The Rest Is History - 668. Greece vs Persia: The Rise of the First Superpower (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 10, 2026

Why did the Persian Empire cross the Aegean to destroy Athens in 490BC? Who was Darius, the King of Kings, and the most powerful man in the world? And, how did this totemic invasion unfold? Join Tom and Dominic as they launch into one of the most cataclysmic clashes in all ancient history: Persia’s invasion of Greece. Join The Rest Is History Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to every series and live show tickets, a members-only newsletter, discounted books from the show, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at the⁠restishistory.com⁠ To read our new newsletter, sign up at: ⁠therestishistory.com/newsletters⁠ _______ Lloyds. 250 years on and still backing the nation's aspirations. _______ Advertise with us: [e-mail] _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude Senior Producer: Callum Hill Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Lloyds, which has been backing British ambition for over 250 years. Now, when you think about it, every dynasty in history has boiled down to two important elements, aspiration and action. And a classic example of this from British history, the rise of the House of Wessex, the family of Alfred the Great and his heirs, who between them established the United Kingdom of England. Yeah, it's a great story, isn't it, Tom? A great lesson in leadership, I think, for anybody. So Alfred and his heirs, they marry idealism and pragmatism.

They're brilliant at alliances. They're brilliant at managing power. They're brilliance, of course, at managing their money, which is a key part of political leadership. And, of course, we are all reaping the rewards of their wisdom and foresight. When it's time to make your next move, you can bank on Lloyds to be ready. when you are. Because from new businesses to new homes and new life chapters, backed by generations

of hope and ambition, you can see, Tom, why 14 million people trust Lloyds to help make their dreams a reality. Based on Lloyd's internal customer data from March 26. A report of the capture and torching of Sardis by the Athenians and Ionians was brought to King Darius. It is said that the King's initial response to this news was to dismiss the Ionians as being of no account, since he knew full well that they had no prospect of escaping retribution for their insurgency. But the Athenians he did ask after. And on being told who they were, he asked for his bow. and when he had it he fitted an arrow, which he then fired into the heavens.

And even as he sent it winging through the air, so he cried, Zeus, do not deny me the chance to punish the Athenians. Having made this appeal, he ordered one of his servants to repeat to him three times whenever a meal was set before him. Master, remember the Athenians. The year is 498 BC. We are in Persia, in Iran, at the court of the Persian King of Kings. And this is the ancient world's answer to that moment, which we've all seen, when George W. Bush is being told about 9-11, when he's reading to those schoolchildren. It's the moment when the most powerful man on the earth hears about a devastating attack that seems to have come absolutely out of night.

nowhere by a group of people whom he regards as terrorists. And Tom, this is from the ancient historian Herodotus, isn't it? Translated by me, and I thought you rendered it beautifully, especially the hint of the eunuch in the servant. Thank you. I was thinking it was a worm tongue thing going on with that servant. No, it was very good. Yeah, so Herodotus, the first historian, and his great work takes as its theme, the story of how the Persian Empire in the early decades of the 5th century BC, tries to conquer Greece and ultimately fails. And what Herodotus is giving us in that passage is the moment when the Persian invasions of Greece become inevitable. It's the kind of key turning point in the drama of his great story.

So what is going on here? The Athenians have crossed from Greece. They've crossed the Aegean and they have joined forces with other Greeks called the Ionians who live on what is now the Eegean coastline of Turkey, and they are subjects of the Persian king, because of course they are in Asia, and the Persians lay claim to the rule of Asia. Or at least they had been subjects of the Persian king,

because actually they have risen in rebellion, and the Athenians have been persuaded by the Ionian leader to join them in this insurrection, and they've marched inland from the Aegean coast with the Ionians, and they've attacked the great city of Sardis, which is the capital of the Persian governor, who kind of administers the region for the great king. And the Persian governor retreats to the Acropolis, so the kind of the upper fortress of Sardis and holds out there, the Athenians and the Ionians can't capture that.

But they are able to capture the rest of the city and they torch it. Everything goes up in flames, including one of the most famous buildings in the whole of the Persian Empire. And this is a temple to Kibelae, the mother goddess. Oh yeah, a friend of the show. Very much friend of the show. A great fan of blood weddings and mass castrations and so on. And obviously, this is the equivalent of people flying planes into the Twin Towers. I mean, this is an appalling insult and appalling affront.

And there is no way that Darius, the Great King, cannot respond to it. I mean, in much the same way that George W. Bush felt that he had to respond to 9-11. And in this episode and the next, we will be looking at what his. response was. So it's a really gripping, I mean, extraordinary story. Yeah, so we're going to be looking at how the Persians try to suppress the Ionian revolt, how they send this extraordinary amphibious operation across the Aegean with orders to destroy the city of Athens and to bring its people back as slaves. The Persians end up landing on a plane near Athens called Marathon, and then a battle is fought at Marathon. One way or another, it is from that battle that

we get the marathon, don't we? What a lovely fact that is. So let's begin with our protagonist, who is not a Greek, but a Persian. He is the great king, the king of kings, and he is, so Darius is by far the most powerful man on earth at this point. I mean, he is the most powerful man who has ever lived. I think it's no exaggeration at this point to say that. So, yeah, he's got these incredible titles, Great King, King of Kings, King of King, King of Kings, King of of lands. You know, he's essentially an Iranian patriot. So he describes himself in his inscriptions as being a Persian, the son of a Persian. He's very proud of that. As a person, he is the lord of a people who essentially in the course of a single lifetime have gone from provincial obscurity

to becoming the rulers of the greatest empire that the world has ever seen. And under Darius, it stretches from the Aegean all the way to the Hindu Kush and the Indus. And the man who had won the Persians, this great empire. He's a man who we have already met in the rest of history this year. And that is Cyrus the Great, because Dominic, the Shah of Iran, as in Jimmy Carter, was a big fan of Cyrus the Great, wasn't he? He did. He had a party.

I think a party that occurred more than once on the rest of history or been covered more than once, because it was one of history's most disastrous parties. So he held this huge blowout in 1971 to celebrate. what they claimed was the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire. What the Shah wanted to do in the 1960s and 70s was to lay claim to the heritage of Cyrus and to say he is a new Cyrus building Persia up, you know, from nothing to become a genuine superpower. And Cyrus, unlike the Shah, was a really, really serious person, wasn't he?

I mean, he was the great empire builder, arguably in all history, the prototypical empire builder. Yeah, so he dies in 529 BC, before that he'd ruled for three decades. And over the course of that reign, he enjoys one of the greatest winning streaks in the whole of history. So he's up there with Alexander, Julia Caesar, one of the greats. And he topples a succession of famous and ancient empires. So the first empire that he topples is the empire of the Meads. and they occupy kind of north-west Iran, so Tehran would be in what was media. And the Persians had been subjects to the Medes.

