The Athenians and Eretrians sent a task force of 25 triremes to Asia Minor to aid the revolt.

Despite the fact that their actions were ultimately fruitless, the Eretrians and in particular the Athenians had earned Darius's lasting enmity, and he vowed to punish both cities.

* Darius I sends an expedition, under Artaphernes and Datis the Mede across the Aegean to attack the Athenians and the Eretrians.

Darius died while in the process of preparing a second army to invade the Greek mainland, leaving to his son the task of punishing the Athenians, Naxians, and Eretrians for their interference in the Ionian Revolt, the burning of Sardis and their victory over the Persians at Marathon.

The Ionians who escaped the battle made for their own cities, while the remaining Athenians and Eretrians managed to return to their ships and sailed back to Greece.

The Athenians arrived in Miletus with twenty triremes and five other triremes that belonged to the Eretrians.

The Eretrians rebelled again in 349 BC and this time the Athenians could not recover control.

The Ionians who escaped the battle made for their own cities, while the remaining Athenians and Eretrians managed to return to their ships, and sailed back to Greece.

Aristagoras, who was disliked by his own subjects after an expedition to Naxos ended in failure, followed Histiaeus ' command, and with help from the Athenians and Eretrians, attacked and burned Sardis.

The Acropolis had been scheduled for the treatment too, but apparently it was to take place at the time of the full moon when the Athenians themselves, out of respect for the natural beauty of the occasion, were wont to forgo their own usual nocturnal illumination.

It was said to have been named after the Greek town of Aegae, or after Aegea, a queen of the Amazons who died in the sea, or Aigaion, the " sea goat ", another name of Briareus, one of the archaic Hecatonchires, or, especially among the Athenians, Aegeus, the father of Theseus, who drowned himself in the sea when he thought his son had died.

The identification of Ajax with the family of Aeacus was chiefly a matter which concerned the Athenians, after Salamis had come into their possession, on which occasion Solon is said to have inserted a line in the Iliad ( 2. 557 – 558 ), for the purpose of supporting the Athenian claim to the island.

To the Athenians it seems what had to be guarded against was not incompetence but any tendency to use office as a way of accumulating ongoing power.

Many Athenians prominent earlier in the century would have lost citizenship, had this law applied to them: Cleisthenes, the founder of democracy, had a non-Athenian mother, and the mothers of Cimon and Themistocles were not Greek at all, but Thracian.

Xanthippus, the Athenian commander at Mycale, had furiously rejected this ; the Ionian cities were originally Athenian colonies, and the Athenians, if no-one else, would protect the Ionians.

In some other respects the Athenians were not the old popular rulers they had been at first ; and if they had more than their fair share of service, it was correspondingly easy for them to reduce any that tried to leave the confederacy.

The Athenians also arranged for the other members of the league to pay its share of the expense in money instead of in ships and men, and for this the subject city-states had themselves to blame, their wish to get out of giving service making most leave their homes.

After the Persian crisis had subsided, the Athenians incorporated many of the unfinished temple's architectural members ( unfluted column drums, triglyphs, metopes, etc.

Herodotus had no Athenian victories to record after the initial success, and the fact that Themistocles was able to carry his proposal to devote the surplus funds of the state to the building of so large a fleet seems to imply that the Athenians were themselves convinced that a supreme effort was necessary.

In 1693 Morosini resumed command, but his only acts were to refortify the castle of Aegina, which he had demolished during the Cretan war in 1655, the cost of upkeep being paid as long as the war lasted, by the Athenians, and to place it and Salamis under Malipiero as Governor.

A stalemate ensued for five days, before the Athenians decided to attack the Persians because, under the cover of night, some of the Persian fleet had set sail for Athens.

Cleomenes's attempts to restore Isagoras to Athens ended in a debacle, but fearing the worst, the Athenians had by this point already sent an embassy to Artaphernes in Sardis, to request aid from the Persian Empire.

This passage is undoubtedly problematic ; the Athenians had little to gain by attacking before the Spartans arrived, and there is no real evidence of this rotating generalship.

When Datis surrendered and was ready for retreat, the Ionians climbed the trees and gave the Athenians the signal that the cavalry had left.

From a strategic point of view, the Athenians had some disadvantages at Marathon.

In order to face the Persians in battle, the Athenians had had to summon all available hoplites ; and even then they were still probably outnumbered at least 2 to 1.

The Athenians initially had no need to seek battle, since they had managed to confine the Persians to the plain of Marathon.

Tactically, hoplites were vulnerable to attacks by cavalry, and since the Persians had substantial numbers of cavalry, this made any offensive maneuver by the Athenians even more of a risk, and thus reinforced the defensive strategy of the Athenians.

The Athenians, joined by a small force from Plataea, marched to Marathon, and succeeded in blocking the two exits from the plain of Marathon.

With the support of the Athenians, the Argives succeeded in forging a coalition of democratic states within the Peloponnese, including the powerful states of Mantinea and Elis.

In the battle, the Athenians obliterated the Spartan fleet, and succeeded in re-establishing the financial basis of the Athenian Empire.

He thus succeeded in both the mission and the marriage, and his marriage was so happy that Athenians instituted festivals in his honour and he came to be associated with marriage.

Aristagoras next went to Athens, where he made a convincing speech, promising “ everything that came into his head, until at last he succeeded .” Won over, the Athenians sent ships to Ionia, and Aristagoras went before them with the sole intention of irritating Darius.

The Spartans remained unwilling to challenge the Athenians at sea, and an Athenian fleet succeeded in recapturing several cities and besieging Chios during the later months of 412 BC.

Both sides built walls and counter-walls, and the Athenians succeeded in cutting off Potidaea from the sea with a naval blockade.

) He succeeded his father in his appanage in Upper Macedonia, of which Perdiccas seems to have wished to deprive him, as he had before endeavoured to wrest it from Philip, but had been hindered by the Athenians.

They arrived in 456 BC, and within two years had put down the revolt, capturing Inarus and various Athenians supporting him.

Herodotus reports that when Darius heard of the burning of Sardis, he swore vengeance upon the Athenians ( after asking who they indeed were ), and tasked a servant with reminding him three times each day of his vow: " Master, remember the Athenians ".

The Spartans and their allies had been invading Attica every year, burning, looting and vandalizing farm property with unusual ferocity in order to provoke the Athenians into a land battle that they couldn't win.

They were at first assisted by the Athenians and Eretria, with whose aid they penetrated into the interior and burnt Sardis, an event which ultimately led to the Persian invasion of Greece.

Learning of this, the Athenians send an embassy led by Conon to present their case to the Persians at Sardis.