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- [00:01]
Tom Holland
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, established the United Kingdom of England.
- [00:35]
Dominic Sandbrook
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 brilliant, 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 with 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.
- [01:17]
Tom Holland
Based on Lloyds internal customer data from March 2026. This message is brought to you by Apple Card.
- [01:30]
Dominic Sandbrook
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- [01:50]
Tom Holland
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- [02:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
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Tom Holland
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- [02:50]
Dominic Sandbrook
taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for detail. 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 B.C. 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 nowhere by a group of people whom he regards as terrorists. And, Tom, this is from the ancient historian Herodotus, isn't it?
- [04:40]
Tom Holland
Translated by me. And I thought you rendered it beautifully, especially the hint of the eunuch in the servant.
- [04:45]
Dominic Sandbrook
Thank you. I was thinking there's a worm tongue thing going on with that, with that servant.
- [04:50]
Tom Holland
No, it was very good. Yeah. So Herodotus the first is 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 Aegean 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. They've 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 Kibale, the mother goddess.
- [06:28]
Dominic Sandbrook
Oh, yeah. French of the show, very much friend
- [06:30]
Tom Holland
of the show, 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, an 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 at what his response was. So it's a really gripping, I mean, extraordinary story.
- [07:04]
Dominic Sandbrook
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 plain 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 said, Darius is by far the most powerful man on earth at this point.
- [07:47]
Tom Holland
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 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 Persian, 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 is a man who we have already met in the rest is 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?
- [08:45]
Dominic Sandbrook
He did. He had a party. I think a party that's occurred more than once on the rest is 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 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, he was the great empire builder arguably in all history, the prototypical empire builder.
- [09:28]
Tom Holland
Yeah. So he dies in 529 BC, but 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, Julius 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 Medes. 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 Medes in this, it's kind of Medes and Persians. So Cyrus, he's now got the Medes 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, Croesus, who gets defeated by Cyrus, overthrown by him, you know, he's still a byword. You're rich as Croesus, 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.
- [11:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
And just to remind people, this is modern day Turkey, basically that we're talking
- [11:14]
Tom Holland
about, as 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 richest 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 center 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. 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
- [12:10]
Dominic Sandbrook
people just a sense, just as 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
- [12:35]
Tom Holland
also has conquered what would now be Syria and Israel and Lebanon, because they were subject to Babylon. So they come under the, under Cyrus
- [12:43]
Dominic Sandbrook
rule and indeed is eyeing up Egypt. Am I right?
- [12:46]
Tom Holland
So Cyrus doesn't attack Egypt, he goes off into Central Asia and that's where he reaches the Indus, he reaches Hindu Kush, he goes even further and that's where he's killed.
- [12:54]
Dominic Sandbrook
His son, has eyes up Egypt. Cambyses, right, his son, yes.
- [12:58]
Tom Holland
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 satrapies, 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, Cambyses 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, Cambyses, 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, 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 Ab abruptly implodes, to have a very good idea of what is going on and to know how to respond.
- [14:51]
Dominic Sandbrook
So the account that we, we have comes from Darius himself, and how much of it is true is impossible to say. But it basically begins with Cambyses 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, wars of the Roses, fraternal jealousy and. But now there's a tremendous twist which I'm looking forward to hearing you explain. So tell us what happens next.
- [15:22]
Tom Holland
So Bardi 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, the Persian equivalent of the Brahmins. They're like a kind of priestly cast. And this kind fake magus, I mean, by amazing coincidence, he's 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, 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 noblemen and they get together a posse and they gallop from Syria across the kind of the parched flatlands of Mesopotamia, the Khorazan highway, which is the road that sneaks up through the Zagros Mountains up towards the. The great plateau of Iran. And they arrive at a place called Sikhivautish, 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 noblemen and the kind of posse of men they've brought burst in on him, take the fake Bardia completely by surprise. He reach 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 been this terrible scam, that Bardy 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.
- [17:41]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, you don't have to be a tremendous sceptic to think that actually what was happening was that he had planned a coup himself and he organizes the murder of these two. Two brothers.
