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Artemisium. Its name is all but lost now, dwarfed by the juggernaut of glory that is Thermopylae—that narrow pass in northern Greece where King Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans faced the invading hordes of Persia to a standstill. In the end, they gave their lives so that other Greeks might know the true meaning of courage, their stand the greatest in military history. And yet, the defenders of Thermopylae, for all their unparalleled heroism, could not have survived an hour—much less three days—had the sons of Athens and her allies not held the Persian fleet at bay in the straits forty miles to the east. Nikomachos, son of Agamedes, a young kinsman of Themistokles, witnesses the savage seaborne fighting and the no less brutal political machinations of the Greek commanders. He encounters the Spartan Eurybiades, who shares nothing of the valor displayed by the defenders of Thermopylae, and Adeimantus of Corinth, who would sell his city as a pander sells flesh: to the highest bidder. And he contends with the most cunning politician of them all, Themistokles, whose arsenal includes bluff, bribery, and outright intimidation. Despite the fierce opposition, Nikomachos doesn’t quail. Young and full of rage, he has come to Artemisium to dine at the table of Vengeance, to settle the score for the deaths of his father and brother ten years earlier, on the plain of Marathon. |
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