So the Persians actually see the Medes as cousins. And when they conquer the Medes, they essentially incorporate the Medes in as kind of junior partners in the entire enterprise of running this empire. And to the Greeks, the Persians and the Medes are indistinguishable. They're likely to refer to the Persians as Medes. So if you hear Meads in this, it's kind of Meads and Persians. So Cyrus, he's now got the Meads on board. Then he marches eastwards into what is now Turkey, so Anatolia.

And he attacks a city we've already heard of, Sardis. And this is the capital of the Lydians. And the Lydians are a very prosperous, wealthy power. They have subjected the Ionian Greeks on the Aegean shore to their rule. And the source of their power is their ability to monetize their power. And they've literally monetized it because they've invented money. And this is why the last king, Cresus, who gets defeated by Cyrus, overthrown by him, you know, he's still a byword, you're rich as Cresis. You know, you're fabulously, fabulously rich.

So now the Lydians have been toppled and with the defeat of the Lydians, the Ionians also come under the rule of the Persians. Right. And just to remind people, this is modern day Turkey, basically, that we're talking about. That's Anatolia is now subject to the Persians as well as media. And this leaves perhaps the greatest power of all to be conquered, and this is Babylon, you know, this fabulous ancient city, the richer city in the world. And Cyrus conquers that in 539. And Herodotus gives a brilliant estimation of just how vast Babylon was. He writes, according to local tradition, such was the size of the city that those who lived in the centre of Babylon had no idea when the Persians broke into the city that the suburbs had fallen, for it was a time of festival and all were dancing and indulging

themselves in pleasures. And for Cyrus, the conquest of Babylon is what sets the seal on his ascent to greatness. So there's a slightly kind of Trumpian quality to his boasting of his inscriptions. He proclaims every king on earth brought me heavy tribute and kissed my feet where I sat in Babylon. So he's made it. So to give people just a sense, just if you think about looking at the map, we are talking about an empire that started in modern day Iran and that has swallowed up. Iraq, which is where Babylon effectively was. That's right, isn't it, Tom? And Anatolia, which is sort of inland Turkey, and has also taken the Turkish coast, which is inhabited by Greek speakers. So it is a vast empire. And also has conquered what would now be Syria and Israel and Lebanon,

because they were subject to Babylon, so they come under Cyrus's rule. And indeed, is eyeing up Egypt, am I right? So Cyrus doesn't attack Egypt. He goes off, into Central Asia, and that's where he reaches the Indus, he reaches the Hindu Kush, he goes even further, and that's where he's killed. His son has eyes up Egypt, Cambyses, right? His son, yes. So, so when Cyrus dies fighting in Central Asia in 529, he leaves behind him two sons. And the first of these, you just mentioned, Cambyses, he becomes the new King of Kings. But Cyrus also has a younger son called Bardia, and Bardia is entrusted with the rule of the Eastern Satrapes, the Eastern Prophes, the eastern provinces, as they're called.

And it's obvious that Cyrus is very keen to ensure that the rule of the world remains within the family. So to ensure that kind of rival nobles can't get in on the act, Cambysius has married both his sisters. And this is an unprecedented display of incest. There's nothing in Persian custom that would license that. But Cyrus, Cambysi's Bardia, you know, they want it to remain a kind of family concern. And this is obviously bad news for even distant cousins of the Persian royal family. And one of these distant cousins is Darius, who when Cambyses becomes king is still in his 20s.

And he is the lance bearer to Cambyses, which might sound a slightly menial function, but it doesn't because it indicates that essentially he's playing the role of a personal bodyguard. and proximity to the monarch in Persia is a kind of indicator of status. So actually it's a very kind of splendid honorific. I mean, it marks you out as certainly a kind of major player at court, even if you're not a royal. And it enables Darius clearly to be privy to very, very sensitive royal secrets. He's got his finger on the pulse. He knows what's going on. And that is what enables him in the summer of 522.

when the dynasty of Cyrus abruptly implodes to have a very good idea of what is going on and to know how to respond. So the account that we have comes from Darius himself and how much of it is true is impossible to say. But it basically begins with Cambysi's going mad, doesn't he? He goes mad and he becomes incredibly jealous of Bardia and has him put to death. So far, so standard kind of Game of Thrones style was the Roses fraternal jealousy. But now there's a tremendous twist, which I'm looking forward to hearing you explain. So tell us what happens next. So Bardia has been killed on the orders of Cambyses, who is still kind of whooping it up in Egypt, which he's just conquered.

The twist is that Bardia is now replaced in the eastern provinces by someone who looks exactly like Bardia. but isn't. So the magi are the kind of the Persian equivalent of the Brahmins. They're like a kind of priestly cast. And this kind of fake megas, I mean by amazing coincidence, he exactly resembles Bardia. And this fake Bardia then stages a rebellion against Cambyses. The news is brought to Cambyses in Egypt. He's furious, of course. He leaps on his horse, leads an expedition out of Egypt through Syria. And in Syria, he pauses, has some food, and then he's climbing up onto his horse, and his sword accidentally slips, and he stabs himself in the thigh with it. And this wound then goes septic, and he dies very shortly afterwards. So that's Cambyses out of the way. And at this point,

the false Magus, the kind of the pretend Bardia, declares that he is now king of kings. And the only people who know the truth that this isn't really Bardia is Darius and six other nobleman. And they get together a posse and they gallop from Syria across the kind of the parched flatlands of Mesopotamia, up the Corazon Highway, which is the road that sneaks up through the Zagros Mountains up towards the great plateau of Iran. And they arrive at a place called Sikkia Vautish, which is up in the heights of the Zagros Mountains, surrounded by rich fields. there are famous horses from these fields so it's a kind of beautiful spot

and Bardia is or rather the fake Bardia is hanging out there enjoying his concubines when Darius the six other nobleman and the kind of posse of men they've brought burst in on him take the fake Bardia completely by surprise he reaches for a chair smashes it up

tries to use the chair leg to fend them off it's no good he is dispatched and Darius then proclaims to the world that there's you know there's been this terrible scam that Bardi had been replaced by this false Magus and that he is now the king. Quite deep waters, I think. Quite a lot of improbabilities there. Yeah. You don't have to be a tremendous skeptic to think that actually what was happening was that he had planned a coup himself and he organizes the murder

of these two brothers, right? Yeah, because I think the sword in the thigh accident. Come on. That's, yeah, he accidentally stabbed yourself in the thigh with it. Yeah. And even that's not a as improbable as the idea that, you know, there's a guy who looks exactly like the murdered king. So I think the likelihood is there isn't a false Bardia, there isn't a kind of mey and that the person who gets killed by Darius and his fellow conspirators in Sikyavoutish was actually Bardia himself. And there's very good corroborating evidence for this because the moment Darius announces his accession to the throne, there is a succession of rebellions and these take place in Persia itself, in media just to the north, and in Elam,

which is a country in the southwest of Iran. So basically, these are the absolute heartlands of the empire. These are the kind of, you know, the Iranian strongholds. And clearly in these Iranian strongholds, they are viewing Darius as a, as an illegitimate king. And it takes him two years of desperate fighting to crush these rebellions. And even once he's done it, the kind of the bushfires of insurrection keep kind of blazing. It takes him a lot of. long, long time to stabilize and pacify all these kind of rebellions. And he does it partly because he's a brutal and ruthless man, right? He does what needs to be done.

