Athens fleet, and helped the rebellion of the Ionian cities against Persian rule. In the ensuing Greco-Persian Wars Athens, together with Sparta, led the coalition of Greek states that would eventually repel the Persians, defeating them decisively at Marathon in 490 BC, and crucially at Salamis in 480 BC. However, this did not prevent Athens from being captured and sacked twice by the Persians within one year, after a heroic resistance at Thermopylae by Spartans and other Greeks led by King Leonidas, after both Boeotia and Attica fell to the Persians. The decades that followed became known as the Golden Age
Battle of Himera (480 BC) the expense of native Sicilians and other Greek cities during 505–480 BC, with the Dorian city of Gela being the most successful. Cleander (505–498 BC) and his brother Hippocrates (498–491) of Gela successfully took over both Ionian and Dorian Greek territory, and by 490 BC, Zankle, Leontini, Catana, Naxos, besides neighboring Sicel lands and Camarina had fallen to Gela. Gelo, successor of Hippocrates, captured Syracuse and made the city his capital. By using ethnic cleansing, deportation and enslavement, Gelo transformed the former Ionian cities into Dorian ones and made Syracuse the dominant power in Sicily. Meanwhile, Akragas, another Doric city,