00:00 The Persian attackers easily defeat the Greek islanders, with some of the attackers being Greeks themselves who fight for the Persians due to financial incentives.

04:23 The Greco-Persian Wars created a sense of shared identity among the Greeks and portrayed the Persians as barbarians, leading to a fundamental mis-portrayal of the historical events and the people involved, as well as the importance of memory and the meaning of these events in defining identities.

08:24 The Persian Wars are a complex and fascinating story, with the Greeks standing up to the might of the Persian Empire, and the conflicts being driven by a combination of structural factors and individual agency, rather than simplistic binaries of heroes and villains.

12:28 The Persians initially preferred to deal with tyrants in the Greek city-states because they were easier to understand and tied to Persian interests through bonds of individual loyalty, giving the Persians a distinct advantage in playing the long game and influencing events from afar.

16:35 The Athenian envoys submitted to Persian overlordship, offering earth and water as a symbol of submission, despite the Athenian citizens being incensed when they found out.

21:19 The internal politics of Athens and the Greek cities of Ionia, as well as the misunderstandings and desires for power among different parties, led to the submission of Athens to Persia and the Ionian revolt, which ultimately precipitated Persia's invasions of mainland Greece.

25:28 The Ionian revolt began with the ambitious tyrant Aristagoras of Miletus seeking to endear himself to the Persians by helping a group of exiles from Naxos take back control of the island, but the expedition was a failure, leading Aristagoras to worry about his political future and ultimately decide to lead a revolt of the Ionians against Persian rule.

29:35 The Ionian revolt, with support from the Athenians, resulted in the burning of the Persian capital of Sardis, multiple uprisings across the western part of the Persian Empire, and a long, grinding conflict that lasted for five years before the Persians fully quelled the revolt.

34:14 The aftermath of the Ionian revolt saw the Persians encouraging the formation of popular governments in the Ionian cities, imposing a new and more equitable burden of taxation, and punishing Athens and Eretria for aiding the rebels.

38:17 The Persian response to the Aegean disorder included a powerful expedition led by Mardonius, who re-established Persian control over the Aegean and bullied the islands into submission, but his expedition was ultimately ended by a storm; two years later, Darius ordered another expedition led by Dates and Artefernes, aimed at capturing Athens and Eretria, and after subjugating Naxos and the Cyclades, they destroyed Eretria and carried off part of the population into slavery before landing on the plain of Marathon.

42:21 The Athenians fought alone against the Persians at the Battle of Marathon, and with the help of a small force from Plataea, they were able to utterly rout the Persians, resulting in a victory that became a foundational event in the minds of the Greeks, particularly the Athenians, and marked the beginning of the Persian Wars.