Yes. You know, he's a serious person to use that or favorite terminology. Yes, you mess with Darius and he will kill you and he will kill you very horribly. So the rebels against Darius's rule are dispatched with very salutary displays of hideous violence. So in Persia, the rebellious aristocrats there are impaled on an immense forest of stakes. I mean, kind of spreading for miles and miles. And actually, these stakes were placed on the very place where the Shah of Iran in 1971 would hold his party. And I think that's something that perhaps the Shah of Iran didn't major on. With his caviar from Maxims or whatever

it was. Yeah, and Princess Anne. Princess Anne, yeah. She'd, she'd, she'd, wouldn't take any prisoners, though, to be able. She definitely impale rebels, I think. She absolutely would. And what about this other guy, this guy from media? So the meads come up with a pretender of their own, don't they? And he doesn't come to a very happy end at all. So the great capital of media is this place called Egbatana, which according to Herodotus is a bit like Minas Tirith. It's kind of rings of fortifications around a central stronghold. And each wall is a beautiful, different colour. And this is where this Median aristocrat has set himself up as a kind of independent king. Darius captures him, has his nose cut off, his tongue, his ears. He's then blinded in one eye so that he can witness

all his supporters being impaled around him. He's then chained before the gates of Epitana, where everyone could see him. And then, of course, he too is impaled. And to be impaled is a really hideous death. I mean, it can take days, sharp spike into your bowels. A very skilled impaler will impale you in such a way that none of your vital organs are pierced so that you would just, you just sort of sit there, as it were, for hours or days. It's time while people came and looked at you. I mean, I think that's a terrible way to die, frankly. Yeah, and the person's the masters of the protracted death. So they also have a hideous one where they kind of lock a, a bloke who's been covered in honey, insider, you know, with the hands and the feet sticking out

of two barges that have been placed over him. And basically, he just get, you know, you get eaten by maggots and flies, lay eggs in your eyes. And I mean, just horrible, horrible. Different times. Let's face it, DeRais is doing what has to be done. It's the kind of thing I think that would garner respect from the Sandbrook political position. I was bad to say, I respect it. I don't necessarily prove it, but I respect it.

I know your ways and means. So that's, the Persians crushed, the median rebels crushed. There are still the Elamites. And what is, I mean, it's an incredibly obscure period of history, the Elamite rebellion. But I would argue that it's actually one of the most innovative episodes in world history. And it marks Darius out as a very consequential king, kind of almost up there with Constantine or Abdul Malik, the great Islamic Caliph. Because the Elamites keep rebelling. Darius keeps crushing them and they keep rebelling again.

And so what he does is to weaponize a very distinctively Persian understanding of the supernatural. Because the Persians, they're not like most other people in the Near East at this time, because they have essentially moralized the entire universe. They see the universe as being governed by a perpetual cosmic war between truth, which they call Arta, and the lie, this universal lie, which they call Drauga. And Darius casts himself as the agent of Arta, which means order as well as truth. To the Persians, order and truth are kind of synonymous. thing. And his genius is to brand his enemies as agents of Drauga, of the lie, and more specifically as agents of davers who are kind of demons, false gods. And this is why Darius had condemned the false bardia as a liar king. He is not just someone who had been telling fibs. He's someone who

has been in hock to all that is darkest and most malign in the cosmos. So in 520, when the Elamites launch yet another rebellion. I think losing track slightly, I think maybe it's their third or fourth. Darius takes this really, really momentous step. He tells his army, and no one had ever done this before in history, that if they go to war against the Elamites, they can expect, and I quote, divine blessings, both in their lives and after death. And the reason for this is because the Elamites are, and I quote, faithless. They are offenders, not just against Darius himself, but against the truth and order of the cosmos and of the god of light and truth, Ahura Mazda, who is the god of this truth. And it's hard to over-emphasize how mad this is, because at this period, no one had really

thought that a people who neglect the worship of a god should be kind of punished for, you know, it's not their God, it doesn't matter. Why would they be worshipping it? But Darius is kind of instituting this notion that even though the Elamites don't necessarily worship Ahura Master, they should still be punished for it. And you can see there that this is a really, really portentous innovation. And because it contains the seeds of some quite radical notions, which will have a very long afterlife. So basically the idea that foreign rebels can be condemned as rebels against a God that they don't worship. The warriors can be promised not just riches in this life, but, you know, all kinds of benefits in paradise. And that conquest in the name of a god.

or of a kind of moral truth or order can be cast as a moral duty. And these are, you know, these are going to, these are going to have a very, very long life. Yeah, ideas that have never gone away, Tom. Correct. So it's, I think, a very kind of crucial moment. And it helps Darius secure his rule, crush his enemies, this combination of kind of militant devotion to notions of truth and a readiness to impale people and kind of mutilate them. And it's, you know, it's a great combination, very effective.

And it helps him to set the Persian Empire on foundations that are so secure that it will endure pretty much in a state of peace. I mean, you know, give or take the old rebellion or whatever for about two centuries until it ends up conquered by Alexander. And he's not just, I mean, he's not just fearsome and he's not just good at weaponising religion. I mean, he's also just very good at running empires, right? He does what needs to be done. He, the administrative legwork, you know, he gets up and he does his. paperwork basically. Yeah, so we've compared him to Constantine, but you could also compare him to Augustus. I mean, he's that significant. He's that able. And he found this great palace to serve him

as his nerve centre, as his powerhouse, and also as the showcase for his power. And the Persians call it parsa, so basically Persia, and the Greeks will call it Persepolis. And this is the site where the Persian rebels had been impaled. You know, this is where the Shah and due course will have his great party. And Persepolis becomes the focus of an immense network of precisely organized tribute that spans the entire empire. And Cyrus and Cambyses, they hadn't really been bothered with this kind of thing. But Darius is, you know, he has the brain of an accountant. And actually, the Persian nobles mock him behind his back as a shopkeeper. But it is precisely this mastery of tribute and of fiscal policy and so on,

