I shook my head. ‘I’m looking into it,’ I said. In truth, he was very difficult to lie to, and I was struggling, but with the stakes so high, I managed.

I turned to Cimon. ‘Someone should watch the Corinthians, and someone else should watch the Spartans. To keep them apart, if nothing else.’

‘You think the Spartans killed the groom?’ Aristides asked.

I shrugged. ‘You know that someone struck Polypeithes the charioteer with a sling stone — right?’

Aristides shook his head. ‘I see,’ he said, face closing.

Cimon took his arm. ‘A slave is dead, not a Greek,’ he said. ‘Let’s not make too much of this.’

He drank down his wine and dragged Aristides away, leaving me with Themistocles. The orator glanced at the Spartan encampment. ‘You’ve taken. . measures?’ he asked.

‘No idea what you are talking about,’ I said. ‘But I have agreed to escort the Spartan ambassadors.’

‘Heralds,’ Themistocles said. ‘Not ambassadors.’

We spent the morning and the afternoon watching the Corinthians. We had help from a dozen Athenians and we didn’t hide ourselves particularly — that is to say, Cimon and I were quite open, and so was Themistocles — so open that Adamanteis came out in a cloak.

‘We can see to our own affairs,’ he said. ‘We don’t need Athenians interfering in our preparations.’

Themistocles shrugged. ‘It is a fine place to stand and watch the games,’ he said. ‘And free to all men, I think.’

Adamanteis looked as if he might explode.

‘Sir,’ I asked, ‘do you by any chance own in the chariot racing today? The four-horse team with the African charioteer?’

He nodded curtly.

I smiled. ‘Ah, I see,’ I said. I meant it. I did see. Gorgo had it all correct. ‘May the best chariot and team win, then,’ I said.

‘I repeat — you needn’t be here. We can protect ourselves,’ Adamanteis said.

Themistocles shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is not you that we protect.’

The Corinthian spun on his heel and walked back among his tents. Several men pointed at us.

I wondered whether he was enough of a fool to provoke a fight. At the Olympics, no less.

Meanwhile, we missed Astylos’s day of triumph altogether, which galled me. We heard the roar from the stadium as he won the stadia, and Hector found us to tell us of the victory. Most of my oarsmen were in the south end of the stadium, roaring their lungs out for the Italian.

Two hours later, we caught the excitement even three stades away. Hector came to tell us that Astylos had won his first heat at the diaulos. Cimon and I cursed that we were missing a great moment. Themistocles made an excuse and left us to watch. He loved the running, and he wasn’t doing anything but provoking the Corinthians. He and Adamanteis clearly loathed each other.

It broke my heart to miss the final race. More so as two Plataeans made the last heat.

But we accomplished our objective, because when two grooms departed the Corinthian camp, they did so just as the cheering reached a fever pitch, late in the day. They avoided our position by slipping under the edge of their back tents and creeping slowly along the ground until clear of the camp. Then they ran into the trees to the south of the river and began to make their way along the high ground towards the Spartans. We never saw them.

But Brasidas and Leukas did. The two were dressed as slaves, Leukas hawking wine and Brasidas serving it. Leukas’s tattoos and barbaric Greek accent covered them both. They sent their pais — an Egyptian boy — running to us. I sent Alexandros and a dozen marines, all unarmed, to join Brasidas.

Then I put Leukas back on duty, this time with Sittonax and Harpagos pouring for him. It seemed possible that the first pair was a diversion.

With every possible arrangement made, I sauntered down to the stadium to embrace Astylos, who was so elated that he was with the gods. He had won two Olympic events in a single day. It had happened before, but no one could remember when, and he was, that night, the most famous man in the Greek world. And for many years thereafter.

Somewhere in the woods north of the sanctuary, Brasidas caught the two slaves. They didn’t fight. He tied them to trees, questioned them, and then Alexandros took them to the Spartan camp. I would love to have been present when they were handed over, but it was all done very quietly and I didn’t want my hand to be seen too broadly in it.

We ate and drank. The last of the wine was gone. The sun set. We changed the watch on the Corinthians. Brasidas assured me that the Athenians were watching the Spartans.

I went to my cloak, too tired to sit up with Astylos and Polymarchos and enjoy their moment of triumph. But the young man glowed, and Polymarchos look ten years younger.

