ABSTRACT
Herodotus wrote his history of the Persian invasion of Greece about the middle of the fifth century bc. He was naturally concerned to give an account of events leading up to that conflict, and this involved him in some discussion of the history of Greece in what we term the sixth century bc. Unfortunately, as far as Argos is concerned, the obscurity is almost impenetrable. Argos kept aloof from the Persian wars, and Herodotus did not have to seek far for the reason; her implacable hatred of Sparta, which had been heightened by the catastrophic defeat the Spartan king Kleomenes had inflicted on her at the battle of Sepeia. The first Persian invasion of Greece was the campaign of Marathon in 490 b.c but the reality of the Persian menace had been obvious ever since the destruction of the Lydian kingdom in 546, and the absorption of the eastern Greeks into the Persian empire.
