Do, do, do...

Bampa!

Bampa! Bampa! Bampa! Bampa!

Okay, enough Rasmataz!

But it's not every day a new scratch card drops.

With the new set for five years scratch card from the National Lottery,

you could win five grand a month, every month, for five years.

Pick up yours in store today and get scratching.

Search Dream Big Place Mall. Rules, procedures and game-specific rules apply.

Place must be 18 or over. In my previous podcast, I told the story of the build-up to the Battle of Marathon.

I described how the Persian Empire had steadily expanded under its

king Cyrus and Darius from its homeland in today's Iran to an area stretching from the

Mediterranean to the Indus Valley and become the largest and most powerful state to have existed

up to that time. This expansion had brought them into contact with the Greek city states of the Mediterranean,

which though each fiercely independent had a strong sense of collective Greek identity.

In the 490s BC, when the Athenians aided their Greek neighbours on the west coast of Asia Minor in a failed rebellion, the Persians were furious.

The depth of anger may be explained by an event back in 513 BC, when an Athenian embassy, asking Persia for help against their rivals, the Spartans, agreed on their own initiative

to pledge Persians earth and water. The ambassadors perhaps didn't fully comprehend the meaning

behind this act. For the Persians, this was no empty gesture. It was the act that symbolised

recognition of their supremacy.

As a result, Athens were seen as nominally friendly to the Persians, and so when they

supported the rebellion it was seen as betrayal, that could not go unpunished.

...