“Beyond Glory and Guts: Unveiling the Untold Secrets of the Spartan 300”
In any event, the tyrant of the Ionian city-state of Miletus was a man named Aristagoras, who embarked on a failed invasion of the Greek island of Naxos with Persian support. On the way, he got into a fight with his Persian handler, as you do. Ultimately Aristagoras managed to alienate himself from Persian support and the powerbase in Miletus. To save face, he tried to incite support amongst the other Ionian city states to revolt, and embarked to Sparta and then Athens to convince them to support the revolution. Sparta refused, but Athens agreed to send twenty ships to help out. Ultimately the revolt was not successful, but this all turned Cyrus’ later successor, Darius’, eye towards the other Greek city-states, especially Athens.
On this one, Darius demanded symbolic gifts of water and soil from the Greek city-states as a sign of submission. As you probably guessed from the fact that we’re about to talk about a major war between these peoples, Sparta and Athens refused to do this, with the Athenians kicking the Persian messengers down a ravine used for executing prisoners. The Spartans did something similar, although would later apologize for this act against the messengers. To try to make up for it, the Spartans even sent two individuals to be executed as a token offering. Though their lives were ultimately spared, with the offering deemed insufficient for the slight.
In any event, ultimately Darius responded to the Athenian and Spartan refusals to submit by sending a conquering fleet to siege the islands leading to Athens. With the help of an exiled Athenian politician, he learned that he must establish a beachhead in the bay of Marathon, which they did in 490 BCE. The Persians camped for a few days here before Athenian and neighboring Plataean troops attacked them.
