The Great King

After Athens, I returned to Plataea for the longest time I had spent there since my wife died.

In my heart, I was preparing my home for a bride again. And my bride was to be Briseis.

By now, some of you must wonder whether I am a complete fool, that I should seek this woman’s favour so often, and so often be turned away. But however brief our encounter in Artapherenes’ house in Sardis, I knew — I knew that the contract was signed.

And my house in Plataea was beautiful. The frescoes were done, and the house was stocked with grain and oil and full of light and life, because my daughter was there with her nurse Phoebe, a charming local girl, a priestess at the temple of Hera. Phoebe had made the mistake any girl can make, and had a baby without a father — but her milk had saved Euphonia, and as my daughter grew, Phoebe had, in some ways, matured with her.

I confess that, besides my daughter, her body slave and Phoebe, mine was a very masculine household. I had found a place to beach my ships in the Corinthian gulf — over by Thisbe — and with my brother-in-law I’d bought warehouses and barracks there. Because that put my oarsmen so close, and because they were — with Myron’s help — all Plataeans, I tended to have a dozen of them around at any given time — on errands, or simply seeing the city of which they were (miraculously, to many) now citizens.

Sekla — who had collected quite a bit of money over the preceding few years — purchased a house in Plataea that spring.

I unpacked my few treasures from Persia — some silk, which went into stores, and my lapis, and the cedarwood box from the Queen Mother. I had never opened it, and when I did, I convinced my new slave butler that I really was a man of consequence.

It was a two-eared cup, as tall as a man’s hand to the wrist, big enough to serve to ten guests at a drinking party, made of solid gold. On one side, a mounted man — a king, from his high crown — killed a lion with his bow. One the other side, a pair of winged lions were engraved surrounding an enormous emerald, the largest I’d ever seen, and beryls and other stones were set all the way around the rim — just below it, so that a man could comfortably drink from it. It was slightly bent, from where I’d fallen on it in the fight in the mountains, and I shocked my major-domo by taking it directly to the shop and truing the circle of the rim. My silversmith saved me from cracking the mounts that held the jewels — what does a bronzesmith know of such work? — and then we all marvelled over the quality of the workmanship. It was worth. . well, about as much as the whole town of Plataea.

I exaggerate. Perhaps only half as much.

It impressed Aristides. He looked at it for a long time, and even put it tentatively to his lips. And then he looked at me over the rim.

‘The hillside of Kitharon is more beautiful,’ he said.

I had Aristides as a long-term guest — I had returned from Susa to find him in one of my rooms with a pile of scrolls under his elbow, reading Anaxamander as if he, not I, was the owner. But he was an excellent guest, and — having run a rich household for many years — he was an endless fund of information.

Aristides, Sekla, Megakles, Leukas, Sittonax — who had a dozen tales to tell of his adventures in Asia; Hector and Nikeas and Alexandros — and all my local friends, such as Ajax and Gelon and Lysieus and the three smiths, who had made more money in one year than they had imagined possible — Tiraeus and Styges and Hermogenes, much recovered in his old self thanks to prosperity-they were all present. Wealth may not buy happiness, but it certainly beats poverty.

And I had truly begun to enjoy wealth.

We went through a great deal of wine as that winter gave way to spring, and the bitter rains gave way to warm sun. The sun dried the stones, and my gardener — a freedman from Sicily, of all places — provided me with jasmine and roses and a hundred other flowers and shrubs, as well as making my olive tree shine like Athena’s gift to my house. Aristides — as anxious for his wife to arrive as I was — helped me with every detail, and when the guest house was finished, we watched the fresco painter — and annoyed him mightily, so that he muttered at us every day.

My guest house was decorated with scenes from the Odyssey — the return of Odysseus, the loom of Penelope, and the moment at which Penelope takes her husband in her arms. My daughter loved them, and did her best to ‘help’ the artist, who might mock or curse me but was always bright and pleasant with her — even when her dirty handprints marred Penelope’s face.

Storm Cutter returned very profitably from Aegypt with the onset of spring, and Paramanos told Moire where to find us and he took a cargo for Corcyra and came right round to Thisbe. My African navarch announced himself by riding into my courtyard on one of the handsomest horses I’d ever seen — he had Ka behind him on another — and Jocasta, wife of Aristides, mounted on a third.

When I’d known him well, Moire hadn’t been much more fulsome than a man of Lacedeamon, but six more years among Greeks had broadened his vocabulary and his confidence. He sat easily on a kline with a cup of wine, and chatted with Aristides about Aegypt as if he were an Athenian gentleman of the bluest blood — but that was, in those days, how the explosion of sea trade was changing Athens. Navarchs and helmsmen were suddenly men of property and wealth, and merchants — Athenian, Metic or freedmen — were growing to be as wealthy as the old money — or wealthier.

In some ways, it didn’t seem right. I had taken an embassy to Susa and brought back almost nothing — I’d preserved some fabrics from India and Kwin, and one packet of spices — but while I’d spent my fortune on a failed embassy, Harpagos, Moire and Megakles and Sekla had made me a fortune moving goods from Athens to Aegypt and Asia. Our piratical triremes made poor merchantmen, but the sudden demand for luxury goods could make even a trireme’s voyage profitable. And the pause in the endless naval war between Athens and Aegina — according to Moire, the rumour in Athens was that Sparta had ordered Aegina to cease operations — made shipping safe, or at least safer than it had been in twenty years.

At any rate, I sat home that spring, and my captains made me more money. Moire purchased a pair of small round ships in Corinth, stowed them with Boeotian barley and shipped it up the coast of Illyria with Storm Cutter as a watchdog, while Harpagos and Sekla took Lydia and a larger round ship that could carry two thousand medimnoi of grain — a good size hull and the proceeds of two successful voyages — and laded her for Aegypt.

Moire brought us reports of the failed revolt in Aegypt and the ongoing revolt in Babylon. When Sekla sailed, he had orders to pick up any information he could gather. It is not part of my tale to explain the workings of shipping — mine or anyone else’s; merchanting is a dull business, unless there’re pirates or a storm — but I will mention that Sekla, who was from somewhere on the coast of Africa, had met Greeks and Phoenicians who traded up the Nile where he found merchants from the Erythra Thalassa and the Great Eastern Ocean, and he was afire to go. My reports from Susa and my discussions with Abha made for some fine spring conversations, a cup of wine on my knee, in my own garden.

Sekla, eyes afire, leaned forward. ‘When all this war is done, I say we take two triremes and a store ship,’ he said. ‘Carry our goods up the Nile, and build ourselves ships on the Erythra Thalassa and try the Great East Sea.’

‘That is a mighty dream,’ I said.

Sittonax laughed. ‘You sailed to Alba,’ he said. ‘Why not India?’ The Galle was becoming a geographer.

I laughed, but Sekla looked off into the darkness. ‘Doola would sail to India,’ he said.

