page_title: Achaemenid destruction of Athens
section_title: Second phase: Mardonius (479 BCE)
hierarchical_section_title: Achaemenid destruction of Athens / Second phase: Mardonius (479 BCE)
caption_attribution_description: English: Answer of Aristides to the ambassadors of Mardonius
context_page_description: The Achaemenid destruction of Athens was accomplished by the Achaemenid Army of Xerxes I during the Second Persian invasion of Greece, and occurred in two phases over a period of two years, in 480-479 BCE.
context_section_description: Mardonius remained with the rest of the Achaemenid troops in northern Greece. He selected some of the best troops to remain with him in Greece, especially Immortals, the Medes, the Sacae, the Bactrians and the Indians. Herodotus described the composition of the principal troops of Mardonius:
  Mardonius there chose out first all the Persians called Immortals, save only Hydarnes their general, who said that he would not quit the king's person; and next, the Persian cuirassiers, and the thousand horse, and the Medes and Sacae and Bactrians and Indians, alike their footmen and the rest of the horsemen. He chose these nations entire; of the rest of his allies he picked out a few from each people, the goodliest men and those that he knew to have done some good service... Thereby the whole number, with the horsemen, grew to three hundred thousand men.
  — Herodotus VIII, 113.
  Mardonius remained in Thessaly, knowing an attack on the isthmus was pointless, while the Allies refused to send an army outside the Peloponessus.
  Mardonius moved to break the stalemate, by offering peace, self-government and territorial expansion to the Athenians (with the aim of thereby removing their fleet from the Allied forces), using Alexander I of Macedon as an intermediary. The Athenians made sure that a Spartan delegation was on hand to hear the offer, but rejected it. Athens was thus evacuated again, and the Persians marched south and re-took possession of it.
  Mardonius brought even more thorough destruction to the city, and some authors considered that the city was truly razed to the ground during this second phase. According to Herodotus, after the negotiations broke off:
  "(Mardonius) burnt Athens, and utterly overthrew and demolished whatever wall or house or temple was left standing"
  — Herodotus IX.13
caption: Answer of Aristides to the ambassadors of Mardonius: "As long as the sun holds to its present course, we shall never come to terms with Xerxes".[15]
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