- [17:52]
Tom Holland
Right. Yeah. Because I think the sword in the thigh. Accident.
- [17:55]
Dominic Sandbrook
Come on, that's. Yeah, you accidentally. What is it? He accidentally stabbed yourself in the thigh with it.
- [18:00]
Tom Holland
Yeah. And even that's not 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 Magian doppelganger, and that the person who gets killed by Darius and his fellow conspirators in Sicja Vautish, which 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 long, long time to stabilize and pacify all these kind of rebellions.
- [19:04]
Dominic Sandbrook
And he does it partly because he's a brutal and ruthless man. Right. He does what needs to be done.
- [19:09]
Tom Holland
Yes.
- [19:10]
Dominic Sandbrook
You know, he's a serious person, to use that, or favorite terminology.
- [19:14]
Tom Holland
Yes. You mess with Darius and he will kill you. And he will kill you very horribly. So the rebels against Darius 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 Shar river run in 1971 would hold his party. And I think that's something that perhaps the Shah of Iran didn't major on
- [19:53]
Dominic Sandbrook
with his caviar from Maxims or whatever it was.
- [19:56]
Tom Holland
Yeah. And Princess Anne.
- [19:57]
Dominic Sandbrook
Princess Anne, yeah. She. She wouldn't take any prisoners, though, to be fair.
- [20:01]
Tom Holland
She definitely impaled rebels.
- [20:03]
Dominic Sandbrook
I think she absolutely would. And what about this other guy? This guy from Media? So the Medes come up with a pretender of their own, don't they? And he doesn't come to a very happy end at all.
- [20:13]
Tom Holland
So the great capital of Media is this place called Ecbatana, 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 ch. Before the gates of Ecbatana, 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.
- [20:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
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. For hours or days at a time while people came and looked at you. I mean, I think that's a terrible way to die, frankly.
- [21:12]
Tom Holland
Yeah. And the Persians are masters of the protracted death. So they also have a hideous one where they kind of lock a bloke who's been covered in honey inside 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.
- [21:30]
Dominic Sandbrook
Different times.
- [21:32]
Tom Holland
Let's face it, Darius is doing what has to be done. It's the kind of thing I think that would garner respect from the Sandbrook political position.
- [21:38]
Dominic Sandbrook
I was about to say I respect it. I don't necessarily approve it, but I respect it.
- [21:42]
Tom Holland
I know your ways and 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, 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 Arthur and the lie, this universal lie which they call draugr. 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. They're the same thing. And his genius is to brand his enemies as agents of draugr, of the lie and more specifically as agents of devas 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 hoc 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, 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, the God of light and truth, Ahura Mazda, who is the God of this truth. And it's hard to Overemphasize 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 condemned as rebels against a God that they don't worship, that 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.
- [25:04]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, ideas that have never gone away. Tom.
- [25:06]
Tom Holland
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.
- [25:38]
Dominic Sandbrook
And he's not just, I mean, he's not just fearsome and he's not just good at weaponizing religion. I mean, he's also just very good at running empires.
- [25:45]
Tom Holland
Right.
- [25:47]
Dominic Sandbrook
He does what needs to be done, the administrative legwork, you know, he gets up and he does his paperwork, basically.
- [25:52]
Tom Holland
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 founds this great palace to serve him as his nerve center, 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 in due course will have his great party. And Persepolis becomes the kind of 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 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.
- [27:01]
Dominic Sandbrook
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.
- [27:28]
Tom Holland
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'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, you know, 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.
- [28:32]
Dominic Sandbrook
So is the implication that the Persian Empire, 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.
- [28:47]
Tom Holland
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 Scythians and that the Persians call the Saka. And these are horsemen who lurk in the steppes to the north of the Persian Empire. They have tall pointy hats, they love a bong, they're incredibly proficient horsemen. And Duras decides it's time to pacify them, to bring truth and order to the. To the steppe lands. 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 said, is the capital of the Lydian kings and it's now the seat of the Satrap, the provincial governor of Anatolia. And this is a guy called Artaphernes, who is Darius brother. And Artaphernes means literally the splendor of Arta, the splendor of truth and order. So it's a very kind of appropriate name. And Artaphernes 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. The Greek area.