And I thought it might be true. That’s when that dream began. It is another story, but I’ll tell it to you some day.

Jocasta’s arrival changed the house in every way. First, a great Athenian lady does not travel alone, and she had six women with her — joined within hours by my sister Penelope and my sister-in-law Leda and their servants.

I remember standing under my portico, looking at my garden, and poor Euphonia caught my hand. ‘I don’t want to go and weave with the ladies,’ she said. For almost two months, she had stayed up too late every night and listened to tales of sailing the world with a dozen men who catered to her every whim, and the arrival of a houseful of gentlewomen had catapulted her back to her life as one of them. ‘I want to sail to Aegypt with Sekla. A pox on all this weaving.’

But I won’t make a mockery of femininity. The air of the house changed for the better, and Jocasta and Penelope got more work out of my servants and my slaves than I ever had. Pen fired my cook and bought me a Thracian — imagine having a tattooed killer as your cook, but I did, and he was very good.

We laid in more wine.

I did enjoy the moment when Jocasta entered the andron to set up her loom, and there was the Persian cup. She started.

She looked at me as a nine-year-old girl looks when she wants one more piece of honeycomb and doesn’t dare ask.

I took it down and handed it to her.

She held it for a moment, and handed it back. ‘A remarkable piece of vulgarity,’ she said.

‘A gift,’ I said.

‘Oh, well.’ She smiled. ‘People do give the oddest things.’

The oarsmen were sent to find their own lodgings.

Hangings went on the walls for the first time — I hadn’t missed them — and one day, Jocasta and Leda and Penelope went to the agora with a dozen servants and four slaves and spent — I can’t remember how much, but it seemed a great deal — on a wine service in silver and a complete set of the sort of overly ornate Athenian ceramics that I carried in my ships and avoided owning — all scenes of the gods and everyday life in lurid red and black. I liked plain black ware and I liked my good Boeotian pottery — thick, heavy and solid as Old Draco or Empedocles himself.

By next morning, I couldn’t find a scrap of it in my house.

You see — like all men, I’ve turned to mockery of women, when what I really want to convey is that my sister and Jocasta and their friends made my house beautiful and civilised enough to receive the Queen of Sparta. I had to admit that the Athenian ware was pretty enough, and the cups were light in the hand, well crafted. My rooms were full of light and air — but decorated in the latest taste — and the women set up looms and prepared for me a set of matching drapes for my couches with a sort of ruthless efficiency that reminded me of a well-run ship. Really — watching Jocasta direct a dozen women weaving on four looms was much like watching Paramenos direct a ship in a storm — no hesitation, no anger, just a single-minded concentration on the task. They wove wool, and then they wove all our spare flax into towels, and then. .

And then Gorgo came.

She came to Plataea with a dozen Spartan women and two men — Sparthius and Bulis. She arrived quite late in the evening, having celebrated the Epikledeia in Corinth. The queen was tired, but we stood with her people in my small courtyard and gave her Plataean kykeon, wine with barley meal and grated goat’s cheese, and she laughed that laugh and was visibly delighted by everything — including a suddenly shy Jocasta and my daughter, who kept grabbing the great queen’s hand and dragging her to see the most ordinary things — which she accepted with a good grace.

When she was gone into the guest quarters, led by Pen and Leda, I put the two Spartiates on kline and we sat and drank most of an amphora of wine. I told them what I knew of the revolt in Babylon.

Finally, I turned away another bowl — Hector nodded, as if to tell me in his fifteen-year-old wisdom that I had chosen well — and cocked an eyebrow at Sparthius. ‘And Brasidas?’ I asked.

He looked away. Bulis looked at his feet. These were men who could defy the Great King and fight anyone to the death.

I let it go.

Eugenios, my new slave domesticos, purchased over my bewildered objections by Penelope for roughly the price of all of my other slaves combined, came in and escorted the Spartans to their room. They had to share — even my house, which seemed as vast as a cavern when it was just me and my daughter and her nurse, was now as full of people as a hive is with bees. It was not too late at night.

It was probably better that way. We didn’t sit up late, as the Spartans were tired — so we had a fresh day in which to renew acquaintance. But as soon as Eugenios escorted them out, Leda and Pen joined me and sipped my wine, sitting on a kline and swinging their feet.

‘A symposiast at last,’ Leda said, stretching. ‘I declare I shall wear ivy on my brow and sing a lewd song.’ She looked at me from under her brows and made me laugh.

Pen poked her. And turned to me. ‘Fancy, having the Queen of Sparta in our house.’

Our house. Well, it made me smile.

Leda got up and stretched again. She and Pen were just thirty — matrons. Both were priestesses of Hera and busybodies, so they were fit from walking. Each had borne just one child — both sons. Pen’s son Euaristos was new to me, just five years old. Leda’s son was six, born to a man she never mentioned. I noticed that they were fit — and lovely — but neither was as fit as any woman among the Spartans.

All this was by the way. Leda was, I thought, stretching to catch my attention. And that was a kind of trouble I didn’t need. But I liked her smile and her wit, and I probably grinned at her like an old satyr.

They went off to bed chattering.

Morning came early.

I met Gorgo playing with my daughter in the garden, less than an hour after dawn. Euphonia could barely sleep for the excitement of having the Queen of Sparta in the house, and her doting nurse helped her dress and loosed her on the world.

The queen rose early.

‘I hope you are not planning on going riding,’ I said.

Gorgo laughed, long and hard. ‘I was hunting,’ she said. ‘I had a beast in view.’ She shrugged. ‘You took my boys to Susa and you brought them home. And helped with the chariot. All in all, I owe you.’ She smiled down at Euphonia. ‘She is charming. She was telling me about Brauron. You should send her to Sparta for a summer.’ She nodded. ‘She’s athletic enough. Some girls can’t take the pace of the races and the dance, but she could.’

‘Can you tell me anything of Brasidas?’ I asked.

Gorgo looked away. ‘He is still in Babylon,’ she said. ‘I doubt Demaratus can save him now.’

‘What did he do?’ I asked.

Gorgo shook her head. ‘It is not my place to speak of it. And I regret that. We are deeply in your debt, Arimnestos of Plataea.’

We talked for some time about the situation, and Euphonia, bored, slipped away into the garden and vanished to the stables.

At some point, I thought of Demaratus, and the tablets, and I sent Eugenios to fetch them. He brought them to me — somewhat hacked about. The string that held them together had been cut, so that they were simply three individual wax tablets, one double sided, and one with a carved cover. I held them out to the queen with a bow.

‘I’m sorry, my queen. These are from the former King of Sparta, Demaratus, and I was to deliver them to you immediately — and I have failed. I forgot them. And indeed, I can’t imagine that they have much of import — I confess I’ve read his note on the wax — it used to be clearer — and all it contains is directions for the factor of one of his farms.’

