I thought perhaps they were in battle shock. So did Cimon. He put a hand on Themistocles’ shoulder as I had. ‘We are a trifle singed,’ he said. ‘But the Great King’s fleet will not come off their beaches tomorrow. Listen — Arimnestos and I can put to sea. .’
I was going to glare at him, but then I saw Abronichus standing with Phrynicus, and both of them were weeping openly.
I assumed that meant Aeschylus was dead, or some other worthy man, and indeed, as I watched, another Athenian, Lycomedes, pulled his chlamys over his head to hide his tears.
Tired men weep easily.
Eurybiades shook himself like an old dog. ‘We must. . retreat,’ he said.
Cimon was looking at Lycomedes, as flustered as I was. ‘Retreat? We won. We lost good men — great men — today, so that we would break them and we broke them! Now we must finish the job-’
‘Peace,’ Themistocles said. ‘Be silent, Cimon. We have no choice.’
‘No choice?’ Cimon asked.
Eurybiades sighed. ‘As dawn broke this morning, the Persians seized a pass above Thermopylae,’ he said, like a man reporting on a race at the Olympics he had once seen. ‘King Leonidas sent the allied army away. Then, with all the Thespians, he formed his phalanx.’
No one moved, or spoke, or groaned. The wind itself stopped.
‘The king died this morning. His body was lost twice, and eventually regained.’ He shook himself again. ‘About the time we engaged the enemy today, the last men died. Thermopylae has fallen.’
I can’t remember anything more of that hour except the desolation.
Leonidas was dead. The army was destroyed.
We had fought for four days, for nothing.
We had lost.
Epilogue
No — I’ll leave you there. You know what happens next. But it is always darkest before the dawn, and that night, with King Leonidas dead across the straits, his corpse defiled by King Xerxes in a fury of unmanly pettiness, every Greek thought the same.
But when next we meet, I’ll tell you more — of Salamis, and Plataea. Of how I met the Great King one more time.
Of what we did, we men of Greece.
But tonight, drink to Leonidas of Sparta, who died for Greece — aye, and Antigonus of Thespiae and all his men, who died with the Spartans. And all the men — Corinthians and Plataeans and Athenians and Aeginians and Spartans and Hermionians and Tegeans and every other man of Greece who fell into Poseidon’s waters off Artemesium, fighting for Hellas.
Here is to their shades!