I went to sleep. And rose in the dawn, to the last day. The day of the pankration, and of the chariot races.

I wasn’t intending to miss the pankration, so I made my arrangements early and put Cimon in charge. And he dumped his command responsibilities on Themistocles, who, you will remember, had walked off to see the races. It would have been the perfect moment for Adamanteis to sneak an assassin out, but the world seldom works that way.

After all, Adamantheis had no idea whether his grooms had succeeded or not. Their orders — according to Brasidas, who questioned them fairly extensively (I’m sparing your finer feelings) — their orders were to injure the horses. They had slings, a bow and knives.

Enough. My point is that the enemy is not always all-knowing. In this case, I think Adamanteis was outmatched. He was one arrogant rich man facing a dozen arrogant rich men. Hah!

At any rate, the pankration was superb. Agias of Pharalas won in just four bouts — only six men were willing to match him, and two of them were out — badly injured — in two rounds. He was tall, heavily built, beautifully muscled, and very fast. He always attacked, and his movements were fluid and graceful — almost impossible for a man so big.

I was lying on the green grass of the stadium bank with a number of my friends, including Polymarchos and Astylos — crowned with laurel and bathing in the admiration of every man in the crowd, I can tell you. But Polymarchos pointed out the Pharsalians early.

‘Rhadamanthius of Pharsala trains them,’ he said. ‘Men say he’s the greatest warrior alive. He’s a freedman — a former slave. You can always tell the men he trains — the way they move. Look at the lumbering bastard — he won’t last a moment. .’

Indeed, as we watched, Agias took his opponent’s left wrist in his right and rotated it up — just a little — and made his opponent rotate on his hips — again, just a little — and at exactly the right moment, he seemed to step through the other man. Agias knelt suddenly, and pulled his opponent down — the man was forced against his will to rotate, to lose his balance, and to collapse back across Agias’s outthrust knee. He fell, and Agias rolled across him, a forearm across the downed man’s throat. The big man was brave and strong — he struggled until he was unconscious. But the pin was complete.

Sadly that was the best of his matches. There really wasn’t anyone who was worthy of him. One man he put down with a single, well-placed punch, and another he caught in a foolish extension and flipped over his head. All with an air of almost casual elegance.

Another Pharsalian won the wrestling. The two men enjoyed our plaudits, and walked the stadium receiving cheers and flowers and wreaths and small statues. Euthymos of Lokroi won the boxing. He was a fighter, and he fought three other men as good as he — well, not quite as good — but his fights offered more drama than the Pharsalians had. He seemed to just barely manage his wins, and yet, in the end, he had the same wreath of laurel on his brow and the same immortality. There’s a lesson there.

And then it was time to walk down to the hippodrome and watch the chariots.

The order of events is not immutable, and I know that in other years, the chariots have run on different days. As men emphasise — or forget — the role of old Pelops in founding the games, the chariot races gain in importance or lose it again. Some new event — such as the hoplitodromos — will catch everyone’s interest, or a particular athlete will capture the imaginations of the judges — and that can change the way the games are scheduled. In that year, with the fate of Greece blowing on the winds of fate, the chariot race for four horses was last.

Of course, we’d already had all the horse races, the donkey race, the race for colts, and the two-horse chariots. Oh, yes. Greeks will watch almost any kind of race.

But as I’ve already said, the four-horse chariot race is considered a sacred event. It takes a fantastically rich man to enter a team — to get four matched horses, you need to raise fifty, or so I’m told. Matched teams sold for enough money to buy a fleet or a small city.

Good charioteers were often Italian or Africans, because both of those somewhat backward places still used chariots in battle and for lavish display, and they had more and better charioteers. Even Asia had better charioteers then Greece — after all, I was one of them, however briefly.

At any rate, there were only the six chariots. So there was only one race, and the teams drew lots for their positions. There was no stagger, so the outside berths were seriously disadvantaged at the start — they had a great deal farther to travel, and they could not possibly get to the inside on the turns, so all other things being equal, the outside berths would be behind for a dozen laps.

And again, recall that on each lap, the chariot had to go straight down the hippodrome, turn at a pole, go straight back to the start, and turn again — not an oval. I think it is possible that the reason men loved to watch is that one or two chariots were always wrecked, and the value of a small city in horseflesh killed. Somewhere, a rich man was brought low. Lesser men could cheer for that.