The queen took them. She sat suddenly, as if overcome by emotion — she, a Spartan — and she held them in the skirts of her chiton. Then she took the cover, and flexed it between her powerful hands, so that the frame splintered.

She took a sharp knife from her zone, and slipped it between the wax and the board beneath, and peeled the wax away in one neat rectangle — and the board beneath was covered in dense black writing.

She laughed aloud.

‘I should not have let you see that,’ she said. She raised her eyes. ‘Swear you will not tell.’

Well, I’m telling you now, but I think everyone involved is dead, now.

She peeled all three boards clear of their wax, and Eugenios carried the wreckage away. I have no idea what the former King of Sparta said to Gorgo in a three-page letter, but I’ll guess that he sent her a list of messengers and codes. Because from that day forward, she always seemed to know more than anyone about the Medes — and especially about their fleet.

Just as we tidied up the last splinters, Aristides joined us — shocked, I think, to find the Queen of Sparta alone in the garden with a man, much less with me. His wife joined us soon after.

She came across the garden, and I could see that age sat more heavily on her than on Gorgo, although they were much of an age — thirty or thirty-five, whereas their husbands were fifty-five and fifty-eight. She had more grey in her hair, and child-rearing had flattened her breasts, widened her hips and added to her weight. She was a handsome woman with a straight back and a dignity unmarred by time — but Gorgo appeared ten years younger — or even fifteen.

Gorgo smiled at her and took her hand, and they embraced. And Jocasta giggled — something I would not have thought possible — and whispered to Gorgo, who shrieked as if bit by an adder and then laughed so hard I thought she might fall down. She took Jocasta’s hand and put it on her right breast, and the two dissolved in laughter.

Aristides was embarrassed. He looked at me, and then looked away, and then walked out of my garden, calling for Nikeas. I followed him, passing a yawning Leda under the archway. She paused to smile at me — a full-face smile — and then I caught sight of my Athenian exile.

He kept walking — out of my house, out of the gate, towards the town wall. I followed him, and eventually caught him up.

‘It is unseemly,’ he muttered.

‘Have you given her the necklace?’ I asked.

That gave him pause. ‘No,’ he admitted.

‘Or anything else from the time we were away?’ I asked.

Aristides glowered. ‘She was behaving like. . like. . a man.’

I shrugged. ‘Your wife is making friends with the Queen of Sparta. The rules for women in Sparta are very different.’

He put his hands on his hips — fidgeted — and put them down by his sides. Finally he turned and started walking back to my house. ‘You are right, of course,’ he muttered. ‘But she is always. . so. . reserved.’ He turned. ‘I love her. . dignity.’

‘As do I,’ I said. ‘But it is a cloak she should be allowed to put off, from time to time.’

Aristides chewed on that for perhaps forty paces, and then said, ‘You get in a good thing, now and then. Dignity as a cloak — that’s good.’

We had the Queen of Sparta in Plataea for five days.

As with Jocasta, one of my favourite moments was created by the cup. Spartan women often sit with men, as I have mentioned, and several times we all sat in the guest house, or the garden, but one night we assembled in the garden and the insects were too much, and we moved into the andron, and there, glowing in golden opulence, was the Queen Mother’s gift.

Gorgo went and took it down from the low shelf on which it sat.

‘I want to drink from this,’ she said. ‘From the Great King?’ she asked.

‘The Queen Mother,’ I admitted.

Bulis laughed. ‘The Persians are so rich they don’t even know they are bribing us,’ he said.

We all laughed. And there we sat — the Queen of Sparta, the just man of Athens, and the heroes of Marathon, and drank to the cause of the liberty of Hellas in the cup we’d been given by the Queen of Persia.

Three of the days she was with us, Gorgo went with Pen and Leda and Jocasta and paid worship to Hera at the temple.

Every day, she was feted — by Myron, by Antigonus, by the temple of Hera itself. She made a great donation, and she was, to all intents, pleased by everything she saw. She kissed Boeotian babies and watched my Epilektoi dance the Pyricche.

Bulis walked among the young men and talked to them. He was like a different man — charming, with compliments for every boy on their physique, their bearing, their skill. Later, he lay with me on a couch.

‘This is a fine town, I think. More like Sparta than I would have believed. Small — and thus good.’ He raised a kantharos cup. ‘See? You make me drunk, and I talk.’

And Sparthius told Ajax and Lysius that the young men were good. This praise, from a Spartiate and a professional warrior, went straight to their heads, and they got very drunk and made fools of themselves very publicly, which was a nine-day wonder in Plataea and had no other effect on any of us — or them.

Early on the last full day, I put all the women up on horses — the splendid horses Moire and Ka had brought — and we rode up to the shrine of Leithos, and Gorgo made a sacrifice of wine. An odd thing happened that I cannot explain. Gorgo poured her libation on the precinct wall, and the tomb rang — as if with laughter. I had known that tomb since I was a boy, and never heard the like. Some of the men flinched.

Idomeneaus came down from his hillside to see the queen. She looked into his mad eyes and spoke quietly to him. He asked her something, and she nodded.

Later he came to me, and nodded. ‘She says you served her well,’ he said. ‘The hero — he is very pleased that she is here.’

I thought he looked madder than ever, and I didn’t linger near him. He smelled odd, and not of the hillside.

Then I took Gorgo up Kitharon, and we rode to my family’s altar — twenty of us, the queen, and Jocasta and Pen and Leda and Artistides and the two Spartan men, Gelon and Alexandros and Idomeneaus and Styges, of all people. And we made a sacrifice of a deer we’d speared on the way — Styges got it — and then we rode slowly down into the gathering twilight of a late spring evening.

I rode side by side with the queen.

‘I do this a great deal,’ she said, as if I’d asked a question. ‘Leonidas is a hero, but sometimes that stands between him and other men. I go to small places and great, and I visit women, and woo men — for the cause.’ She turned to me in the gathering darkness and she did not look downcast. ‘But I tell you, Plataean — this is a fine place. Your people are good people. The Pyricche and the women’s dances, the wine and the barley and the festivals and the temple. .’

As always, I was tempted to say that I did not need a Spartan’s good opinion to know my home was good. But instead I smiled.

‘I’m glad you see all these things,’ I said. ‘To me, it is merely home.’

She nodded. ‘Next spring, we’ll have an assembly of all the free Greeks. At Corinth, I think. Please come, with Myron.’ She smiled. ‘My husband wants you there as much as I do. Listen — we’ve made a good beginning. Most men accept that we must resist. Your reports and ours have spread far and wide.’

On the last night, she led a torchlight procession around the women’s shrines, and then she returned to my house. I had kline in the garden — all of them I owned and four borrowed from Myron, who joined us. I had a scandalous dinner — a mixed dinner, with men and women together. In Lacedaemon, it was sometimes done, and in Italy it was the norm. In Etrusca, a man and his wife might make love on their couch at the end of a meal and no one would think it odd.

