I'm John Betts with Andrew Bayliss, and we've trained them. There's an army. There's a need. The Persians are attacking.

This is the famous story of the Thermopylae, but there's a story that happens at sea that's far more profound.

The Spartans show up at Thermopylae, and we all know the ending of the story. They fight off the Persians as long as they can and then are overwhelmed.

And they die making statements that are not accurate. It doesn't matter because the legend is huge.

There's a sea battle at the same time. What happens there, Andrew?

Well, there's the sea battle that happens adjacent to Thermopylae, which is Artemisium.

And that's a kind of a

scoreless draw between the Persians and the Greeks. But when the army retreats from Thomopony

and the Spartans and the Spaniens and the Spians and Thebans remain behind with them. The rest of the army withdraws.

And then there is a major sea battle off the island of Salamis near Athens a few months or a few weeks later where the Persian fleet is destroyed.

And in many ways that's the moment that the Greeks defeat the Persians, because after that,

Xerxes, the Persian king returns home.

And it's the following summer, the battle of Plataia, where the Spartans will lead the Greeks

to victory over the Persians on land as well.

And that's the moment when the Persian Wars are about won.

And who is given credit for winning that sea battle, and what happens to him?

Well, the man who gets the credit from us for winning the sea battle is the mystocles,

but the man who's the Athenian admiral, because the Athenians contributed two-thirds of the Greek fleet.

But the man who actually technically won the battle is a Spartan admiral named Euribides.

And the Spartans, who were not normally very good at giving credit to others,

actually made it clear how much they accepted that the Mystocles was really responsible for that victory,

because they invited him to Sparta

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