‘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.