This one is Themistocles' story, and - what with the Greek capacity for fighting on both sides of important wars - is a vivid view of Xerxes' attack on the Greek city-states, and a brilliant one of the city-states, Athens especially, contorting themselves to deal with the threat.
It's mostly politics, and very personal politics, which gives the plot an immediate grip - not much romance; that would be a novel on Alcibiades, I guess. The voice it's told in is wonderful; both direct and sophisticated, which fits perfectly with the career of a politician who lived by unscripted speeches in front of all his peers and enemies.
So wrote clew in
Fiction (20th c.).