- [30:14]
Dominic Sandbrook
Sorry, I'm just trying to understand his sense of geography. He wants to attack the Scythians, which are. Who are basically in. Where are they? Are they in Ukraine?
- [30:22]
Tom Holland
All the kind of the Steppelins 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.
- [30:37]
Dominic Sandbrook
So he's going a very, very elaborate roundabout routes. Right. He's going to go up through the Balkans.
- [30:42]
Tom Holland
Yes, I think he wants to expand into Europe. I think he wants to kind of 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 realise that launching attacks into the steppelins of Ukraine and, and Russia beyond it is not a sensible thing to do.
- [31:07]
Dominic Sandbrook
Do you know what he hadn't done? He hadn't listened to our excellent series about Charles XII and the Great Northern War.
- [31:13]
Tom Holland
No, he hadn't. So anyway, so he's in Sardis, 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 Steppelands. And unsurprisingly, the campaign proves a disaster cause. The Scythians 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 Steppelands. 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. 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, the Aegean seaboard of what is now Turkey. And these rulers are what the Greeks called Tyranoj, 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 a better analogy. And, 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 populist 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 Miltiades. And he is very able, he's very ruthless and he's ambitious, I would say to the point, point of overreach. And he had sailed from Athens to what the ancients called the Thracian Chersonese, which is the thin peninsula which forms the European side of the Hellespont and today is called Gallipoli.
- [33:43]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, we'll be hearing a bit more about Gallipoli in a few weeks.
- [33:46]
Tom Holland
Yeah, in a few weeks time. So Miltiades, he set up this colony on the Thracian Chersonese, 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 Chersonese and also from, 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 Chersonese not as a democrat or anything like that, but as an out and out strong man. He has a 500 strong bodyguard. He's married into the local aristocracy. He's been busy throwing his weight around. And that's why he, 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
- [34:43]
Dominic Sandbrook
idea, but high risk, right? I mean, the retribution of the Persians would be swift and merciless. And the other strongmen, the Ionian strongmen, they're not going to go for this, are they?
- [34:54]
Tom Holland
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 Histias. And Histias is the, the ruler of the most powerful of all the various Ionian cities. It's the largest, it's the richest, it 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. This is, 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 Histias does not want to risk the prosperity and glory and wealth of his city. And so he essentially crushes Miltiades proposal. Darius returns from his abortive attack on the Scythians. He crosses the pontoon and hysterias is rewarded for his loyalty with, you know, splendid gifts, grants of land, the favor of the king of kings. And among the grants of land that Hystheus gets is a region of Thrace that Darius had just recently conquered. And this is a place called Myrkinus. And Myrkinus has silver mines and it has forests. And forests are obviously useful for building a fleet. And I think the, the ambition of Histias is to exploit the favor of Darius and the backing of the Persian governor that Histaeus can enjoy to build a kind of semi independent power base for himself to in the Aegean. You know, he will remain loyal to the Persians in Miletus, but if he can establish, you know, a kind of Saab empire in the Aegean, in Thrace, say the northern coastline of the Aegean, you know, that'd be brilliant. Why not? That'd be great.
- [37:07]
Dominic Sandbrook
But that doesn't work out right because he ends up with an unexpected promotion.
- [37:12]
Tom Holland
Yeah, he 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 Susa, 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, 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 hysterias 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 bought 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 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 in 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 the 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, Naxos would be very useful to them. And so Aristagoras goes to Artaphernes.
- [39:36]
Dominic Sandbrook
So Asaphernes, to remind people, is the Persian governor of Sardis. He is Darius brother, isn't he?
- [39:41]
Tom Holland
Yes, and his name means the splendour of Arthur. So anyone getting muddled up between Aristagoras and Artaphernes, if it's got Arthur in it, it's a Persian.
