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...central high hill, the Acropolis. It is behind this wall that, they maintain, the Athenians will be safe. But Themistocles provides an alternative interpretation, one which requires a mental leap. He says that the ‘wooden walls’ to which the oracle refers must mean their ships, since otherwise the priestess would have called Salamis (the stretch of water where the sea...

...central character, and so it proves. At first sight the narrative voice seems to be fairly neutral and undemonstrative, like that at the beginning of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four above. But a closer inspection reveals greater subtleties. Indeed, it appears that the narrative voice is doing everything in its power to undermine our possible interest, while also drawing our...