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 Hysiae (417 BC) destroyed the town and fortress of Hysiae and had its male population executed. The campaign is described by the historians Thucydides (5.83.2), who actually fought in the war, and Diodorus Siculus (12.81.1), who wrote in the 1st century BC, over two hundred years later. Thucydides says that the Spartans marched against Argos in the winter of 418–417 BC with all their allies, but failed to take the city of Argos. The Spartans did, however, capture and destroy the Argive town of Hysiae, taking all the male citizens as hostages. The hostages were subsequently killed. With Hysiae destroyed, the Spartans left