That’s a cynical reason. A better reason is that just one four-horse chariot makes the earth shake. Just one looks like the direct tool of the gods — the horses paw the earth and snort, their magnificent heads toss, and you can see Apollo or Zeus himself at the reins. Put six of them side by side, and the sound is like Zeus’s own thunderbolts, and the waves of the sea.

The draws were announced while Cimon and I — and our friends — took up the ground that had been held for us all morning by a dozen of my oarsmen. On the inside, in the best berth, was the team from Ceos. As I mentioned, they were piebald horses and a hand smaller than the others, but the position at the inside changed all the wagering instantly. The charioteer wore a long white racing chiton with Tyrian red borders.

The next team out were the Corinthians, and they were magnificent, with the horses and the driver looking equally dark, glossy — and heroic. The charioteers’ salute was sufficient to draw a wall of thunderous applause — the cheers roared on and on. His horses were calm, while the little horses of Ceos fidgeted and tossed their heads. The Corinthian wore a red tunic — all red.

The third team was that of Gelon of Syracusa — black as his heart, I might add. They were the most beautiful team, and men roared for them again. Their charioteer wore a pure white chiton and looked like the god Apollo.

The fourth team from the pole was the white team of Aegina. The horses were beautifully matched, and their coats had been brushed and brushed so that their bodies appeared to be some sort of flowing metal. Their charioteer wore a dark blue chiton.

The fifth team was the Athenians. Their horses were all beautiful, but unmatched. It was rather like a drama about Athenian democracy — the unmatched team. The Athenian charioteer wore a white chiton with blue borders and full-length sleeves, an older style the Athenians always favoured. I can tell you from experience that in a fall, those full sleeves can protect you from a great many abrasions.

And last — the worst position — came the Spartans. Every head in the hippodrome went to the Spartans, all sitting together.

They didn’t react at all, and they all cheered the Spartan chariot. As did many others — all my men, and many of the Athenians, too. That brought some stares.

The six teams lined up carefully, and the judges examined every team. This went on long enough to make every man in the hippodrome anxious for his particular team and for the animals. I was hungry and thirsty myself before the judges cleared away from the teams, and the censor mounted the rostrum with a wand in his hand and raised it, and the tension in the hippodrome rose until it was like the tension between two phalanxes getting ready to close in mortal combat.

And then the wand dropped, and they were off.

The opening of the race held a layer of surprises like an Athenian wedding cake. The team from Ceos was off the line in perfect form — and they went from the stand to a dead gallop in six or seven strides, a superb performance.

The Corinthian driver had clearly expected to beat the Ceosian team off the line — to seize the inside lane and hold the pole for the turn for the beginning. And his team came off the line in beautiful style. But they could not beat the piebald horses down the stretch. It was amazing to see the four small horses run — they seemed to flow along the ground with something of the dancing grace of the Pharsalian athletes. They couldn’t beat the bigger Corinthian team, but the Corinthians couldn’t gain even a head and a neck on the Ionian team, and as the two began to come up on the first turn, if became clear that the Corinthian was not going to gain the inside lane.

He allowed himself to drop back half a chariot length, to cut inside and take the turn second. After all — I could read his thoughts — he had fifty-three more opportunities to pass.

The teams of Aegina and Syracusa duplicated the entire performance. The Aeginians probably had the inferior team, but they were on their mettle, and the Syracusans could not cut in to gain the inside lane — you must imagine every chariot cutting hard to the left from the moment the wand was dropped.

The Spartans and Athenians were very slow off the line. Indeed, they seemed to merely trot while all four other teams galloped.

As a charioteer, I knew what that meant. It meant that they expected trouble — collisions — and they wanted to be able to make big turns on the first lap, even if it lost time. In outside lanes, you need the help of the gods. I heard men hiss at them, but I felt the tactic was sound.

Especially when the Syracusan chariot refused to give way for the Corinthian. The whole pack of four was thundering into the first turn with two chariots trapped outside the pole. It is hard enough to turn with the pole — it can be harder to turn outside.

By the time all four had made the turn, both outside chariots had lost speed. The Syracusan’s horses almost tangled with the Corinthian car, and there was a gasp, but the Corinthian flicked his whip back and struck the Syracusan off-lead, and the horse faltered, lost a pace, and the Syracusan fell back.

The Athenians were already in the inside lane.

The Spartans were comfortably behind them.