Antiochus pretended to be scandalised, but Myron joined in with a will, dragging his shy wife from her chair and making her lie beside him. After a cup of wine she giggled as much as Gorgo and Jocasta.

We ate and drank. We spoke of nothing deep, or meaningful, except about children, and their upbringing. Gorgo smiled at Jocasta’s description of the perils of choosing tutors. Of course, Jocasta was far more directly involved in her son’s education than Gorgo, who had probably handed hers off to slaves minutes after childbirth. That was the Spartan way.

Yet despite a thousand differences, Jocasta and Gorgo were instant friends. It was odd — and somewhat miraculous — that Gorgo had somehow discerned this from a few descriptions, but their alliance helped all of the events that follow. Leonidas forged an alliance with the democrat, Themistocles. Gorgo made hers with Aristides’ wife.

When Gorgo and her train had ridden away — headed to Thebes for another social visit — Pen fell on to my lap in unpretended exhaustion. Myron sent a slave to ask all of us to dinner — because, the slave explained, he assumed we’d be too shattered to cook. He might have been right, although I suspect it was my cook and Eugenios who needed the night off.

That was the queen’s visit to Plataea. Ever after, Plataea was much more favourable to the Laconians in all their dealings. Thebes was merely polite, and Sparthius stopped with us one more night while Gorgo visited Thisbe — to tell me that the Thebans had been rude.

Nothing pleases a Plataean more than news of foolishness in Thebes.

‘They’re going to accept the Great King,’ Sparthius said.

I shook my head. For a Plataean, that was a major threat.

I took my daughter to spend her summer at Brauron by sea, in Lydia, and promised to pick her up again myself and not to spend all summer at sea.

You would think — after all we reported, and after Moire took Storm Cutter home early and reported on the Persian fleet in Thrace and the number of ships in the Bosporus — you’d think, I repeat, that all Greece would have rung with the sound of mallets driving pegs into new planks, of men straining to learn how to wield an oar, of legions of Jocastas weaving sails.

You’d think.

You’d think that the knowledge that only the bravery of the men of Babylon had kept the Persians from our doors that very spring might have served to alert Greece.

But Greeks like to talk. And everything had to be talked through, and every one — everyone who mattered — had to be allowed to speak, and when I entered Piraeus that summer, there were, in fact, forty triremes under construction — but only because of Themistocles and his silver mines.

‘I only got these by swearing that if the Persians didn’t come, we’d storm Aegina,’ he said. ‘Before the gods, all men are fools.’

I drank to that, and we discussed what he knew from all the captains who carried goods from Asia or Ionia. He said that the revolt in Babylon had been crushed, and that the Great King had ordered most of the nobles involved, and their wives and children and children’s children, put to death. Every Greek mercenary taken was executed as a rebel.

‘Now he’ll come,’ Themistocles said. ‘And we still won’t be ready.’

‘Gorgo says there is to be an assembly at Corinth,’ I said.

‘Only because Adamenteis is the most ruthless politician of our age,’ Themistocles said — this for a man who exiled all his opponents. ‘He told the Spartans that attendance at the Isthmian games by an entire Spartan delegation was his price for hosting the affair.’

I shrugged. ‘It must be somewhere,’ I noted.

A day later, I was in Piraeus when the sky to the east and south began to turn black — not grey, not even a dark grey, but black, like coal or charcoal. I have seldom seen a sky that colour.

As the winds rose, I gathered what oarsmen I could and got the Lydia into one of the new stone ship-sheds, where she was snug, high off the water, and dry. Her hull was waterlogged and had worm, and the ship-sheds were the very best place for my Lydia.

What followed was one of the worst storms I’ve ever seen. The wind was from the east, as strong as a northern gale, but longer and shriller. Noon on the second day we had shrill winds and an orange sky, as if the gods meant to burn the earth away.

Seasoned captains got their ships off the seas. Far to the south, off Crete, Harpagos took our pentekonter freighter into a little port for refuge. Moire ran Storm Cutter back into Corcyra despite having just left the sea wall. Megakles took Swan into Mytilini, and Lydia was safely in a ship-shed.

Far to the east, the storm smashed into the bridges on the Hellespont, and wrecked them.

At the time, I stood at the eastern edge of the Piraeus harbour and let the storm soak me to the skin as I watched it come in. I could feel its deadliness and the force of its winds and I prayed to Poseidon to preserve my friends and my ships. And eventually, I was wise enough to pray for any man at sea in such a storm, with a little more humility.

For four days the waves pounded Piraeus. For four days that late summer storm wrecked ships, ruined houses, flooded towns and river estuaries — it killed birds and fish and men. And then the skies dawned pink, and the storm was gone, and we were left to wonder whether it had all been a dream.

But to Xerxes’ plans, it was no dream, and ten days later, when an Athenian ore freighter came back in from the mines on Samothrace, he reported to us — and the priests of Poseidon and any other who would listen — that Zeus had broken the chain at the Hellespont, shattering ships and drowning men.

I spent the summer running cargoes. It was a piece with my life in general that I went from hosting royalty to helping a dozen oarsmen muscle sacks of Boeotian barley into the hold of a round ship in just a few weeks, but I’m a poor aristocrat. I can’t sit on my hands and watch other men work. I could either drive ships through the water or pound bronze, and I was not man enough to resist the look my sister gave me — or my domesticos. That man — supposedly a slave — had taken over my house and made it all too easy for me to live there. Food appeared as if by magic — wine flowed, or stopped, with more or less water.

When oil jars ran low, more was purchased. Floors were cleaned. No servant or slave approached me for any reason.

Well — I’d been a slave, and I was not a very good master — too involved, I suspect. But my joke to Pen as I paused at her great house to sip wine en route to the Gulf of Corinth was that the house would run best of all if I wasn’t there.

I saw Aegypt that summer. Sekla had Lydia, so I paid rent to Aristides and took his beautiful Athena Nike from where he’d laid her up in Corinth. I got to spend the summer with Demetrios, one of my earliest mentors — one of Aristides’ helmsmen. He, too, was rich.

We had a fine voyage. I had learned a great deal of pure navigation in the Western Ocean, and I was no longer cautious about using it. Demetrios was still — like Vasileos and Megakles — a much better dead-reckoning sailor than I, and we challenged each other all summer. I suspect our rented oarsmen loathed us — we spent too much time over the horizon from any land, but we had fun, and we had some very fast passages.

In Aegypt, we found a Corinthian trireme — badly damaged by a storm and abandoned. In fact, locals were starting to pick her apart for firewood. How I wished for Vasileos! But I got her off the beach, towed her into the delta and got some linen patches on her sides — the Aegyptian revolt had cut them off from any source of wood unless Greeks brought it, so that their shipbuilding industry was at a standstill.

