1944. The invasion of Greece by Xerxes, with its battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea, forms one of the most dramatic events in history. Had Athens and Sparta succumbed to this attack of Oriental superstition and despotism, the Parthenon, the Attic Theater, the Dialogues of Plato, would have been almost as impossible as if Phidias, Sophocles, and the philosophers had never lived. Because this contest and its heroes, Leonidas and Themistocles, cast their abiding shadows across our world of today, I have attempted this piece of historical fiction.