- [39:48]
Dominic Sandbrook
Okay, perfect.
- [39:49]
Tom Holland
So Artaphernes, 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 Megabates, basically to kind of keep an eye on Aristagoras. And he's Artaphernes cousin. So it's again all very much being kept in the family. And so Megabate is an Aristagoras set sail with his 200 ships for Naxos 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 Mega Beta 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. So Aristagoras now seems screwed. He's skint, he's blown all his money. Miletus 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 Megabates gets back to Sardis and reports to Artaphernes, the Persian governor, this has been a complete screw up. Artaphernes 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. 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 tyranois. And so this is like, you know, throwing a match onto a kindling box and we love a match thrown onto a kindling box and the rest is history. It explodes. All the other Milesian tyranoi 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, he's all in such a
- [42:20]
Dominic Sandbrook
big call from him. He's doing this, presumably because he thinks it's this or nothing thing. This is a strategy born of total desperation and despair, presumably. And does he ever think at this
- [42:35]
Tom Holland
point, do you reckon that he could win? Because against the greatest empire in the
- [42:39]
Dominic Sandbrook
world, could he hope to defy it?
- [42:41]
Tom Holland
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.
- [42:53]
Dominic Sandbrook
There.
- [42:54]
Tom Holland
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 it's a success. The entire Persian fleet is captured and sails out of the Persian harbour and goes off and becomes, you know, it's now in the hands of the rebels. So that's, 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.
- [43:59]
Dominic Sandbrook
So the Athenians are about to enter the story. Come back after the break to find out what happens.
- [44:06]
Tom Holland
Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from the Rest Is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research uk. We often think of beating cancer as treatment, but imagine stopping it before it begins. After years of work, Cancer Research UK scientists are launching a clinical trial of lungvax, the first vaccine designed to prevent lung cancer. It builds on Tracer X, the world's largest cancer evolution study, which tracked lung cancer cells over many years to uncover the disease's earliest warning signs. Lungvax is designed to train the immune system to spot these signs early on, destroying 47 cells before cancer develops. So it's not treatment, but preventative, with the potential to stop lung cancer before it starts. The first stage of the trial starts this year. Focusing on people at higher risk, it shows what long term research makes possible. For more information about Cancer Research uk, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org the rest is Science this episode is brought to you
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Dominic Sandbrook
taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. 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, the spearhead of, of reform and all this kind of thing.
- [47:52]
Tom Holland
Yeah, because Athens, like the Ionian cities, had until very recently been subject to the rule of a tyrannous of a kind of autocratic strongman. And this had been an aristocrat called Hippias. And then in 510, Hippias 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. 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 neighbors had tried to do. So Thebes, neighboring city, absolutely hates the Athenians and Sparta, the great military power in the south, in the Peloponnese. But amazingly the Athenians, despite the fact that up until this point they'd been absolute losers as soldiers, they defeat the Thebans and more amazingly, they see off the Spartans kind of very battle of Valmy 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 tyrant, had been no more proficient in battle than any of their neighbors. But then once liberated from tyranny, they emerged as supreme by, by far. Proof enough that the downtrodden, since their labors 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, freedom. And you fight with more determination. And we actually, we 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 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 ideological drive there. And so the fact that Aristagoras, when he comes there, there, can frame the Ionian revolt as being a revolt against 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, Artaphernes in Sardis, to see if they could negotiate an alliance. And Artaphernes 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 thing. Again, quite Donald Trump in their approach to diplomacy. 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 that the Athenians have now kind of offered a formal submission to the Persians. And then Hippias, the exile tyrant, turns up in Sardis. And Artaphernes loves a tyrant. I mean, this is what they always do. They always install tyrants to rule Greek cities. And so Artaphernes sends a message to Athens saying, you should take Hippias back. This is my order as your overlord. And of course, there's no way the Athenians are going to do this. They've got their democracy, they've thrown the tyrant out, they don't want him back. And so they say, no know, and there's no response to this from Artaphernes, 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. Persians. And also Aristagoras is telling them, oh, the Persians are absolute wusses. You know, they're a bunch of women. They wear trousers, right.
