Aristides, without a ship, as his beautiful Athena Nike was still being repaired, added a wrinkle. We had far more hoplites than we could fit on ships. Aristides was given command of all the hoplites left on Salamis. He said he would attempt to take the two islets in the middle of the straits. Neither is very considerable, but the larger is big enough for a thousand men to stand in formation and archers on that island would be able to wreck our centre. We gave him all the pentekonter and all the fishing boats.
In fact, once the decision was made to fight, we moved along at a great rate. I want to say that it was Eurybiades who decided to fight. He never called for another vote. Perhaps he thought it was obvious or perhaps he was tired of oratory. I know I was.
We trudged back to our camp and I laid out my panoply and woke two of my slaves to shine it. I planned to wear the whole thing — shin guards and thigh guards and arm guards and everything. To shine like a god. Because in war, these things matter.
And then I rolled in my cloak and went to sleep without another thought.
Part II
When all Greece was balanced on the razor’s edge
we protected her with our souls, and here we lie
I woke from a dream so erotic that I might have been on the point of an indiscretion, and pondered what the gods meant by sending me a dream of making love to Jocasta, for whom I had infinite respect but towards whom I had never felt the least attraction. But my waking mind found the notion humorous, and I rolled out of my cloak looking more like a satyr than a man and threw myself into the sea. I dried myself with my linens in the darkness and woke Seckla, and all around me men blew life into campfires.
I sent Hipponax up the ridge to see what could be seen from our watchtowers, and I walked along the beach until I was sure that the Athenians were in motion. Xanthippus was civil enough and already in his armour, while I was still naked and my hair wet from my swim, but I felt better for it, and better still when Hector put a horn cup of mulled wine in my hand.
The first kiss of dawn touched the sky and I put on my best chiton, milk-white wool with purple stripes and red embroidery, ravens and stars. Then I put on the leather straps that went around my ankles to protect them from the slap of the greaves against my instep, and then I snapped the greaves over my shins, cursing the way they cut into every old wound and new scratch from my last outing. Hector knelt behind me and buckled them on, and then he put armour on my left thigh — the thigh most likely to be hit. Sometimes I wear armour on both, but usually I do not.
Then he hinged open my beautiful bronze thorax that Anaxicles had hammered out of new bronze back in Syracusa, what seemed like many years before. He closed it and slid the pins shut, slipped the arm guard on my right forearm and the shoulder guard on my right shoulder. No man needs a guard on his left shoulder or forearm — that’s what the aspis covers.
Many men were gathered there. It was like a ceremony and a festival, too. I was Achilles being armed, or Ares, or mighty Ajax or Diomedes, or one of the Immortals or the heroes, and the dawn gilded my bronze and made it glow red, as if I’d spilled a fiery immortal blood. Hector brought my helmet and Hipponax, back from his mission and looking furtive for some reason, reported that the Peloponnesians were already arrayed and putting rowers into their ships, and also reported, somewhat unnecessarily, that the Brauron girls were awake and singing hymns. He put my aspis on my arm, and then he and Hector armed together. Brasidas came out of his tent armed, and Idomeneus, who looked more like a god than any, with his perfect body and shining bronze and his old-fashioned high crest nodding like Hector’s in Iliad. And Achilles’ namesake, my cousin, did us no disgrace, despite his recent wound and his surly ways, but he ran down from the upper beach fully armed, and his bronze also lit up in the new sun.
But against our bronze, most of the rowers were naked, or wore loincloths. But the top-deck rowers on Lydia had helmets and thorax of captured Persian linen, stitched tight and hard with embroidery, or quilted, or beautiful leather spolas taken off Ionian ships, or tawed leather yokes made in Athens or Massalia, and spears. A few even sported swords, or axes, or little maces with bronze heads. They watched us arm, as if our bronze plate protected them as well as us — and I like to think it did.
When we were all together, as far as I could see — the marines in neat rows, and Leukas and Onisandros and Polymarchos, standing with Sittonax, the laziest deadly fighter I knew, my old Gaulish friend and my old sparring mate and newest marine — then our ship’s dog condescended to join us, running down the beach. He ran to me with a live rabbit still breathing in his mouth. I gentled him, gave him a hug and a long pat and beckoned Hector to give the dog a sausage, which he clearly craved. But the rabbit was from the gods and I slit its throat, as much a mercy as a sacrifice, and opened it over the fire.
‘Victory!’ I roared, before I had even glanced at its entrails. But the liver was whole and spotless — not all that usual with rabbits, let me tell you. I am no great diviner, but that rabbit was sent by Zeus and told me we would win.
My people cheered and cheered and the men on other ships began to cheer, and the cliff above us echoed hollowly, as if the gods were shouting approval.
One of our Gaulish wine barrels was open and Onisandros was serving a cup of wine to every man. I leapt on it.
‘Lydia!’ I said.
They all froze.
‘Listen, brothers!’ I called. ‘Many times before today, I have heard men argue whether the hoplites or the rowers would save Greece.’ I paused.
By the gods, it was quiet.
‘I tell you, we will only save Greece together. I tell you, today, any man who pulls an oar against the Medes is my brother, a descendent of Heracles, noble in his birth, free to walk the earth and defy his foes. I say that this is our hour, when the world will decide if indeed we are worthy of that freedom our fathers won. I say that those who die today will go with Hector and Achilles and the dead of Marathon, even if they were born of slaves and were themselves unfree, and those who live today having done their duty will be remembered as long as free men in any country walk under the stars. And as I make every one of you noble sons of Heracles, then every one of you must want nothing better than to die in arms, or live victorious. For I promise you, brothers, I will not leave the field today alive and beaten. If Greece, free, is a dream, I will die today, still dreaming. Will you, my friends, be my brothers?’
Zeus, the noise they made. I was carried away — I was already with the gods and Athena said those words in my ear, yet even as their cheers rang like the voice of Poseidon echoing from the cliffs over my head, I heard a curiously high-pitched cheer from close at hand.
I remembered it later.
Themistocles held one last meeting. I confess that I think the man loved a council, where his particular merits shone forth at their best. Or perhaps he just liked to talk.
It was greater than just a council, because he had there most of the trierarchs and navarchs, but also many of the helmsmen and marines, both captains and famous men. No one was forbidden to attend. The sun was not yet fully in the sky when he made his speech, and Eurybiades did nothing but bid us to hold our places, to back water when ordered and not break the line.
I felt that Eurybiades’ speech was more to the point.