Poseidon's Spear

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So — here we are again.

Last night, I told you of Marathon — truly the greatest of days for a warrior, the day that every man who was present, great or small, remembers as his finest. But even Marathon — the great victory of Athens and Plataea against the might of Persia — did not end the Long War.

In fact, thugater, an honest man might say that the Battle of Marathon started the Long War. Until Marathon, there was the failed revolt of the Ionians, and any sane man would have said they had lost. That the Greeks had lost. In far-off Sardis — in Persepolis, capital of the Persian Empire — they barely knew that Athens existed, or Sparta, and I will wager not a one of the gold-wearing bastards had heard of Plataea.

I was born in Plataea, of course, and my father raised me to be a smith — but my tutor Calchus saw the man of blood inside me, and made me a warrior, as well. And even that isn’t really fair — my pater was a fine warrior, the polemarch of our city, and he led us out to war with Sparta and Corinth in the week of three battles, and fought like a lion, and died — murdered, stabbed in the back while he fought, by his own cousin Simon, and may the vultures tear his liver in eternal torment!

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