And now, this powerful ruler had come to crush the Greeks, determined to avenge the embarrassing defeat that his father, Darius, had suffered at their hands at the battle of Marathon in 490 BC.Ĭharged with stopping Xerxes’ forces was King Leonidas from the city-state of Sparta, leading 300 Spartan soldiers. “I am Xerxes, the great king, king of kings, king of countries containing all kinds of men, king in this great earth far and wide,” proclaimed the official documents of a monarch whose kingdom stretched from the Balkans to the fringes of the Indian subcontinent. He was, by all accounts, a formidable foe.
In 480 BC Xerxes, the great king of Persia, headed west into Europe with a massive force – allegedly more than 2 million fighting men and 1,207 warships.
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