Why the Persian king Xerxes burnt the city of Athens to the ground

After the Ionian cities of Asia Minor had fallen under Persian control in the sixth century BCE, tensions stayed high between the local Greek population and their imperial rulers.

In 499 BCE, these tensions broke out into open revolt. The Ionian Greeks rose against Persian authority and, in a move that widened the conflict, received ships and troops from Athens and Eretria.

Unfortunately, their involvement would have lasting consequences.

To strike a blow against Persian command, the rebels and their allies marched inland and set fire to Sardis, the regional capital of Persian Lydia, in 498 BCE.

The attack damaged the city and destroyed a major temple, which some later sources and scholars have associated with Cybele, a sacred Anatolian mother-goddess.

As one of the most important religious and administrative centres of the western empire, Sardis held special importance.

Darius I ruled the empire at the time and viewed the sack of Sardis as both a political challenge and a personal insult.

He vowed revenge against the Athenians who had dared to interfere in his control.

According to Herodotus, he instructed a servant to repeat the same phrase each day at his table: “Master, remember the Athenians.”

Several years later, Darius' forces crossed the Aegean, but in 490 BCE they suffered defeat on the plains of Marathon.

The defeat humiliated the Persian court and forced a retreat. Darius began preparing a much larger invasion, but he died in 486 BCE before he could launch it.

His son Xerxes inherited the throne along with the memory of Sardis and the sting of Marathon.

Soon after he came to the throne, Xerxes turned his attention westward. He ordered the construction of supply lines such as the famous boat bridges across the Hellespont and the canal at Mount Athos.

Herodotus wrote that an initial storm had destroyed the first bridge attempt, and this event prompted Xerxes to order his men to whip the sea and cast shackles into the water in a symbolic act of defiance.

These projects that were carried out over several years showed the empire’s skills in engineering and supplies, but they also had a strategic purpose.

They allowed Xerxes to move his massive army and fleet toward mainland Greece without risking a repeat of previous naval losses.

By 480 BCE, Persian forces had assembled across Asia Minor. Greek writers at the time often described a very large army supported by a navy made up of many groups drawn from subject peoples such as the Phoenicians, Egyptians, Cilicians, and Ionians.

Herodotus gave a figure of over two million men, but modern estimates usually suggest a force between 100,000 and 300,000, which still required immense organisation.

While other poleis had submitted or hesitated, Athens stayed openly defiant. The city rejected the offer of peace and killed Persian envoys who had demanded earth and water.

That only deepened the insult.

When the Persian army entered central Greece, the Athenians had already consulted the oracle at Delphi.

The prophecy warned that the city would fall, but offered hope that a “wooden wall” would bring safety.

People understood this in different ways. Some citizens fortified the Acropolis with wooden barricades, believing that the sanctuary itself would be spared.

Most, however, evacuated the city and took refuge on the island of Salamis, where they placed their hopes in their wooden warships.

As Persian troops arrived in Attica, they found Athens mostly deserted. A small group that was determined to defend the Acropolis had stayed behind.

They refused to surrender, so Xerxes ordered his forces to storm the hill. After an initial failure, his soldiers found a way to scale the cliff and overwhelm the defenders.

The Persians then looted the sacred areas, broke altars, and torched the temples.

Flames consumed the temple known as the Hekatompedon, which was sometimes also called the Old Temple of Athena, and the sanctuary of Pandrosos, along with many smaller shrines spread across the hill.

Xerxes had turned the spiritual heart of Athens into blackened rubble. Some reports later suggested that sacred statues were defiled or destroyed, although the specific fate of many cult images is still uncertain.

For Xerxes, the destruction had special meaning. Greek soldiers had once torched Sardis, which violated a sacred Persian site and humiliated his father.

Now, as his troops burned Athens, Xerxes believed he had taken his revenge. He had silenced a city that had led others into rebellion.

The ruins of Athens did not bring the kind of victory Xerxes had expected. A few weeks after the sack, the Persian navy suffered a heavy defeat in the waters near Salamis.

Themistocles was an Athenian general who had led the naval evacuation, and he helped plan a tactical trap that lured the larger Persian fleet into narrow straits.

He sent a false message to Xerxes in which he claimed that the Greeks were about to flee, which led to the Persian fleet entering the channel, only to find themselves unable to move or turn properly.

There, the Greek ships rammed enemy vessels and then boarded them as the formation scattered in confusion.

From the shore, Xerxes watched the destruction of his fleet. The Athenian exiles whom he had tried to crush now drove him from the sea.

After Salamis, Xerxes withdrew most of his army to Asia, and he left a force behind under Mardonius.

The war continued for another year, but the Athenians reclaimed their city. When they returned, they found that their homes and sanctuaries had been reduced to ruins.

However, they chose not to clear all the damage, and some burnt walls stayed in place for decades.

The memory of the fire eventually became a public monument for the city that had suffered the attack.

Later, when Athens built the Erechtheion and, eventually, the Parthenon as part of Pericles’ building programme, which began in 447 BCE after the Peace of Callias.

As such, the Athenians built reminders of the sack into their new temples, and they used them to cultivate unity and resolve.

They also swore oaths never to rebuild some of the ruined temples, which preserved the memory of Persian sacrilege as part of the layout of their sacred sites.