that actually is at least as important as his talents as a general. You know, it's a combination of knowing how to conquer people and then knowing how to screw the money out of them so that they don't rebel. But the real genius is that he allies that with this sort of moral ideological vision, isn't it? That you basically combine somebody who's brilliant

at actually extracting money from people and who's, you're a great practical empire builder with somebody who creates an ideological justification for empire, where his empire is a reflection of divine order, and to challenge it makes you a rebel against harmony and order and truth and all that is divinely sanctioned and all that is good in this world. So you get conquered by the Persians, you get told you've got to give enormous amounts of tribute, and then you get told that if you're going to rebel, then you know, you're in rebellion against truth and order, and that this truth and order spans the entire

cosmos. And so it enables Darius, who I think is clearly not a very pleasant man, to cast himself as a kind of friendly uncle. So this is one of his proclamations. I am the kind of man who is a friend to the right, who frowns upon the wrong, who has no wish to see the weak oppressed by the strong. And so he's basically saying that if you submit to me, it's not a humiliation, it's not a conquest, you are blessed. You've been absorbed into the eternal order of the cosmos. And what this means in turn, of course, is that if the Empire of the Persians is to be cast as a kind of earthly reflection of the divine order of the cosmos, then it means that all those peoples who are not in the empire, who lurk on the fringes of it, that they belong to the dimensions of the lie,

that they are essentially worshippers of demons. So is the implication that the Persian Empire, you know, is it absolutely explicit that the Persian empire will effectively become universal? because if this is about divine order, surely there can be nowhere on earth that is beyond the reach of the divine order, right? That's why he's the king of kings. It's why he's the king of lands. It's kind of implicit in those titles. Yeah, it is a kind of universalizing dream. And that means that Darius feels he has the perfect right to go around attacking people beyond the frontiers of the empire. And high on the list of people that he wants to attack are people that the Greeks call the Skidians, that the Persian is called the Saka, and these are horsemen who lurk in the steps to the north

of the Persian Empire. They have tall, pointy hats, they love a bong, they're incredibly proficient horsemen, and Daraas decides it's time to pacify them to bring truth and order to the steplands. And so he decides that he's going to attack them in the west. So he arrives in Sardis with an enormous expedition, and Sardis, of course, we say, said is the capital of the Lidian Kings, and it's now the seat of the Satrap, the provincial governor of Anatolia. And this is a guy called Artafernes, who is Darius's brother. And Artifernes means literally the splendor of Arta, the splendor of truth and order. So it's a very kind of appropriate name. And Artifernes is the governor, not just of Lydia, but of the Ionian Greeks

as well on the Aegean coast. So Darius is now kind of emerging for the first time into the kind of the Greek area. Sorry, I'm just trying to understand his sense of geography. He wants to attack the Scittians, who are basically in, where are they? Are they in Ukraine? All the kind of the steplands north of Persia. So Darius, by this point, has already attacked them beyond the Caucasus. He's launched an invasion there.

He's kind of pacified them. Now he wants to attack the tribes who lurk kind of beyond the Black Sea. So he's going a very elaborate roundabout. routes, right? He's going to go up through the Balkans. Yes, I think he wants to expand into Europe. I think he wants to kind of to have a foothold there. I think there are all kinds of various strategic considerations. But I think he also, he hasn't really done his homework because if he had studied the

careers of Napoleon or Hitler, he would realize that launching attacks into the steplands of Ukraine and Russia beyond it is not a sensible thing to do. Do you know what? He hadn't done. He hadn't listened to our excellent. series about Charles the 12th and the Great Northern War. No, he hadn't. So anyway, so he's inside is he marches north up towards the Hellespont, which is the straits between Asia and Europe, crosses them, goes up to the Danube, builds a pontoon bridge across the Danube, and vanishes into

the steplands. And unsurprisingly, the campaign proves a disaster because the Skivians on their horses adopt a scorched earth policy, as the Russians and the Ukrainians and so on will do many times in the future, and Darius finds it impossible to corner them. He's basically the first imperial invader to discover that it's not actually very easy to conquer the steplands. And meanwhile, in his rear by this pontoon bridge on the Danube, there is also danger lurking because Darius has set kind of squadrons to guard the pontoon bridge to make sure that no one attacks it. And one of the people who've been set to guard this pontoon bridge is actively treacherous, is actively plotting the ruin and destruction of Darius. So these guards

are the Greeks, the Greeks who are subject to Darius. They are the rulers of the various Ionian cities that dot the Egean Sea Board of what is now Turkey. And these rulers are what the Greeks call tyrannoy, from which we get the English word tyrant. But I think tyrant doesn't convey the right sense, essentially populist strongmen, they are Peron rather than Hitler. I would, I mean, it's kind of as better analogy. And they are pretty loyal to the Persians because the Persians keep them in power. The Persians use them as their tools to subdue kind of popular risings or whatever in these various Greek cities. However, there is one Tyrannos there, so kind of popular, strongman, who is not Ionian, and he's the ruler of a very recently founded colony,

and he's an aristocrat from a city on the far western side of the Aegean in mainland Greece, and this city is Athens. And the name of this Tyrannos is Miltaiades, and he is very able, he's very ruthless, and he's ambitious, I would say, to the point of overreach. And he had sailed from Athens to what the ancients called the Thracian Chersenese, which is the thin peninsula which forms the European side of the Hellespont and today is called Gallipoli. Yeah, we'll be hearing a bit more about Gallipoli in a few weeks. Yeah, in a few weeks' time. So Miltaieties, he set up this colony on the Thracian Chersinese, aka Gallipoli.

And he's done it partly because the Hellespont is really, really important to Athens. Athens is dependent for its food supply on grain from the Chersinese and also from the Crimea. through, so the Black Sea. But I think he's also done it because he's a bit of a lone wolf. He enjoys the exercise of power. And this is why he rules the Chersenese, not as a Democrat or anything like that, but as an out and out, strong man. He has a 500th strong bodyguard. He's married into the local aristocracy. He's been busy throwing his weight around. And that's why he's infuriated that Darius has turned up, made him submit, and kind of ruined his fun to an extent. And so he comes up with this cunning plan, why don't we just cut the pontoon bridge and leave the Persians stranded

on the Northern Bank? You know, it's a kind of brilliant idea. But high risk, right? I mean, the retribution of the Persians would be swift and merciless. And the other strong men, the Ionian strong men, they're not going to go for this, are they? Well, no, because, to quote Herodotus, there was not one of them, but he owed his position as Tyrannos to Darius. So in other words, they are, you know, they're the kind of the Vichy type rulers of the Greeks. You don't want to go attacking your your sponsor. And there's one guy in particular, one Ionian Tyrannos who particularly presses this. And this is a man called Histeas. And Histeas is the ruler of the most powerful of all the various Ionian cities. It's the largest, it's the largest, it's the most sophisticated

of the Ionian cities. And this is a place called Miletus. And it has four great harbors. full of shipping from across the Mediterranean, from across the Black Sea. It's the birthplace of philosophy. It's the birthplace of history. It's the birthplace of what ultimately one might call science. I mean, it's an absolute intellectual powerhouse. And it is praised as the glory of Ionia. And Hystias does not want to risk the prosperity and glory and wealth of his city. And so he essentially crushes Milaides' proposal. Darius returns from his abortive attack on the Skivians. He crosses the pontoon. And his dais is rewarded for his loyalty with splendid gifts, grants of land, the favour of the king of kings. And among the grants of land that his deus gets is a region of