We left her there to get new rigging, and we ran a small cargo of perfumes and wines and some finished papyrus to Lebanon — and came back with the whole centreline of the ship burdened with timber. I think that Aristides would have cried to see his magnificent warship, her fine entry to the water ruined by overloading, her beautiful midship catwalk unusable because of fifty great pine logs. We all had to run down the ship’s sides with ropes, and it was a dead uncomfortable voyage — rowing all the way, no wind, terrible heat.

But out of it, I got a trireme — a heavy merchant trireme, well built and beautifully rebuilt by men happy to have work. We made a small fortune on the wood — the best cargo in the world is a cargo that your buyer needs desperately and for which you have no competition.

We called her Astarte for her new timbers, and we crewed her from rowers stranded in Aegypt by the revolt and loaded her with papyrus and linen, and we used all our profits on the wood to load Athena Nike’s narrow holds with glass — Aegyptian faience, mostly perfume bottles.

Summer was wearing on to autumn. We had our ‘home cargo’ and we also knew that there was a squadron of Phoenicians preying on Greek merchants — there was the biter bit — off the delta. So we ran out of the eastern mouth of the delta — for the south coast of Crete. I’d done it before when desperate — this was simply good navigation, and I put into Gortyn’s port as if I’d had a Pole Star over it all the way. Permit me a little bragging. It was a pretty piece of navigation, given two hard blows and a couple of grey days with no sun sighting.

We’d slipped the pirates — who were, according to the Cretans, the Persian navy enforcing a blockade on Aegypt, which was being punished for revolt. I’ll waste a little of your time to say that Aegypt — one of the richest lands in the world — was not in ‘revolt’. According to their own way of thinking, they were throwing off the yoke of oppression. To Xerxes, they were rebels.

Old Lord Achilleus was dead — and his son Neoptolymos had died at Lades. But the new King of Gortyn was Scyllus, Achilleus’s brother, and his son Brotachus was already a famous soldier. I was feasted in the palace, sold some fancy perfume bottles — wait, I lie. I gave the Cretans the perfume bottles of Aegyptian glass, and they gave me rich gifts in return. Very aristocratic, the Cretans. Too good for trade.

Bah — none of that matters. What matters is that in the town — the fishing port that supplied the king and his soldiers — I met Troas, the fisherman — still hale, still rude. He crushed me to him, and invited me to dinner.

So I went. Troas no longer lived in a rude shack on the beach. He’d had two boats and a fine son-in-law and some war loot, and from that he’d gone to a dozen fishing boats, nets in a tangle in every direction, a small army of fishermen who worked for him — and a fine stone house.

Gaiana didn’t share our dinner — that was not the Cretan way. But her oldest son did. His name was Hipponax, and he was. . mine. There was no hiding it — he had my nose, my mouth, my eyes — and her long limbs.

He was overeager to please me, and rude to his mother and his grandfather, and it was quite clear to me that he was a handful.

After dinner, he was sent to the agora on an errand, and we three sat together. Gaiana had aged. She was tall and plump and had lines around her eyes, and probably had a thousand other flaws, but I was older myself and I saw her as. . the same girl I’d bedded in the rain under Hephaestion’s porch, fifteen or more years before. She smiled nervously when first I came in, and then she had to find fault with me. .

‘I’m sure our manners are too coarse for a great lord like you,’ she said.

‘Do you ever stop talking to hear yourself think?’ she asked, and:

‘Do you know any stories that are not about you?’

And a dozen other quips. But after a cup of wine, she looked at her father.

He leaned forward on the kitchen table and held his bronze cup between his hands. ‘Would you take your son?’ he asked. ‘He’s going to kill someone. He’s set on being a warrior, and fishermen’s sons are not warriors on Crete. He fights all the time — with the boys from the warrior societies. He wins, too.’ Troas grinned in pleasure. Then shook his head.

‘You do not have the best record around here,’ Gaiana put in. ‘Half the island died at Lades!’

I shrugged. At thirty, I might have launched into some hot-blooded defence of my actions, and Miltiades and the whole Ionian Revolt — a diatribe against the treasons of Samos. But instead I shrugged and smiled at her.

And she smiled back.

‘Stop looking at me like that,’ she said.

At twenty, I’d have assumed she meant just that, but there and then, I knew she meant the opposite.

‘Will you take him?’ Troas asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. I felt good saying it. ‘Bless you for raising my son. I’ll take him to sea and try to keep him alive.’ I looked at Troas. ‘You know there is no guarantee.’

Troas raised his chin. ‘I lost her husband,’ he said gruffly.

‘Pater. .’ she began, and then paused.

I think we talked more, but eventually old Troas glared at his daughter. ‘Shall I leave you two lovebirds alone?’ he asked testily.

‘Yes,’ she said, defiant.

And he did.

Much later, she lay beside me. The gods were smiling — rain was falling on the roof.

‘I’m old and fat,’ she said.

‘No,’ I said. I spent some time proving my point.

She laughed and laughed and tickled me. ‘Damn you for coming back,’ she said. ‘I loved my husband. But I’m sick of being in a bed alone.’

And later still, she said, ‘Keep him alive. I have two other boys. They’ll make good fishermen. But Hipponax is. . something else. When he’s not a violent fool, he’s. . like a poet.’

Like a poet? I liked the sound of that.

The world is a strange and wonderful place, and one of the ways in which it is strange is this — few women in my life have stirred me as quickly or as deeply as Arwia of Babylon, with her scents and her earthy brilliance and her remarkable body. But while she was an adventure — and a sensual pleasure — Gaiana was. . better. Truer. Better for my soul, anyway.

We laughed a great deal. We talked about. . nothing — but we talked and talked, and then she complained again about her fat, as she called it.

‘The answer to weight,’ I said, ‘is exercise.’

She hit me quite hard.

Hipponax was a trained sailor, and a remarkably sullen and difficult boy. I’ve known dozens, if not hundreds, of young men, and they have much in common — they do not think, they lie when the truth would have done as well, they think failure is a crime, they think they are the gift of the gods to war, the sea and all of womankind — I’m just getting started, and these views are based mostly on knowing myself.

But even by that standard, Hipponax was difficult. It was as if he was constantly wrestling with some inner daemon, and losing. He said the most astounding things — out loud. He told Demetrios that he — Hipponax — was the best helmsman on the ship.

He came to me our second day at sea and said that he ‘wasn’t going to take any more crap’ from my captain of marines. Siberios was probably not the best warrior on the waves — he was a Corinthian sell-sword I’d found on the beach in Aegypt — but he was a good man in a fight, he had scars to prove it, and he could discipline men.

‘He’s riding me. Because he knows I’m a better man. I can take him,’ Hipponax said.

I looked at him for a moment. ‘Are you here on the command deck as my son, or as a marine on my ship?’

He shrugged. ‘Whatever,’ he said.

