Mark Gagnon

The Acropolis, the sacred hilltop that was the heart of Athens and all its temples and everything, was destroyed.

This act would have had enormous consequences.

I mean, burning Athens would become a rallying cry for Greek unity and eventually would serve as justification when Alexander the Great burned Perzopolis over a century later.

But Xerxes' triumph at Athens was even shorter-lived than that.

The moment that would define the entire evasion basically came at sea during the Battle of Salamis.

In September of 480 BC, the Athenian commander Themistocles lured the massive Persian fleet

into the narrow straits between the island of Salamis and the Greek mainland.

And these waters were so confined that the Persians' numerical advantage once again became a liability.

This is basically like a repeat of Thermopylae, but now at sea.

Their ships were packed too tightly to maneuver

and the smaller, more agile Greek triremes actually just tore them apart.

Herodotus tells us that Xerxes watched the battle from a golden throne set up on the shore, literally just posted up on land, watching the ocean and all of his troops fighting.

And he actually witnessed the destruction of his navy in real time.

Now, whether that specific detail is true or not, we don't know, but the outcome was devastating.

Xerxes lost roughly a third of his fleet in a single afternoon.

Now, with the fleet crippled and his supply lines at risk, Xerxes did the rational thing.

He cut his losses and took the core of his army home.

He left behind a large force under his general, Mardonius, to continue the campaign.

But the following year, the Battle of Plateau in 479, a combined Greek army decisively defeated Mardonius and his forces.

Mardonius himself was killed, and on that same day, or perhaps within days, the Greek fleet destroyed what was left of the Persian navy at the Battle of Mycale on the coast of Asia Minor.