In the east the expansion of Persia's Achaemenid Empire led to confrontations with the Greek cities of Asia Minor. With the support of Athens and Eretria these cities rebelled against the Persian king Darius I in 499 BC, and the rebellions were not finally suppressed until 493 BC. Darius then demanded the submission of all the mainland Greek cities, but Athens and Sparta refused. In 492 BC Darius sent out a punitive mission, which backfire after most of the Persian fleet was lost in storms around Mount Athos. When Eretria was sacked in 490 BC Greece was divided on how to respond, but the Athenians and a small Plataean force took the initiative and defeated the Persians at Marathon that year. Infuriated, Darius's successor Xerxes prepared an even larger invasion, to which many of the Greek city-states responded by mounting their first united force, led by Sparta.
The Athenian leader Themistocles interpreted the oracular pronouncement that they should rely on Athens's wooden walls to mean strengthening their navy, and he enlarged the fleet to 180 ships. The first confrontation took place in 480 BC at thermopylae, where the Spartan King Leonidas held out bravely but was defeated. After inflicting considerable losses on the Persian navy at Artemisium in 480 BC, the Athenians withdrew to the Bay of Salamis. They knew they could not defeat the Persians on land and so left their city to the enemy, who burned Athens to the ground. The huge Persian fleet followed the Athenian navy to Salamis but was unable to manoeuvre within the narrow straits there and was obliterated in 480 BC. The following year, at Plataea, the Persian land army suffered a similar fate at the hands of the Spartans, and the Greeks dealt the Persians the final blow in 479 BC at Mount Mycale, where the Persian troops had taken refuge. The small and independent Greek city-states had managed to defeat the greatest empire at that time.
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