Tom Holland

And it's just in the nick of time, because not long after they have turned up in Athens, the Persian fleet glides up towards Phalerum, which is the harbour that serves Athens.

And so the Athenians march down to Phalerum, they draw themselves up in kind of great

bronze lines.

And the Persian fleet lies stationary off the entrance to the harbour at Phalerum, and then the sun sets, it's dusk, the Persian fleet raises anchor, swings round and sails eastwards into the night, and the threat of invasion is over, and Athens is saved.

Yeah, it's a bit like, you know, we did the episode on the American attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran and the helicopter crashes.

And it's, you know, the Iranians inspect the helicopter because it's a way of trying to understand what the Americans can do.

And I think the Spartans are exactly the same, that they're looking at the, you know, the armour and the arms and so on that the Persians have.

And to be honest, they're not very impressed.

They think, well, you know, we could beat these any day.

But equally, I think the fact that the Spartans are so concerned to go and make this inspection is a reflection of the fact not just that they've now woken up to just how major a threat the Persians are, but also this kind of nagging anxiety that even if the Persians have been defeated now at Marathon,

they probably will be back.

So we should try and get as much information on them as we possibly can.

I think they probably wouldn't even have mentioned marathon.

I mean, the thing is that the Persians don't write history in the way, say, that Herodotus does.

So we don't have any Persian accounts of any of the wars against the Greeks at all.

But Robert Graves, so as in I, Claudius, he wrote a fantastic poem called The Persian Version, in which he imagines how the Persians would have spun the defeat at Marathon.

So just a quote from it, some of the lines.

Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon the trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.

Despite a strong defence and adverse weather, all arms combined magnificently together.

You know, superpowers never acknowledge the fact that they've been defeated.