    11

    Of course there were still dangers.  But the Persians knew exactly

    where to look for them.  Or so they thought.

    Like the Babylonians before them, the Persians were blind to the

    barbarians, and expected trouble only from nations celebrated for

    military might.  They forgot that the real threat often comes from a

    people everyone has totally dismissed.  So the great Persian leader

    Darius didn't even bother with the scarcely civilized yokels who

    squabbled interminably on a bunch of islands and rocky coasts to the

    west.  It was a big mistake.

    The western upstarts provoked a fight.  When some of the cities

    under Persian rule revolted, the insignificant foreigners sent a fleet to

    help them out.  Then these outlanders proceeded to burn down Sardis,

    capital of the western segment of the Persian Empire.18

    The Persians, determined to teach the impertinent nobodies a

    lesson, ordered a naval detachment to administer punishment.  Like

    the group of helicopters once dispatched to rescue American hostages

    in Iran, the invincible Persian fleet ran into technical problems.  It was

    wrecked in a storm.  In 490 B.C., the Persians tried again.  This time,

    they sailed off to the homeland of the upstarts and clobbered one of

    their pitifully backward towns into the turf.  But the nobodies turned

    the tables.  They sent the invading Persian troops running and

    destroyed seven of the Empire's momentarily victorious ships.19

    The Persians had had it.  They were determined to make these

    half-baked rednecks from a land scarcely marked on the map rue the

    day they tangled with Persia.  Emperor Xerxes gathered an armada of

    mind-boggling size.  Its ships numbered well over a thousand.20

    What's more, according to Herodotus, the Persians put together an

    army of 1,700,000 men,21 including troops from every territory of the

    Empire--Arabia, Bactria, Media, Assyria, Ethiopia and Libya.22   Even

    the distant Indians contributed their heaviest transport vehicle--the

    war elephant.23

    <<  <  GO  >  >>