It was a cold night in the spring of 580BCE, Dionysos, a peasant in the realm of Attika was strolling on the beach, it was a long and hard day and he had toiled under his master for long, he sat on the beach wondering about his life, thoughts filled his head, he had made up his mind to leave slavery, he thought that he could slowly earn money and buy back his freedom. While his head flooded with thoughts, waves crashed on huge ships in the distance, they were triremes, ever-present to remind the people that they were safe under the watchful eyes of Themistocles, their elected king. The ships were coming closer, for a second Dionysos thought it was weird but gave no second thought to it, after a while, the ships became clearer, they were red in color, peculiar as the ships blessed by Athena were all bright blue, there was no mistake, he thought to himself, those were Trojan ships. The Trojans had attack where and when nobody expected. It was the Olympics, the Trojans had broken the truce, those brutes! At first Dionysos thought of his family, what would happen of his beautiful wife and his child to be, will they all be enslaved by the armies of Troy and sold in the Agoras and bazaars of Ionia? Will he be subjugated to build the walls of Troy, what would happen of his dreams to finally break off his shackles as a Helot and become a free man? No, he couldn’t sit still, he had to do something, so he did what a coward would, but with the heart of a brave man. He started running towards the capital, he had to inform the Athenians about what was to come, the ships weren’t far, it wouldn’t have taken even another hour for them to land their troops onto Attika. Athens was a hundred and twenty stadia away, it would take any normal man an hour but the determination in him gave him the might of Achilles, he ran and ran till his bare soles bled dry, he barely felt them and on he went into Athens, through the marvelous gate bulwarking the city from the walls he went in and raced up the Parthenon, he came to the feet of the Statue of Goddess Athena and shouted, “Save us oh goddess, Trojans at Marathon!” This did the trick, the city was put on alert and the gates were barricaded, still a problem bothered Themistocles, though Athens’ walls could hold, the food supply couldn’t, the Trojans would pillage and slaughter the countryside of Attika and Athens would be laid siege to, the fall would come, so he made the hard decision to meet the invaders in the field and stop them in their tracks.
Themistocles urged his Corinthian and Thebian allies to send help, messengers were quickly dispatched. Whatever ships could be mustered were readied and deployed out of Piraeus harbor, it was a sight to behold as the magnificent ships moved in formation, exiting the bay. The bright blue lines they formed looked like very ink that writ the pages of Athenian democracy, unlike those Trojans who laid their lives for despots and tyrannics. Themistocles led his army, he was more of a bureaucrat than a warrior, but he knew that his presence would mean a lot for morale, the Athenian army raced to Marathon, eight hundred men strong led by a contingent of a hundred horsemen, the pearl white steeds rode by well-trained Athenians, famously known as the Centaurs. About halfway through, the army started crossing the forest, the most direct path was through it. As the going was slow, the heavy Athenian armor got bogged down but just then, with ghostly footsteps and the sound of cracking leaves as the only warning, bearing down on the Athenians came the enemy soldiers, they were Persian soldiers, their robes indicated that they were immortals, highly trained and the best that Persia had to offer. Quick and agile, the terrain favored the enemy while the Athenian preference for armor and shields didn’t help in that situation. Themistocles’ bodyguards fought off the attack, the army had taken a beating, Themistocles still kept marching forward. It was now clear to him that with the Persians on Troy’s side, the battle would be one to delay the invasion, not to stop it. He finally reached Marathon, from the rocky heights he could see that the Trojan ships had completed their amphibious landing and a lot of the troops had landed. The ships numbered vast and the Athenian Navy would take another few hours to reach, with his men being outnumbered more than ten to one, he tried to set up defenses, but the Trojans didn’t sit idle, knowing that the Athenian navy might reach anytime, the Trojans struck, trying to push their advantage, the fighting was fierce but alas most of the Athenian army had been slaughtered to a man, the only ones to live to tell the tale were the centaurs, who on Themistocles’ orders, retreated back with him to Athens. They reached Athens, the news of the defeat had sparked panic in the city, the now crowded city, as most of the country had been moved in the protection of Athena’s walls. Themistocles was too busy urging allies to send immediate help, vacating all the messengers he could to all nearby forts, outposts and friendly cities and empires, still, it could be weeks before any major force from Lakonia or Corinth, the two most powerful allies, could be sent. Others in Themistocles’ court had other solutions, one especially Aristides, his greatest critic and political rival thought of what Athenians did best, pray to Athena.
The statue of Athena, fifty cubits in height, standing atop the already immensely tall fort of the Parthenon, dominated the city from above, so around it, the whole slew of priests walked in a circle, around the Parthenon complex, fulfilling every rite to satisfy Athena. Incense, oils, papyrus and gold, all those important to the gods had been arranged for. Soon enough, the citizens joined standing inside and around the circle of priests, chanting along prayers. On the other side of the city Themistocles saw the enemy arrive, the Trojans, joined by a numerous army of Persians, allied to defeat Athens, and more importantly, Athenian democracy, the rise of which had been giving them troubles due to civic strife in their own lands. The troops were spread thin and eventually, on of the gates crumbled against the might of the battering rams that Persian engineers had constructed so wisely. The first of the men to break inside Athens’ walls, a feat not achieved since they were built, was the Trojan commander and apparent heir to the dynasty, Hector. The trickle from the gate soon meant that a flood would follow, Themistocles had to make the hard choice of keeping a few men to sacrifice themselves and hold the gates while he and the rest of his army pulled back to the walls of the Parthenon, the tall steps leading up to it the only bulwark between the Athenians and their invaders. The prayers had seemed to have gone into vain, led astray. Still, Themistocles reluctantly joined the prayer, how could he pray with inner peace when he say the very thing he worked his entire life for, the city he had nurtured, crumble against invaders? Just then, a massive storm rolled in, the likes of which no mortal had yet seen, it came from the northwest, moving from over Mt. Olympus. The rain spelled liquid as hard as hail and the storm so massive that even the sky trembled in its presence. The clouds along with the storm and rain formed an incredible sight, it was the silhouette of a man, well-built and dressed in robes, things as strong as Achilles and arms as vast as Hades, when lightning struck, it illuminated the silhouette into a shadow, it could not be missed, it was the very pater of Athena, it was Zeus himself descending from the heavens! The people were in awe and shock, commanders of both sides grinned assuming typically that god was on their side but Zeus had seemed to have sided with his favorite daughter.
Lightning struck the ground, which responded with massive upheaval and tremors, where the ground had been struck, beasts emerged out by tearing the earth, they were cyclopes, massive one-eyed beasts, beautifully adorned but just as merciless and daunting from the inside, they started slashing through the Trojan armies, the Persians, completely indifferent to Greek culture had not known what the beast was but such a sight would terrify anyone. Soon enough, Hector and his armies were killed. The rest of the armies and supplies, still on the beaches had fled, seeing the cyclops from that distance, towering over the omnipresent Athena. The city had been defended, the cyclops collapsed back into the void they emerged from, the ravage of the storm ended and Zeus disappeared as mysteriously as he had emerged, some citizens couldn’t believe their eyes, others felt patriotic on the fact that Zeus had sided with them. Aristedes, the never quitting opponent to Themistocles left Athens that very day, he set out for Mount Olympus and determined to do the impossible task of climbing to its great heights, for Themistocles, he knew had a difficult few days ahead, it was not the first or last time that Athens had to be rebuilt, but it was definitely the first for him after having been protected by Zeus.
