How did a few small cities hold off the largest empire in the world - not once, but twice? This novel takes you back to ancient Greece and the beginning of self-government. In a story that sweeps across 20 years and two invasions Athens and Sparta repel the Persians against long odds. But it isn't just Marathon and Thermopylae, it's also the war ships - rowed not by the elite but by the ordinary Athenians, and commanded by the narrator's father. Behind those battles is the slow emergence of the Assembly - the place where people for the first time began to find a way to lead themselves without a tyrant.