‘As my son, I’d suggest you learn some humility. As a marine — get the fuck off my deck before I have you bound to an oar, and never approach me again with such whiney crap. Do I make myself clear?’ I did think a moment before I shot that out.

He turned red. ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘I don’t have to take your crap either.’

Demetrios saved me a lot of trouble by knocking him flat — from the side. I think it was better that Demetrios did it.

He bounded to his feet, ready to fight. He really was incredible — fast, brave, strong.

Overweight Demetrios dropped him a second time, and he didn’t move.

‘I should apologise,’ Demetrios said.

‘Don’t bother,’ I said.

But I was wise enough to send Hector to look after him. Hector got him under the awning and kept him cool, and was waiting with water.

I can guess some of the things they said to each other — but they became friends. Hector was younger, but as my right hand, he knew me better. Hipponax craved my good opinion but had all the wrong notions of how to achieve it.

They became. . inseparable. We had a day in port on a tiny island west of Lesvos, and they did something that must have been insanely reckless and stupid, because I still haven’t been told.

At any rate, Hipponax became manageable, although, as you will hear, this did not apply to combat.

A day west of Thasos, with all my rowers well rested and a deck full of marines, a pair of pirates came out of the morning haze and were foolish enough to try us — two ships to two, in the open ocean.

I won’t bother with the fight. I’ll only say that I would have loved to be aboard their lead ship when we turned and attacked them.

See? I still laugh.

They were brutal animals with a dozen women chained to their midships deck and the corpse of a man rotting against a boat sail mast. Neither ship had any recognisable identity — they weren’t Samian aristocrats making a little money, or Phoenicians or Carthaginians. These were scum. I’ll only relate one incident. I was standing in the bows, waiting to climb on to the rail of the marines’ box and leap on to the enemy deck. My marines were all formed behind me, and we were silent with the tension. That heart-grabbing tension that never changes. Every fight.

We bore down, with Demetrios’s powerful hand on the tiller, and we made the little leap to the side that Demetrios always makes about fifty feet out from a strike — and my fool son pushed past me and clambered on to the rail.

Even as we struck, he leapt. A full twenty heartbeats before I would have gone — and no one was ready to support him.

No one but Hector.

Hector ran along the side rail — you try that in bronze — and leaped.

It was many, many years since I had been the third man on to an enemy deck.

We killed every free man. The slaves caught the last of their marines — he tried to hide among them, and they killed him. I won’t describe it, but I’m going to guess he had it coming.

The whole incident reminded me of Dagon. As I have said before, I’m sure you’d like me to have sailed the seas looking for him and for revenge, but by Poseidon and by Herakles, I had better things to do with my time.

But seeing the ruins of the women chained to the deck did something in my chest. I dreamed of Dagon that night, and the next night, and the next. The gods were telling me something.

We were close to Delos. We had a good cargo and time. I put the helm down and took the women we’d saved — if indeed they were saved — to the sanctuary of Delos. I found Dion of Delos, who had helped me with dreams before.

After some time, I decided, with the help of the worthy priest, that I had been commanded to avenge the women — the women who leaped into Poseidon’s arms. That’s what the priest of Apollo concluded, and I think he had the right of it.

It is one thing to pursue a personal revenge. It is another — I hope — to be told by the Sea God to right a wrong.

But the fight made the bond between the boys as strong as Chalcidian steel. And it confirmed my notion that my ships, despite their lading with luxury goods, were fast enough to run. So I bore away north on a favourable wind for a little spying along the Thracian coast. West of the Dardanelles, it is flat — the delta of the Evros river is rich in birds and fish and mosquitoes. We beached, built hasty stockades to protect our ships against the locals, and stood guard all night, but some of the Thracians traded with us, and we had a good look into the Great King’s preparations.

Zeus and Poseidon sent the storm that wrecked the bridges, but the Great King was equal to the challenge. I got close enough to see one span of ships already rebuilt, and another laid out along the Asian coast.

Men say that Xerxes ordered the waters beaten with whips. I think that sounds unlikely, but he was a man not fully in control of his passions, and I suppose he might have given way to a fit of rage.

I also counted almost three hundred and fifty military ships.

I touched at Athens to sell my cargoes and pick up hides and salt for Corinth, but I was in a hurry and all my friends were gone. We were late for the Council, and everyone was already there.

Corinth is a fine city. The magnificent acropolis towers over the town itself, and it is a long climb to the temples, and the pottery workshops aren’t what they were in my father’s youth, but they have beautiful buildings and superb bronzesmiths. To say the least.

As we beached, a runner came down to invite me to drink wine with Adamenteis. I would not have been suspicious, even though I disliked the man, but the runner would not meet my eye. The whole thing sounded odd, and I read the message tabled several times.

‘Please tell our lordly host that I will attend him after I report to Themistocles,’ I said.

He cringed. ‘No! That is, lord, he needs to see you — immediately.’

Never make a slave improvise.

‘Why?’ I shot out.

The man’s eyes were everywhere. ‘I. . lord, I don’t know. Perhaps about Persia?’ He still didn’t look at me, and I smelled a dead rat. Perhaps several dead rats.

I turned to Hipponax. ‘Set this man ashore,’ I said.

‘No!’ he said, but he went quietly enough. I sent a runner to Themistocles, and sat tight.

Before the sun set the width of a finger, a small army of magistrates and armed men came down to the beach.

It was all about the ship — the wreck we found in Aegypt. A pair of Corinthians claimed her — and said that I had no doubt attacked her and taken her, as I was a notorious pirate.

Adamenteis supported them. I suppose he’d intended to take me when I went to visit him.

Let me explain that men in Greece do not recognise the laws of other cities, so no man of Plataea cares a fig for the laws of Corinth, least of all me. I told the two magistrates to go about their business or I’d have them thumped by my marines. I was informed that I could not land or sell my cargoes.

This sort of thing happens. I sent Hipponax to Aristides and Hector to Gorgo and got my ships off the beach.

That should have been enough. It should have worked. Adamanteis should have, at the very least, put the interests of the League ahead of his own and let the matter go, but he did not, and by that action revealed himself, at least to me. I still think he took a bribe from the Great King. I know that other men dispute this.

But I say he was a traitor, and he was hosting the conference.

I lost six days in Adamanteis’s pettifogging labyrinth of accusations. Among other things, it became apparent — to me — that he had known I had the ship before I landed. A priest on Delos, perhaps? But my innate sense of self-preservation said that something was not right, and that this was the long arm of Xerxes reaching across the waves for me.

Neither Aristides nor Cimon would accept a word of it. They saw me as deluded, and while they worked tirelessly to rid me of the burden of accusations, they declined to accept that the Corinthian was an enemy.

So I didn’t hear any of the opening orations, and I missed it when the whole delegation of Thebes — a delegation of oligarchs that excluded some of the cities’ aristocrats — spoke against resistance. I missed the King of Sparta — Leonidas — giving what Themistocles insisted was the best speech he’d ever heard.