- [52:37]
Dominic Sandbrook
How can the Athenians not know about the Persians when Persia is by far the world's most preponderant power?
- [52:43]
Tom Holland
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.
- [52:50]
Dominic Sandbrook
They would have contacts with the Ionian cities, presumably, which are part of the Persian orbit.
- [52:55]
Tom Holland
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 sets 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 Euboea. 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 Atticus, Attica, and that's Euboea 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.
- [54:02]
Dominic Sandbrook
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. So Artaphernes, who is to remind people he is the governor, he is Darius 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?
- [54:34]
Tom Holland
I think it does. I think they very rapidly start to realise that they've bitten off much more that they could chew. I mean, I think the burning of the Temple of Qibli is very unsettling for them. 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 and the Ionians 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 is. These aren't a bunch of women, even though they may wear trousers, these are 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 hopla, 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 forces 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. 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 that their plan is basically to hope that the Persians will forget all about it, 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 realizes 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 Ionians. They are 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 Larde, which is an island just outside Miletus. Miletus is Stormed, her men are slaughtered, her women raped, her sons castrated, her daughters enslaved. And the survivors are then sent off from. From the coast of the Aegean, all the way into the depths of the Persian Empire to Iran, to work camps, to harems, to whatever, to the slave markets. And as they are being led off, you know it, chained in coffles, they pass settlers coming the other way who have been granted their lands by Artaphernes. And those few Milesians who have not been deported are left, you know, huddle up amid the blackened ruins of what had been the glory of Ionia, this great birthplace of philosoph. 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 Myrcanus, his private Thracian fiefdom. But his uncle Histias is still on the scene. So Histaeus had been. This is the guy who had been taken off to Darius court to be, you know, his table companion. And he's a very wily, cunning, untrustworthy figure, really, who's always kind of playing double games.
- [58:36]
Dominic Sandbrook
He's an old fox.
- [58:38]
Tom Holland
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 Deus turns up in Sardis very coolly, and Artaphernes 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, brilliant story about how actually it was his Deus who had persuaded Aristagoras to launch the rebellion. And his Deus had done this by getting a slave, shaving his head, tattooing 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 Histaeus, 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 Artaphernes own court, because Artaphernes really hates him. So Histaeus thinks, if I can get rid of Artaphernes, that'll be brilliant. It doesn't work out. He gets captured, he gets taken to Sardis. Hystereus says, look, send me to Darius, I'll be able to explain everything. Artifanis 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 Histaeus and we've
- [60:22]
Dominic Sandbrook
got one guy left. So this is Miltiades, who was the Athenian guy who had taken over what's now Gallipoli, right?
- [60:30]
Tom Holland
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 Chersonese. He manages to escape it. There's a chase all the way across the Aegean. Miltiades manages to reach Phalerum, the harbour of Athens, just in the nick of time. But even when he arrives in Athens, his trust troubles aren't over because of course, he is an aristocrat and he had been himself a Tyrannos, 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 Chersonese. However, he is acquitted. But not only is he acquitted, but he is elected to the board of the 10 generals, whose role it is in this democracy to provide advice and so support to the Athenian supreme commander, who's called the war archon, 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 Miltiades 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 Miltiades election as One of these 10 generals serves as a signal to everyone to would be appeases 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.
- [62:30]
Dominic Sandbrook
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?
- [62:54]
Tom Holland
Well, I think that Pers 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, you know, this, that they're worshipping Daeva's demons there and it needs to be purged with fire. You know, 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. 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 Aegean coast 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, 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 fleet is shipwrecked off Mount Athos in the north of Greece. And Mardonius himself sustains quite a severe wound. He's currently 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. You 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 Miltiades. And the result, of course, is to ensure there is no way back. 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. And I quote 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.