So the Syracusans had to fall all the way back to sixth. They were all around the first turn, and they thundered down the back stretch in line — Ceos, Corinth, Aegina, Athens, Sparta and Syracusa well behind, trying to get his horses back into their pace. They held this formation through the second turn, and they were one lap down.

To me, it appeared that the Ceosians and the Corinthians were running too fast. They set a terrible pace, and the Aeginians matched it. But the Athenian charioteer wasn’t interested, and kept his horses in hand — fast, but not at the pace. He wasn’t going to give a full lap, but he was saving speed.

The Spartan, Polypeithes, looked magnificent, his knees well flexed, his shoulders level, his hands steady, and he stuck to the Athenian. I thought he was wise.

Ahead of them, the Corinthian took aim at the Ionian as they entered the fourth lap. As he came out of the turn, he cracked his whip and let his horses go to their full stride, and they stretched out for him. We could hear him urging them, and they responded.

The Ceosian charioteer raised his hands slightly, and his smaller horses gave another spurt — and held their position. Just before the turn, the Corinthian had to fall back — again.

He thundered around the turn on the outside, his turn beautifully judged. But he lost ground with every stride, and now the Aeginians were in second place.

The Corinthians didn’t go for the third place on the inside. They stayed outside, and ran. Down the back stretch, the Corinthians passed two teams, and on the turn into the fifth lap, they tried to close to the pole. The Corinthian was fully committed — he was leaning as far as a man can lean in a car, and his horse could not have had any more speed to offer. Nor will most horses give a magnificent effort more than once in a race — even horses have morale.

The African Corinthian went for all the knuckle bones.

He cut right across the Ceosians, and later it was said he flicked his whip at them. Perhaps. But the smaller Ceosian team baulked, and the Corinthians swept by. The Ceosians lost their pace and their tempo, and swerved — struck the turning post a glancing blow and slowed still further, and the Athenians pulled well out to pass. The team from Aegina was jammed in behind the Ionian team, unable to manoeuvre and forced to slow almost to a stop as the Athenians and then the Spartans and finally the Syracusans thundered by on the outside. By a miracle, no one was injured — no horse fell, no cart broke up. But by the time the Ceosian was moving again, the Ionian and the Aeginian were a full length — half the hippodrome — behind.

This sudden reversal of fortune — not uncommon in the hippodrome — left the Corinthians in the front by a whole chariot length, with the Athenians second and the Spartans third. The Syracusans were a distant fourth, and the Aeginians and Ceosians were well back. But with only five laps run, the race was barely a fifth done.

They ran four laps in that formation, and the Corinthian, now in front where he’d wanted to be, forced a terrible pace. He didn’t plan to slow from a gallop, and he ran off the laps so fast that his opponents began to lose heart. The Athenians wanted to run a slower race with a fast finish, but the expert Corinthian charioteer wasn’t having it.

Through the tenth lap, the Athenians, Spartans and Syracusans held the pace. But in the back stretch of ten, the Athenians — in second place and on the rail — began to slow from a hard gallop to a slower pace.

The Corinthian shot ahead.

The Spartans stayed with the Athenians, and the Syracusan made two attempts in the next two laps to pass them but could not, and the Ionoians and Aeginians were now too far behind to regain the distance unless a miracle occurred — the Ceosian team, in particular, looked very tired.

On the thirteenth lap, the Corinthian came up behind the other chariots and began passing them. He took the Ceosians after a brief struggle and many glares and some shouted words, and then passed the Aeginian chariot after a whole lap of racing side by side. On the fifteenth lap, he slipped by the Syracusans, suggesting to the crowd — as I already suspected — that the Syracusan charioteer wasn’t as good as he needed to be at this level.

Sixteen laps out of twenty-seven, and the Corinthian team was a lap ahead of everyone but the Athenians and the Spartans.

Coming into the turn for lap seventeen, the Athenians moved into the pole, and just as the Corinthian team pulled out to pass on the turn, the Spartans — up until then almost spectators — pulled out as if to pass as well, blocking the Corinthian chariot. The Corinthian pulled out farther and again set his horses to run full out — he angled out to pass the Spartans.

The Spartan driver was thundering up on the turn, but he did not turn. In fact, he edged his horse a little farther outside. His very slight acceleration was either ferociously lucky or perfectly timed — the Corinthian was caught outside him and without room to cut back, and the whole car was briefly up on one wheel.