Instead, I took my ships along the isthmus, landed in the Peloponnesus at Hermione, and took a horse back with all my marines trailing away behind me in a cacophony of curses — most of them had never forked a horse before. I lost two more days riding through the Peloponnese — beautiful, but not for riding. We came down out of the mountains and I saw Corinth in the distance, and sent Hector ahead to see whether the way was clear.

Themistocles had bought a Corinthian ally — Diotus, who had had business dealings with me and was the proxenos for little Plataea, and he and Myron had done the best they could — they’d wrapped the accusations in wool, as we like to say in Plataea. So when I arrived, I had to put up almost a third of my profits from the voyage east as a bond, and then I was allowed to go about my business — which was to attend the conference.

One more detail to explain my frame of mind. I went to the great temple of Zeus to swear an oath to answer the charges against me, and there I saw Calisthenes — one of the mighty Alcmaeonidae of Athens. That was like a splash of icy water.

He smiled at me. I know that smile — I’ve smiled it at other men. He wanted me to know that he was involved in the charges against me.

I was concerned, to say the least.

With all that hanging over my head, I was a poor delegate — a week late, and I hadn’t made a sacrifice. The conference was actually held in the precinct of the temple complex where they held the games — the Isthmian games, I mean. And even though I’d missed eight days of talk, they were still talking.

The issue was not resistance. Greece had already chosen to resist. Thanks to the gods, men had used their heads and seen that we had to fight.

The issue was command. All were agreed that Sparta should lead the allied army. Why not? The Spartiates were the closest things to professional soldiers that we had. Spartan kings had more experience of planning major campaigns than anyone else. There really wasn’t much argument — the only man I could possibly have considered to put up against Leonidas was Aristides, and he wanted the Spartans to command.

So Leonidas would lead the field army.

But the naval component was another story. And we all knew that the navy was going to be important. The largest navy belonged to Athens, which, in fifteen years, had gone from a fairly small navy to the largest in the Aegean and perhaps in the whole of the eastern Mediterranean — except Persia, of course. That summer, Athens could put more than a hundred hulls in the water, and Aegina could scarcely muster seventy, and Corinth about fifty. Only Syracusa on Sicily had more.

And no one wanted Athens to have the command.

In vain did Themistocles politic. And let me add — Gorgo and Leonidas were unshakeable in supporting him. Leonidas wanted Themistocles to be the navarchos.

There were other candidates.

Gelon of Syracusa was one. He offered one hundred and twenty ships to the cause if he could be the commander on land and sea.

Adamanteis of Corinth was another, and he scarcely bothered to conceal his loathing of Athens — That upstart city, he said in a speech. It was an impious exaggeration — even in myth, Athens pre-dates Corinth, and in fact the evidence of your eyes will show you how long Athens has been a mighty citadel, but other men — our foes — agreed with him. Only a few decades before, Athens had been a minor city-state with a tyrant who could be bought and a small fleet and a small army. The new democracy had flooded her phalanx with new muscle and had made her rowers into citizens, and many of the oligarchs who ruled the cities of mainland Greece felt deeply threatened, no little bit by the growth of the very fleet that Athens swore to use for the common good.

After a day of it, all I could think of was the captains’ conferences before Lades. We had supposedly all been on the same side, for the same purposes, and the Samians had betrayed us. Here, we weren’t done with the conference and some men — the Corinthians and the men of Argos — were open in saying that they would prefer to see Athens destroyed than to see an Athenian command the allied fleet.

The problem — and it was a problem — was that there were not many compromise candidates. No one was going to accept an Aeginian in command. They had tried to Medise — that is, to support the Great King — at the time of Marathon, and they made no secret of their hatred for Athens. But they were the only other state with a navy large enough to train officers who could direct major sea operations.

Except Corinth. And Adamanteis wanted that command very badly. He fought tooth and nail in the discussions to arrange that a stinging message was sent to Gelon.

For myself, I could have served under Gelon. But the rumour was that the Great King was flinging Carthage at Syracusa to pin the great Syracusan fleet in place, and men worried that Gelon would sacrifice Greece to save Sicily, and of course they were right. I agreed with them — I knew that Artapherenes had gone to Carthage. But I thought that with one mighty fleet, we could probably control the whole of the sea.

At any rate, no one listened to me. Gelon was sent an icy message of refusal, and went back to fighting Carthage.

But Themistocles was no more willing to send the Athenian fleet to sea under a Corinthian than under an Aeginian. So the bickering continued, while the Persians built their second bridge and while their ships and lead elements of their armies moved into Thrace.

I could see it falling apart before my very eyes. The whole alliance — so promising a month before — was going to break up over the issue of the fleet. Half the cities present had no fleets and couldn’t imagine what it was all about.

About two weeks into the conference, I was sitting on the steps of the shrine of Herakles with two dozen men — really, the whole of the ‘Athenian’ faction. We were tired, and we sat drinking watered wine, our slaves and hypaspists gathered around us.

We’d come out of the temple still debating the command. Two of the representatives from Megara had come out — we were trying to dissuade them from their pro-Corinthian stance.

‘Why does it matter?’ the elder asked.

And Themistocles stood, and pointed out over the crisp blue water of the great bay before us. ‘The war with Persia is all about the sea,’ he said. ‘Xerxes may come by land, but he cannot maintain his army — or his conquest — without the sea. This war will be won and lost with triremes, not with swords.’

The Megaran sneered. ‘You only say that because your political power base is little men who row,’ he said. ‘Only gentlemen can win battles.’

Themistocles shook his head. ‘Persian archers care nothing for the quality of the man in the armour,’ he said. ‘Arrows are all democrats.’

The Megaran shrugged. ‘Only rich men can own the armour to stop the arrows.’

Themistocles shook his head. ‘With a fleet, I can prevent the Persians from having arrows,’ he said. ‘I can prevent them from having bread, or beans, or garlic, or bowstrings.’

The Megarans muttered, and turned to walk away, unswayed.

Stung, the orator shouted after them, ‘After the war, there will be an empire! Don’t you see it? With a fleet, we can crush the Great King. We can take all Ionia back-’

I put a hand on his arm.

Themistocles sat down and glowered.

That night, I went and drank wine with Leonidas. I was invited. He and his retinue were in a fine country house near the precinct — far finer than his house in Sparta, in fact. The floor mosaics were magnificent. Aristides was there — he didn’t attend the meetings of the conference, because of his feeling about Themistocles, but he was in Corinth and attended many private functions. Everyone knew he had been to see the Great King, and since no one could imagine the great Aristides becoming pro-Persian, they trusted him to tell them what the Great King intended, and he told them — right down to the facts of our escape from Mardonius.

