History of Athens returned under Darius's son Xerxes. When a small Greek force holding the pass of Thermopylae was defeated, the Persians proceeded to capture an evacuated Athens. The city of Athens got captured and sacked twice by the Persians within one year after Thermopylae. Subsequently, the Athenians (led by Themistocles), with their allies, engaged the much larger Persian navy at sea in the Battle of Salamis. Xerxes built a throne on the coast in order to watch the Greek navy being defeated, but instead, the Persians were routed. This established a great turning point in the war. In 479 BC, the Athenians
Battle of Himera (480 BC) aid to avenge the death of Dorieus was ignored by mainland Greece, even by Leonidas of Sparta, brother of Dorieus and who later would win immortal fame at Thermopylae in 480 BC. This possibly demonstrated the futility of opposing Carthage by single Greek cities or the unreliability of aid from mainland Greece, a situation that would change with the rise of the Greek tyrants in Sicily. While Carthage remained engaged in Sardinia after 510 BC, most of the Greek colonies in Sicily fell under the rule of tyrants. The tyrants of Gela, Akragas and Rhegion successfully expanded their dominion at