- [67:15]
Dominic Sandbrook
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, that the Persians are. They're not going to take this line down. They're bound to come. And sure enough, the next year, Darius says, let's go for this. We're going to punish these rogue states. We're going to reimpose the law of heaven, order, harmony, stability. We are on the side of. We're fighting this axis of evil, which are these current terrorist states. Yes.
- [67:48]
Tom Holland
And we will get loads of slaves. Slaves and looted treasure as well. So it's all brilliant. So everyone's a winner.
- [67:54]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [67:55]
Tom Holland
So a huge army, powerful and well equipped. Herodotus 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 Silesia, which is in the southeastern corner of what's now Turkey. And there they find waiting for them a great fleet of ships. Some are built as as well, 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 Artaphernes. 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 Daniel Darius. He's quite young. The effective commander is a mede called Datis. 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 Datis has been given very precise orders by the king of kings. He's to conquer Naxos, so the 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 Eritrea 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 him Aristagoras four months, and even then he hadn't been able to capture the city. Datis 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, so you have these 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 reason region that Athens controls. 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 Euboea 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 Eritrea itself. And the Eritreans have opted not to try and oppose the Persian landing on the beaches. They've withdrawn with 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 Eritrea open the gates. The Persians come in, the city is sacked again. The people of Eritrea are rounded up, they're led onto 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 headlands the perfect spot is waiting for them. And this is a bay 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 plain which of course is ideal for the operation of the Persians strongest army, which is their cavalry. And so this is the bay that the Persian armada heads for. And the name of this bay is Mary. Your next chapter in healthcare starts at Carrington College's School of Nursing in Portland. Join us for our open house on Tuesday, January 13th from 4 to 7pm you'll tour our campus, see live demos, meet instructions, and learn about our Associate Degree in Nursing program that prepares you to become a registered nurse. Take the first step toward your nursing career. Save your spot now at Carrington. Edu Events. For information on program outcomes, visit carrington. Edu Sci Security Program on spreadsheets, New regulations piling up and Audit Dread it's time for Vanta. Vanta automates security and compliance, brings evidence into one place, and cuts audit prep by 82%. Less manual work, clearer visibility, faster deals, zero chaos. Call it compliance or call it compliance.
- [73:37]
Dominic Sandbrook
Get it?
- [73:38]
Tom Holland
Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to vanta.com why did we really
- [73:48]
Dominic Sandbrook
go to war with Iraq?
- [73:49]
Tom Holland
And did Saddam Hussein really have weapons of mass destruction?
- [73:54]
Dominic Sandbrook
I'm Gordon Carrera, National Security and I'm
- [73:57]
Tom Holland
David McCloskey, author and former CIA analyst. We are the hosts of the Rest Is Classified. And in our latest series, we are telling the true story of one of history's biggest intelligence failures, Iraq WMD.
- [74:10]
Dominic Sandbrook
In 2003, the US and UK told the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But they were wrong.
- [74:19]
Tom Holland
This wasn't a simple lie. It was something far more complicated, far more interesting, and far more dangerous.
- [74:25]
Dominic Sandbrook
Spies who believed their sources, politicians who wanted the public to believe in the threat, and a dictator who couldn't prove he'd already destroyed the weapons.
- [74:36]
Tom Holland
In this series, we go deep inside the CIA and MI6, go into the rooms where decisions were made, and look at the sources who fabricated the intelligence that took us to war.
- [74:48]
Dominic Sandbrook
The Iraq war reshaped the Middle east
- [74:49]
Tom Holland
and permanently weakened public trust in governments
- [74:52]
Dominic Sandbrook
and intelligence agencies, and its consequences are still playing out today.
- [74:57]
Tom Holland
Plus, in a Declassified Club exclusive, we are joined by three people who were at the heart of the decision to go to war. Former head of MI6 Richard Dearlove, Tony Blair's former communications director Alistair Campbell, and former acting head of the CIA Michael Morale.
- [75:13]
Dominic Sandbrook
So get the full story by listening to the Rest Is Classified and subscribing to the Declassified Club. Wherever you get your podcasts.