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And so the Delian League became the Athenian Empire.
And Themistocles, like all who become great in Athens, suffered his fall.
Exiled from his home by jealous rivals,
he ended up volunteering his services to none other than the Great King of Persia,
who reasoned that the Persians’ greatest foe might prove their most useful servant.
So Themistocles ended his days a loyal subject of the Mede.
As I said, great men rarely meet great ends.
Decades passed.
The Athenian Empire grew to new heights
under the wise statesman Pericles, who governed with his beloved Aspasia at his side.
Athens, burnt to a husk mere decades earlier,
was now a marvelous metropolis, resplendent in glittering marble.
Prosperous and confident,
the city of Athena nurtured a golden age of art, philosophy, and architecture.
But the days when Athens fought side-by-side with Sparta were long gone.
Greece fractured into two great powers:
the Athenian Empire and the Peloponnesian League, circling each other like yellow-eyed wolves.
One hardly needed the foresight of Apollo to see that war was coming.
On land, none could resist the Spartans, whose men devoted their whole lives to war.
At sea, the Athenian fleet was unmatched.
And with Athens connected to its port by a set of long walls,
the navy could feed the city indefinitely, should any foe attempt a siege.
All Greece held its breath,
like an audience that awaits the arrival of a tragic chorus,
knowing that things both great and terrible are about to unfold.