Then the Spartan abruptly decelerated and turned sharply — an incredible turn, shockingly dangerous. The Spartan car did not quite flip over, and seemed to turn at right angles — and left the Corinthian a whole chariot length outside the rail and at a virtual stop.

The Syracusans and then the Aeginians and then the Ceosians thundered by inside, and the Corinthian spent two laps getting back up to his speed. And now his horses were not running as well. The Athenians had lost no speed, and the Spartan team was less than half a length behind them, and as the censor marked the twentieth lap, the Athenian charioteer saluted the crowd, bent forward — and gave his horses some secret signal of hand or voice, and they were off.

They ran, not like the wind, but like a gale. They ate the ground between them and the Corinthian, and took him on the mid-lap turn in the twenty-first lap. It was a magnificent performance by the Athenian charioteer, who showed his mastery — in his acceleration, in his timing, in his voice. He took the Corinthian at the very end of the turn. Then, as his car swerved in to fill the inside lane. .

He slowed abruptly.

Again the Corinthian had to swerve, but again, there was nowhere to go. The Spartan team was already coming up outside. The Corinthian’s mouth showed his anger — and he wilfully tried to slam his car into the Spartan horses, but the Athenian was decelerating too hard, and unless the Corinthian was willing to risk a messy death he had to rein in, and he did, cursing so loudly he could be heard in the stands.

Every Athenian was on his feet — many had their hands on their mouths, silent as their charioteer handed the race to the Spartans.

But by my side, Cimon had tears in his eyes, and he thumped my back.

Polypeithes got his team up to the fullest of gallops and blew past the slowing Athenian team just before the turn. He leaned, and for a moment I was afraid he wasn’t up to it — but he shaved the post and completed his turn, his cart bouncing slightly as it skidded out behind the horses like an empty stone-hauling sled dragged on smooth marble by eager boys.

The Corinthian wasn’t through.

He got around the Athenian on anger and will, and flicked his whip at his horses, and they responded one more time, heads up, willing, it appeared, to burst their hearts. They came down the front stretch of the twenty-second lap, and it seemed possible that they had kept a little in reserve. On the back stretch, the Corinthian made his move, whipping his horses repeatedly — and then striking at the Spartan horses.

Sometimes, men make plans. It was clear to every man in the crowd that the Athenians had agreed to support the Spartans.

But sometimes, the gods take a hand.

At the final post of twenty-second lap, the Ceosian team was stumbling. The horses were exhausted, and the charioteer was having trouble keeping them on the course and at speed. He didn’t take the turn — for him, the last turn of lap nineteen — as close as he ought. In fact, he was ten feet off the post, and his chariot was moving at a trot.

And Polypeithes chose to put his team inside the Ionian team. He chose to cut from the outside position almost at right angles to the pole — a little like a man threading a needle in the dark.

Once again, he did the complicated manoeuvre he’d executed so well early on — he slowed, and pivoted his chariot on the inside wheel, the horses running through an elaborate double curve.

In the three heartbeats in which he executed the manoeuvre, he had every man in the crowd on his feet.

The Corinthian had to manoeuvre to avoid a wreck — the Ceosians got their heads turned back inward and went up the inside lane no faster than a brisk trot — and the Athenians were past the Corinthians on the inside and then past the Ionians on the outside — a magnificent double overtake — and then the Spartans and the Athenians were running free.

And perhaps the Athenians did not ‘give’ the race to Sparta, because those Spartan horses were fast. They ran, and the unmatched Athenians ran — they ran, and they ran, and the Athenians gained back a whole chariot length, so that when they crossed the final line and the heralds raised their wands, the lead Athenian horse was even with Polypeithes.

But no more.

And the Spartans swept to victory.

Cimon roared by my side, and even Aristides thumped my back. My Athenian friends, who had no doubt negotiated the ‘chariot alliance’ for King Leonidas.

Perhaps I’ve told my story badly. But as the Spartan team swept to victory, and the young Spartiate was granted the right to wear the crown of laurel — and to serve in the king’s bodyguard all his life — in that moment, the Spartan peace party was defeated, and the alliance between Athens and Sparta — never, as you know, the best of friends — was sealed. It was sealed because Athens sacrificed an Olympic chariot race and because, as usual, a lot of Plataeans were doing the dirty work.