Dominic Sandbrook

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.

How can the Athenians not know about the Persians when Persia is by far the world's most preponderant power?

They would have contacts with the Ionian cities, presumably, which are part of the Persian orbit.

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 Artafernes, 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?

And we've got one guy left.

So this is Miltiades, who was the Athenian guy who had taken over what's now Gallipoli.

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...