In the year 480 BC, war came to Greece.

Not the usual squabbling between the regional powers.

That myriad patchwork of Greek-speaking city-states,

kingdoms and oligarchies strewn around the seashores of the eastern Mediterranean.

No, this threat was something else entirely.

A Leviathan rolling in from the east.

No doubt many amongst the coalition raised to face this new threat must have cursed their

cousins across the sea in Ionia for bringing down this fate upon them.

The Ionian Greeks having rebelled against their new near eastern overlords more than a decade earlier,

ushering in years of conflict in the process and now out in the water just

beyond the horizon of the Greek mainland a massive army and fleet of ships to match

had gathered the likes of which the Greek world

had never seen before. To those defenders, each individual Greek state, being able

to field a few thousand men at best, the sheer size and composition of this new force must have been

near incomprehensible. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing several decades later,

claims that over two and a half million men were present from all nations of the known

world. Today, we simply don't know the actual size of the invasion force, though modern

scholars tend to estimate the number closer to somewhere between around 100,000 and 200,000 men.

Still a massive force. This was the grand army of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

Quite simply, the most powerful stage of the the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

Quite simply, the most powerful state that had ever existed in the history of the world.

And in many respects, Herodotus was quite right. This force didn't consist of Persians alone, not by a long shot.

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