Thrace that Darius had just recently conquered. And this is a place called Mirkenus. And Mikinas has silver mines and it has forests. And forests are obviously useful for building a fleet. And I think the ambition of Histeas is to exploit the favour of Darius and the backing of the Persian governor that Hestheus can enjoy. To build a kind of semi-independent power base for himself in the Aegean. You know, he will remain loyal to the Persians in Miletus. But if he can establish, you know, a kind of, you know, Saab Empire in the Aegean in Thrace,

so the northern coastline of the Aegean, you know, that'd be brilliant. Why not? That'd be great. But that doesn't work out, right? Because he ends up with an unexpected promotion. It does. And I think possibly because the Persians are a little bit twitchy about this, you know, it's a good way to stop his regional ambitions,

which is essentially is to kick him upstairs. So he gets promoted to the rank of royal table companion. So that means he has to leave Miletus and head to Persia and kind of hang out in Persepolis and Sousa, the other great palace complex that Darius has. And it's essentially a kind of gilded cage because he enjoys tremendous, you know, wealth and all of that, the favour of the king. But he's a long way from home. He can't kind of build this empire that he'd been hoping to do.

However, all is not lost for his deers because his family retains its rule. of Miletus. So his replacement as Tyrannos is his nephew and son-in-law, a guy called Aristagoras. And Aristagoras is very ambitious, very wily, very proactive. So a chip off the old block. And Aristagoras has essentially brought into this dream of a kind of family empire in the Aegean that he's inherited from his uncle. He's very keen to do that. He is also aware that there are all kinds of social tensions in Miletus itself, that there are conspiracies, that there are whisperings, that there are plots to topple the tyranny and introduce a democracy. So these social tensions, you know, he feels like he's essentially sitting on the edge of a volcano. And that's another

incentive to try and go out into the Aegean and kind of carve out a small empire for himself, because that would then generate more wealth, which would enable him to kind of keep the lid on this pressure cooker. And so he cooks up what's the world. What's the world. seems to him a brilliant plan. And this plan is designed to boost his dynasty's power, to consolidate his relations with the Persians, and thereby to keep agitation for a democracy and Miletus firmly in check. And the plan is he will lead an expedition against the island of Naxos, which lies in the middle of the Aegean. So it's a kind of stepping stone between what's now the Turkish coastline of the Aegean and mainland Greece. And you could see

the appeal of that to the Persians, if they ever want to launch an attack on mainland Greece, Naxus would be very useful to them. And so Aristagoras goes to Artifernes. So Artifernes, to remind people, it's the Persian governor of Sardis. He is to arise his brother, isn't he? Yes. And his name means the splendor of Arta. So anyone getting muddled up between Aristagoras and Artafernes, if it's got Arter in it, it's a Persian. Okay, perfect. So Artafernes, the governor says, yeah, all right. Okay, fair enough. I'll need to check it with my brother, so he checks with Darius, and Darius says, yeah, okay, why not? And so Aristagoras is able to go to launch an expedition with the deployment of 200 ships

that have been given to him by the Persians for the expedition. And he's accompanied by Persian Admiral called Megabetes, basically to kind of keep an eye on Aristagoras. And he's Artifern his cousin, so it's, again, all very much being kept in the family. And so Megabaties and Aristagoras set sail with these 200 ships. for Naxas in 499. But it's an absolute disaster. The main city of Naxos is put under siege

and it just drags by one month, two months, three months, four months. And after four months, Aristagoras has used up all his money. The Naxians are still holding out and Megabata says, look, come on, this is hopeless.

We're giving up. There's no way we're carrying on with this. You've essentially, you know, you told us this would be easy. It isn't, you know, you're in real trouble. We're heading back. And so Aristagoras, has now seemed screwed. He's skint. He's blown all his money. Maletus, meanwhile, is absolutely

seething with kind of revolutionary talk by this point. And of course, he's messed up his relations with the Persians. And none of this is good. And so when Megabatis gets back to Sardis and reports to Artafernes, the Persian governor, this has been a complete screw up. Artifernes decides, no good. We're going to dismiss Aristagoras. He can no longer remain as tyrant, the Tyrannos of Miletus. But Aristagoras has anticipated that this is what the Persians will do. And so he has moved fast and already abdicated his tyranny. He stood down. He said, actually, tyrannies are awful. We should have a democracy. I am a friend of the people. And what's more, let's export this revolution. I, as leader of the Milesian democracy, I urge all the other cities of Ionia to get rid of their tyrants as well, their

Tyrannoy. And so this is like, you know, throwing a match onto a kindling box, and we love a match thrown onto a kindling box on the rest is history. It explodes. All the other Milesian tyrannoy are expelled. Some of them get stoned to death. Those who aren't run fleeing to the Persian satrap in Sardis. And Aristagoras basically, you know, he might as well hang for a sheep as a lamb. He now proclaims a kind of general revolt against Persian rule. So he's all in. such a big call from him. He's doing this presumably because he thinks it's this or nothing. Like this is a strategy born of total desperation and despair, presumably.

And does he ever think at this point, do you reckon that he could win? Because against the greatest empire in the world, could he hope to defy it? Well, I think he has two plans. And the first of these is very cunning because he knows that the Persian fleet is not far from Miletus, and there are lots of Ionian squadrons there. He sends an officer down to the Persian fleet, and this officer is pretending to be loyal to the Persians, and this officer arrives,

and he then kind of passes secret communications to all the various Ionian admirals and says, look, why don't you just upship? We'll capture all the Persian ships, and we will make off, and we'll have captured the Persian fleet. And, you know, it's a success. The entire Persian fleet is captured and sails out of the Persian harbor,

and goes off and becomes, you know, it's now in the hands of the rebels. So that's a promising, clever, you know, admirable step, unexpected. But also, Aristagoras is looking westwards across the Aegean, and he's thinking, well, we might be able to get support there. And so in the winter of 499, he boards a warship, and he sets sail across the Aegean for mainland Greece. And this is going to prove a very, very fateful mission, because it is going to end up drawing the infant democracy of Athens into direct conflict with the king of kings.