At any rate, I lay with him on a kline and listened to Leonidas plan his campaign. He had a straightforward idea — that the Greeks should send their allied army to a forward position so that the Persians would not be in a position to threaten anyone — except perhaps the Thessalians. We needed the Thessalian cavalry to match the brilliant Persian cavalry.

And Leonidas — almost alone, let me add — looked clear eyed at the odds and the campaign. He was the first to propose a series of narrow points — where land and sea were both constrained — as the places where the allied army could face the Great King while the allied fleet contained his fleet. Our spies and our scouts — even my own work — suggested that the Persians would have almost six hundred fighting ships. Even if Xerxes gave us another year, all Greece couldn’t match six hundred ships. So the best we could hope for was a series of holding actions, and Leonidas invited me to drink his wine so that I could help Aristides to advise him on naval tactics.

Leonidas was a fine commander and a deep thinker, but he thought sea battles were land battles with water.

But he was very good about the narrow places and he had a much firmer grasp of geography than most men. He listened when other men spoke. He was already choosing his battlefields. Perhaps most important, he was almost alone in understanding that we would not be challenging Xerxes to a fair fight on an open field, like Plataea facing Thisbe or Athens facing Thebes.

Oh, no.

Leonidas, the great general, the King of Sparta, the first among equals, the best warrior of Greece, lay on his couch at Corinth and laid out our strategy.

‘I’ll take the allied army to a narrow place,’ he said. ‘And we’ll fight the Medes the way a cat fights a dog.’ He looked around.

Some men flinched.

‘With everything we have,’ he said. ‘And with our flanks defended.’

He chose a dozen sites based on what other men could tell him, and his own travels and his brother’s. Some of them were rendered untenable by distance from the centres at Athens and the Peloponesus. Some were so far ‘forward’ that they fell immediately to the Persians or even surrendered. But he chose the Vale of Tempe immediately, because it offered almost everything we needed for a forward strategy. He named three places to which he could retreat.

The best of them all was the Hot Gates, and the headland of Artemis, where the north end of Euboea almost meets the coast of southern Thessaly. There, the sea is as constrained as the land.

But Euxenis, the Thessalian, shook his head. ‘If you fight there, you will lose Thessaly,’ he said. ‘And all of our cavalry will be serving the Great King.’

Leonidas smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But if I lose Thessaly, I’ll have to fight somewhere.’

Sparthius raised a hand. ‘Why not just meet them here, at the isthmus?’ he asked.

Leonidas shrugged. ‘If we fight here, then Athens and Thebes are lost, and Megara and probably Corinth.’

Sparthius looked at me and winked. ‘So? None of them has a single Spartan citizen.’

Now, my friends, you may think this is dull — but this is what we faced, in building the alliance. Every state could see how to protect its own interests. And the men of the Peloponnesus were in the most secure position of all.

‘If Xerxes’ fleet defeats our fleet, he can land an army anywhere,’ I said. ‘He could take Olympia.’

‘Avert!’ said a dozen Spartiates. Men glared at me.

‘Or Sparta itself,’ I said, ignoring them.

Every head turned.

‘Not while there was a single Spartiate left alive,’ Bulis said.

But Queen Gorgo nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. She was only passing through the room — collecting her small weaving bag, or so she claimed, although like many women I’ve known, she knew how to linger at an all-male party for an hour.

At her one word, all the Spartans fell silent. And she smiled — a carefully dramatised hesitation. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You would all die, and then an army of his slaves would take Sparta.’

An hour later, with far too much wine in me, I staggered to my feet and clasped hands with Aristides before nodding to the king. Spartans use very little ceremony in private.

I had made it through the doors of the andron when Hector took my arm without a word and led me across the marble-paved courtyard, past a magnificent and ancient olive tree in a basin of marble, and up a set of carved wooden steps to the porch — the exedra — of the women’s wing.

Gorgo sat quite decorously with a pair of maidens, enjoying the moonlit air and the scent of olives.

‘A Spartan,’ she said, as soon as I was at the top of the steps.

I was not at my best. ‘What?’ I mumbled, or words to that effect.

She waved dismissively. ‘Why do men drink so much? Listen, Arimnestos, I need your wits. Let’s have a Spartan navarch. A Spartan of unimpeachable nobility and some ability, who can give clear orders — and take them, if necessary. From Themistocles. No — listen! No one in Corinth or Megara or Thebes can imagine that Themistocles the Democrat is really going to ally with Leonidas the great noble. Let us put in a Spartan admiral, and all our troubles are at an end. And we are rid of Adamenteis.’

I leaned against the rail. ‘I think Adamenteis is in the pay of the Great King,’ I said.

Gorgo shrugged. ‘Half the conference have been sent money by Xerxes.’ She lowered her peplos from over her head to show her eyes and a bit of her mouth. ‘I have myself.’

I was charmed. ‘What did you do with the money?’ I asked.

‘I sent half to the temple of Artemis at Brauron and the other half to Themistocles to build a ship,’ she said. ‘Do you think we can defeat Xerxes?’

‘Yes,’ I insisted. ‘If you are navarch.’

We laughed together.

The next day, I proposed that Eurybiades of Lacedaemon be chosen as navarchos. I had wandered about — half drunk — and informed Themistocles and Aristides and a dozen of the important men, so that, as soon as I made the proposal in council, a dozen orators rose and supported it.

Adamenteis never had a chance to rally his supporters. We put it to the vote and the thing was done.

Athens chose to trust Sparta with its fleet. Friends — in many ways, it was Athens’ finest hour. Someone had to trust a stranger.

And with that trust came the scent of victory. Until Athens conceded that it would give the command to Sparta, we were some sixty odd cities with a common language and a lot of shared hatred. But after the question of the arch-navarchos was settled, the smaller cities began to show signs of fight. And as the last week of the conference rolled along, Themistocles framed a resolution calling for an even division of spoils — as in the Iliad — and the wording suggested strongly that if we won, we would punish those who stood with the Medes.

On the last day, Leonidas walked among the delegates and asked each how many hoplites his city could bring. And when he had counted them all, he nodded, and said — quite loud, so that it carried acorss the temple -

‘Sixty thousand.’

Silence fell.

‘If every city here does as they have promised, we Greeks can put sixty thousand hoplites in the field.’ He looked around, imperious in his scarlet cloak, but he would have been imperious naked.

Adamanteis didn’t exactly shrug, but he said — loudly enough to be heard — ’Xerxes will have a million.’

Themistocles laughed. It was a derisive, orator’s laugh, but it cut through whatever noble thing Leonidas meant to say.

‘We Greeks are poor. We don’t have enough wood to build more ships, nor enough food to feed all our people, nor enough bronze to make more armour, nor iron to make weapons.’ He raised his hands. ‘But thanks to the will of the gods, we will have enough Persians to allow all of us to be heroes.’

We arrived at the conference as factions — as Megarans and Plataeans and Lacedaemonians and Athenians and Thebans and Thesbians.

Most of us left it as Greeks.