Sardis Burns

Naxos

Aristagoras of Miletus talked the satrap Artaphernes into a fleet against Naxos. The commander quarrelled with him and warned the Naxians, and after four months the siege failed. Facing ruin, Aristagoras turned against the King.

Herodotus 5.30-35

The message under the hair

Herodotus says Histiaeus, kept at Susa, shaved a slave's head, tattooed a message on it, and sent him to Miletus once the hair grew back. It is told as a clever tale.

Herodotus 5.35

The bronze map

At Sparta Aristagoras showed King Cleomenes a bronze map of the world. Cleomenes refused when he learned Susa lay three months from the sea. Athens sent twenty ships; Herodotus calls them 'the beginning of evils' for Greeks and barbarians.

Herodotus 5.49-51, 5.97

Sardis burns

Most houses of Sardis were of reeds or had reed roofs. One caught fire, and the whole lower city burned, with the temple of the goddess Cybebe. Artaphernes held the citadel. The Persians later named that temple when they burned Greek temples.

In the game: Reed roofs: torches catch easily, and fire spreads fast.

Herodotus 5.100-102

Ephesus

The Ionians and Athenians could not take the citadel, and marched back to the coast. The Persians of the satrapies west of the Halys came up with them near Ephesus and beat them; Eualcides, general of the Eretrians, fell. The Athenians sailed home and would not help the Ionians again.

In the game: The Ionian host with its Athenians and Eretrians comes up from Ephesus.

Herodotus 5.102-103

'Remember the Athenians'

Herodotus says Darius asked who the Athenians were, shot an arrow into the sky, and had a servant say three times at every dinner, 'Master, remember the Athenians.'

Herodotus 5.105

Gold of the Pactolus

The Lydians, says Herodotus, were the first to strike coins of gold and silver. Excavators found Sardis's gold refinery beside the Pactolus. Under the Persians the King's gold daric and silver siglos were struck here.

In the game: The Royal Mint turns the river's gold into silver for the treasury.

Herodotus 1.93-94; A. Ramage and P. Craddock, King Croesus' Gold (2000)

Lade, 494 BCE

353 Ionian triremes met the King's fleet off Miletus. Herodotus counts 600 for the King. Most of the Samians sailed away before the fighting; the Chians fought on and were destroyed.

In the game: Act II brings the fleet at Lade.

Herodotus 6.6-17

Miletus falls

Miletus was stormed, its temple at Didyma burned and its people sent to live on the Persian Gulf. In Athens, Phrynichus staged 'The Capture of Miletus'; the audience wept, and he was fined a thousand drachmas for reminding them.

Herodotus 6.18-21

The peace of Artaphernes

Afterwards Artaphernes measured the Ionians' lands, fixed their tribute and made the cities settle disputes by law, not war. In 492 Mardonius removed the tyrants and let the cities govern themselves as democracies.

Herodotus 6.42-43