Also, each of these city-states had its own form of government, ranging from very democratic unless you were a woman or a slave, to completely dictatorial. And the people who lived in these cities considered themselves citizens of that city, not of anything that would ever be called Greece. At least until the Persian Wars. So between 490 and 480 BCE, the Persians made war on the Greek city-states. This was the war that featured the Battle of Thermopylae, where 300 brave Spartans battled, if you believe Herodotus, 5 million Persians. And also the Battle of Marathon, which is a plain about 26.2 miles away from Athens. The whole war started because Athens supported those aforementioned Ionian Greeks when they were rebelling in Anatolia against the Persians.