Tom Holland

Miletus is stormed, her men are slaughtered, her women raped, her sons castrated, her daughters enslaved.

And the survivors are then sent off 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, chained in coffers, they pass settlers coming the other way who have been granted their lands by artifernies.

And those few Malaysians who have not been deported are left behind.

huddle up amid the blackened ruins of what had been the glory of Ionia, this great birthplace of philosophy.

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 Myrkinus, his private Thracian fiefdom.

But his uncle, Hestias,

is still on the scene.

So Pistaeus had been, this is the guy who had been taken off to Darius's court to be, you know, his table companion.

And he's a very wily, cunning, untrustworthy figure, really.

He was always kind of playing double games.

He's an old fox.

Yes.

And when the revolt broke out, he went to Darius and said, look, I'm the guy to solve this.