Defining moment

Battle of Marathon

While his other conquests couldn’t have gone better, taking over Greece wasn’t on the cards. Defeated by the Athenians at the Battle of Marathon, Darius’s forces fled back to their ships in an attempt to beat the Greeks back to Athens by sailing around Cape Sounion to attack Athens directly. Their siege of the city never came to fruition because the Athenians had returned just in time.

490 BCE