So the Athenians are about to enter the story. Come back after the break to find out what happens. Rees knows a thing or two about great combinations. Chocolate and peanut butter, obviously. But there's more than one way to Rees's. From indulgent Rees's big cups with caramel to crunchy Reese's pieces and Reese's miniatures, There's a delicious Rises for every mood. It's the same combo you love, just with more ways to enjoy it. So, whether you're snacking, sharing, or just treating yourself, nothing else is Rises. Welcome back, everybody, to the rest is history.

It is the winter of 499 BC, and we are in Athens. So to remind people, Aristagoras, the former strongman of the city of Miletus, who has now become a born-again enthusiast for democracy, and has launched an open rebellion against the Persian Emperor Darius, the King of Kings. He has arrived in Athens and he can reasonably expect a good hearing. Athens has been the sort of champion, I suppose, of democratic enthusiasm. It has been the most radical, the most revolutionary state in the Aegean. It is the, I mean, you liken it in your notes, Tom to France in the 1790s. the kind of handmaiden of change and the spearhead of reform and all this kind of thing.

Yeah, because Athens, like the Ionian cities, had until very recently been subject to the rule of a tyranness of a kind of autocratic strongman. And this had been an aristocrat called Hippias. And then in 510, hippies had been expelled from the city by a great popular uprising. And three years later in 507, this radical political experiment had been introduced a democracy. So Athens is the prototype for the democratic regime that the Ionians are now dreaming of installing in their own cities. Again, a bit like the French Revolution, the revolutionary regime in France attracts anxiety from all the kind of the neighboring powers, the Austrians and the Prussians and so on, and they tried to crush it. This is what Athens's neighbors had tried to do. So Thebes, neighboring city absolutely hates the Athenians and Sparta, the great military power in the South.

the Peloponnese. But amazingly, the Athenians, despite the fact that up until this point, they'd been absolutely losers as soldiers, they defeat the Thebans and even more amazingly, they see off the Spartans, kind of very Battle of Valmi style, where the French defeat the Prussians. And Herodotus writes a very famous passage about how and why the Athenians had gone from being losers to complete winners. And he writes, the Athenians, while subjects of a tire, had been no more proficient in battle than any of their neighbours, but then once liberated from tyranny, they emerged as supreme by far. Proof enough that the downtrodden, since their labours are all in the service of a master, will never willingly pull their weight, whereas free men, because they have

a stake in their own exertions, will set to them with relish. And he's articulating something there that you might see in the American Revolution or the French Revolution or whatever, this idea that once you have cast off an autocratic regime, suddenly you have the joys of freedom and you fight with more determination. And we actually did an episode on this. It's episode 334 if you want to check it out. All of which of course means that the Athenians are more likely to be open to Aristagoras's proposals. So firstly, because like the French after their own revolution, the Athenians are keen to export their democracy. You know, there's a kind of ideal. ideological drive there. And so the fact that Aristagoras, when he comes there, can frame the Ionian

revolt as being a revolt against, you know, autocratic rule of the kind that the Athenians are thrown of. I mean, that immediately appeals to the demos, to the mass of the people in Athens. But there's another reason as well, and this is that lots of the Athenians are anxious that they might already be at war with the Persians. And the reason they're worried that they might be at war, with the Persians is because back in 507 when they'd set up their democracy and they were nervous that the Thebans and the Spartans might come and crush them, they had sent ambassadors to the Persian governor, Artifernes, in Sardis, to see if they could negotiate an alliance. And Artifernes had told them, well, you know, we're the superpower, we don't bother with alliances. It's, you know, you either

submit or it's nothing. Again, quite Donald Trump in their approach to diplomats. And so the Athenians thought, well, yeah, we might as well. And they had offered their submission, according to Herodotus, in the form of earth and water. You kind of make the offering of this to the Persian king. And they thought that they'd done a good job. But then they come back home, it turns out that the Thebans and Spartans have been defeated, that the democracy is fine. And so everyone in Athens says, what have you done? That's a terrible move. And the problem is, is that the Athenians have now kind of offered a formal submission to the Persians. And then he's, and then he's Hippias, the exile tyrant turns up in Sardis, and Artifernes loves a tyrant. I mean, this is what they always do. They always install tyrants to rule Greek cities. And so Artifernes sends a message to Athens saying, you should take hippiers back. This is my order as you're overlord. And of course, there's no way the Athenians are going to do this. So they've got their democracy. They've thrown the tyrant out. They don't want him back. And so they say no. And there's no response to this from Artifernes. But there is a kind of nagging anxiety that, well, perhaps the Persians will

come and punish us for this. And so I think that the arrival of Aristagoras, with his suggestion that the Athenians join the Ionian revolt, it seems to offer the Athenians a chance to get onto the front foot. And it has to be emphasized that the Athenians don't really know anything about the Persians. And also, Aristagoras is telling them, oh, the Persians are absolutely wusses. You know, they're a bunch of women. They wear trousers. Right. How can the Athenians not know about the Persians when the Persia is by far the world's most preponderant power. Greeks are pretty insular. They're pretty, I mean, they're kind of vaguely aware of it, I think, but it's not like

they can read about the Persians on the internet. They would have contacts with the Ionian cities, presumably, which are part of the Persian orbit. Yeah, they would, but I think that they, I think they probably equate the Persians to the way that the Lydians had been. You know, they're a kind of regional overlord. They probably don't have a sense of just how vast the Persian Empire is. and how immense the resources available to the Persian king.

I mean, whatever the reason is, they decide, yeah, okay, we'll join you. And so in the spring of 498, the first ever task force sent by a democracy to attack an Iranian army. Right. Set sail across the Aegean, and it's a fleet of 20 ships. And it doesn't sail alone because there is another Greek city that falls for the blandishments of Aristagoras. And this is a place called Eretria, which is a merchant. city on the nearby island of Yuba. So if you think

of the map of Greece, Attica sticking out into the Aegean, there's a kind of long, narrow island directly above the northern coast of Attica. And that's Ubea, Evia, as it's called today. And in the words of Herodotus, terrible evils would stem from these ships, both for the

Greeks and the barbarians, by which Herodotus means the Persians. But at first it all goes well for the Greeks, doesn't it? I mean, they join up with the Ionians, the Athenians and the Eritreans. They march to Sardis. They, so Artifernes, who is to remind people, he is the governor, he is Darius's brother. He ends up being basically barricaded in his own acropolis in the sort of citadel. And they loot and burn the lower city of Sardis. But then do you think reality

starts to dawn on them? The Persians might be more formidable than they had anticipated. I think it does. I think they very rapidly start to realize that they've been. written off much more that they could chew. I mean, I think the burning of the Temple of Kibberle is very unsettling for them because they are now anxious that they will draw down the wrath of the mother goddess. And so they say, well, look, we're getting back. This isn't going well at all. And they head back from Sardis to the coast. And as they're drawing near to the coast, the Athenians, get attacked by Persian cavalry, which the Athenians have never come up against before. And they're routed. and I think this is the moment when the Athenians realize actually, you know, this isn't, these aren't a bunch of women, even though they may wear trousers, these are a terrifying fighters.

And the cavalry in particular, Greece is not a land that encourages the use of cavalry, whereas the flat plateau of Iran absolutely encourages the use of cavalry. And essentially the kind of the heavy infantry that forms a Greek army hoplites they're called, people with, the hoplar, the kind of heavy kit. If they get caught in open land by Persian cavalry, they are toast. And this is pretty much what happens now. The Athenian force is very brutally savaged. Those who survive, get back to their ships. And they say, we are out of here. We're not sticking around. You know, you've, you've basically lied to us. They tell Aristagoras, and Aristagoras is kind of begging them not to go. But the Athenians say, no, we're off. And they sail back across the Aegean. And they ignore all future appeals. And I think their plan is basically

to hope that the Persians will forget all about it and they will pretend that it never happened. It's like that scene in Seinfeld where George announces that he's leaving and then realise he's made a terrible mistake and just goes back in and tries to pretend that it had never happened. I think that is basically the strategy

to pretend that it had never happened. And to begin with, it looks a reasonable strategy because actually the Persian focus is very much on crushing the Ionian. They're the ones who are the open rebels. And it takes them four years. And of course, when victory finally comes, it is predictably merciless.

So in 494, the Ionian fleet is destroyed off an island called Larday, which is an island just outside Maletus. Maletus is stormed. Her men are slaughtered. Her women raped. Her sons castrated. Her daughters enslaved. And the survivors are then sent off from the capital. coast of the Aegean all the way into the depths of the Persian Empire to Iran, to work camps,

to Harims, to whatever, to the slave markets. And as they are being led off, you know, it chained in coffels, they pass settlers coming the other way who have been granted their lands by Artafernes. And those few Malaysians who have not been deported are left to, you know, huddle up amid the blackened ruins of what had been the glory of Ionia, this great birthplace. of philosophy. So it is a devastating moment. And not just for the Ionians, but for the Athenians as well. So a tragedy is staged illustrating the destruction of Miletus, and the audience are so upset that the playwright who wrote it is fined. And it's agreed that, you know, again, let's just not talk about this. However, even after the destruction of Miletus, there are two

Ionian rebel leaders still in the field. These did not include Aristagoras. By this point, he is dead. He had been killed back in 497 in a kind of a squalid brawl in Mirkenus, his private Thracian fiefdom. But his uncle, Hystheus, is still on the scene. So Hystheus had been, this is the guy who had been taken off to Darius's court to be, you know, his table companion. And he's a very wily cunning, untrustworthy figure, really. He was always kind of playing double games. an old fox. Yes. And when the revolt broke out, he went to Darius and said, look, I'm the guy to

solve this. I know these people. Send me back. And so Darius does. And his dais turns up in Sardis, very coolly. And Artifernes has entirely sussed him out. And he says to him, Aristagoras may have worn the shoe, but you were the one who made it. In other words, you are the guy who fostered this rebellion. And Herodotus tells a brilliant story about how actually it was Histeas who had persuaded Aristagoras to launch the rebellion. And Histheus had done this by getting a slave, shaving his head, to towing a message on the scalp. You know, basically, let's have a revolt, letting the hair back, and then sending the slave to Aristagoras with the met. And the slave has to say, shave my head.

So whether that's true or not, most historians, I think, probably think that's a tall story. but there are some who give it credence. And Hysteris, when he arrives in Iona, he's been playing a kind of very shrewd double game, but very perilous because he's fomenting rebellion, not just among the Ionians, but among Artafernes' own court, because Artafernes really hates him.

So Hysteris thinks, if I can get rid of Artafernes, that'll be brilliant. It doesn't work out. He gets captured. He gets taken to Sardis. Histeas says, look, send me to Darius.

I'll be able to explain everything. Artifernus says, no way. Has him impaled? Chops off his head. Has it pickled? Kind of wrapped up in ice. Sends it off to Darius. And Darius, it is said, was sufficiently upset that he gave the head of this rebel, a dignified burial.

That's the end of Hesdaeus. And we've got one guy left. So this is Naltiades, who was the Athenian guy who had taken over what's now Gallipoli, right? So he has fought very bravely and well in the Ionian revolt. But by now the revolt is effectively crushed and the net is closing in on him. And a squadron is sent to intercept him on the Chersenese. He manages to escape it. There's a chase all the way across the Aegean.

Miltides manages to reach Valerum, the harbour of Athens, just in the nick of time. But even when he arrives in Athens, his troubles aren't over because, of course, he is an aristocrat and he had been himself a Tyrannos, a a strong man. And so he's viewed with a good deal of suspicion in Athens. And in fact, later that year, he is prosecuted for his tyranny in the Chersenese. However, he is acquitted, but not only is he acquitted, but he's elected to the board of the 10 generals whose role it is in this democracy to provide advice and support to the Athenian supreme commander who's called the war Arcon and who again is kind of elected for an annual term. And the reason for this, I think, is because people in Athens are aware that the Persian shadow is lengthening and that Miltaiades is their city's

most seasoned Persian fighter. And although nobody really likes him, they think this is a guy who knows what he's talking about. I mean, we should listen to what he's saying. And so I think Miltadis is election as one of these ten generals serves as a signal to everyone to would-be appeasers in Athens, to other Greek cities, and to the Persians, that the Athenians, if the Persians attack them, are going to fight. They're not just going to submit. And this is an important signal because back in Persia, the gaze of the great king is now turning on the lands of the barbarous far west. Now why though? Because my sense of this has always been that the Persians are so rich, so powerful, so important. And Athens is just, you know, it's a, to the Persian

sensibility, what is it? It's a rogue state, a terrorist state, that it's way out there on the fringe. I suppose you might say, why bother? But then on the other hand, why not? If it's only, if it's a little rogue state, why not punish it? I mean, what do you got to lose? Well, I think that Persians think there are good geopolitical reasons for it. because if the punishment of Athens is delayed, then it risks encouraging the emergence of other similar terrorist states in the mountainous wilds of Greece. I think Greece to the Persians is what Afghanistan was to the Americans in the wake of 9-11.

You know, we need to go and stamp this nonsense out. But there is also this cosmic dimension, which I think Darius takes very seriously, that he's been given the rule of the world by Ahura Mazda, and Athens is patently a stronghold of the lie, and that they're worshipping Dea Eva's demons there and it needs to be purged with fire the Persians need to get in there and restore truth and order

and you can see that those two notions, the geopolitical and the kind of the religious if you want to put it like that. I mean they coalesce very readily. They coalesce in the 5th century BC as they have coalesced many, many times in subsequent history. And also, of course, if they capture Athens, it then provides a base, perhaps for the conquest of the rest of mainland Greece, all of which means that the storm clouds of

war are starting to gather over the Aegean. And Darius' policy is twofold. Firstly, he wants to complete the conquest of the land approaches to Greece, so that's from the Hellespont all along the northern Egean coast. And secondly, he wants to intimidate if he possibly can the various Greek cities in mainland Greece and receive their submission without actually having to fight them. So the advance from the Hellespont along the North Aegean coast, he entrusts yet again to a member of his family. This is his son-in-law, a guy called Mardonius, who is incredibly dashing, perhaps a little bit too dashing. But he knocks out Macedon. So this is the kingdom that in due course will produce Alexander the Great. But for now, the king of Macedon, who is also called

Alexander, he goes, yeah, fine, I'm giving up. He presents earth and water to the Persian ambassadors. And this means that Persian rule now extends all the way from the Hellespont to the foothills of Mount Olympus, the mountain where the gods of the Greeks have their palace. There's only two drawbacks to this triumphal approach. The first is that Mardonius's fleet is shipwrecked off Mount Athos in the north of Greece. And Mardinus himself sustains quite a severe wound. he's kind of gone off on a dashing expedition against a mountainous tribe, and he's ended up with a rather severe wound. So that knocks him out of the immediate engagements. And then the following year after Mardonius has conquered Macedon in 492 in 491, the Persian ambassadors are sent to the cities

of mainland Greece, and most of the Greek cities do submit. They do offer up earth and water. I guess they feel, we've got nothing to lose. I mean, we might as well play it safe. But there are other cities who don't. And there are two in particular who pointedly reject the Persian demand for submission. And the first, of course, is Athens. And here, not only are the demands of the great king dismissed, but his ambassadors are tried, convicted and put to death. And the man who instigates this legal process is Miltaiades. And the result, of course, is to ensure there is no way about.

now for Athens. It's fight or perish. You know, there is no other option. The second city that refuses to offer earth and water to the Persian ambassadors is Sparta, the most formidable military power in Greece. And so she cannot afford to lose face. It's very important to the maintenance of her prestige and of her kind of empire in the Peloponnese, southern Greece, that she isn't seen to submit to the demands of some distant foreigner. And the Spartans don't even bother to put the Persian ambassadors on trial. Instead, they fling them down a well and tell them, before they drown in a quiet Herodotus, if they wanted earth and water, they could find it there.

And anyone who's seen the film 300, this is the moment where the Persians get kicked down the well and the king shouts out, this is Sparta. So two cities are standing against the Persians, and these are Athens and Sparta. and it is pretty clear now to everybody in Greece, isn't it? The Persians are, they're not going to, you know, take the slide down. They're bound to come. And sure enough, the next year, Darius says, let's go for this. You know, we're going to punish these rogue states. We're going to impose, we're going to reimpose the law of heaven, order, harmony, stability.

You know, we are on the side of, we're fighting this axis of evil, which are these kind of terrorist states. Yes. and we will get loads of slaves and looted treasure as well. So it's all brilliant. Everyone's a winner. Yeah. So a huge army, powerful and well-cripped, Herodotter says, perhaps 25,000 men leaves Persia in the early months of 490,

and they're heading for the distant west. And by the summer, they have passed through the Syrian gates, and they come down into the plain of Cilicia, which is in the southeastern corner of what's now Turkey. And there they find waiting for them a great fleet of ship, Some are built as weapons of war. Some are there to serve as transport ships and horse transports. The troops and horses board these ships.

The fleet glides along the southern coast of Anatolia and then out into the Aegean. And it's under the command of two generals. And one of these is a Persian, inevitably called Artafernes. It's always so confusing ancient history. And he is the son and the namesake of the governor of Sardis. and so therefore he is the nephew of Darius. He's quite young. The effective commander is a mead called Datus.

He's been given the commission because he's a very seasoned Greek fighter. He's a veteran of the Ionian revolt. But he also has a good understanding of the Greeks. He respects their gods. He even, to a degree, speaks their language, which is kind of very unusual among the Persians. And Datus has been given very precise orders by the King of Kings. He's to conquer Naxos, so that island that Aristagoras had been defeated by, and all the other islands of the Aegean.

And then he is to land in mainland Greece, and he is to reduce Athens and Eretria to slavery and bring the slaves before the king. And he proves himself the perfect man for the job. He knows how to storm Greek cities. He lands at Naxos, you know, to take an Aristagoras four months, and even then he hadn't been able to capture the city. Datus takes a city within a few days. He sacks it, he loots it, and he rounds up the inhabitants, puts them on the transport ships. They are going to be taken off as slaves back to the Persian Empire. But he also knows how to win hearts and minds.

So very near to Naxos is the island of Delos, which the Greeks think is the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. You know, Apollo, the radiant god of light. And Datis burns enormous amounts of incense before the altar of Apollo. And so you have the two great twin plumes of smoke, one from the burning rubble of Naxos, one from the altar of Apollo. And it sums up Persian policy to intimidate and to woo, to crush down rebellion, but to offer rewards to those who submit. Then it is onward to mainland Greece. And by late July, the Persian Armada is coming within sight of Attica. And Attica is the region that Athens control.

However, the Persian generals have decided that Athens is going to wait, and instead their fleet sails up the narrow straits that separate northern Attica from the island of Yubia, on which Eretria stands. They sail up about 30, 40 miles, and there ahead of them is the less formidable of these two cities of the lie, Eretria itself. And the Eretriens have opted not to try and oppose the Persian landing on the beaches. They've withdrawn within the city. And this proves to be a disastrous decision because inside the city, there are all kinds of various factions. One of these factions is saying, this is madness. We should try and reach an accommodation with the Persians. And so after a five-day siege, two of the aristocrats in Eretria open the gates. The Persians come in. The city is sacked. Again, the people of Eretria are rounded up. They're led on to ships. And with the flames, of the city kind of rising into the sky, the Persian fleet pulls back out and starts to glide back down the straits towards Attica. So they have the coast of northern Attica now on their

right-hand side as they're sailing back towards the Aegean. It's very steep, it's very rugged, and it's plain that there can't be any landing there. But the Persian Admirals know that round the headland, the perfect spot is waiting for them. And this is a bearer. in the shape of a scimitar which is sheltered from the winds. It's got a long, long, open beach, which is perfect for drawing ships up onto. You know, they can basically be parked there. And beyond it, there is a flat level plane, which of course is ideal for the operation of the Persian's strongest arm, which is their cavalry. And so this is the bay that the Persian Armada heads for and the name of this bay is Mara.