Rubio at the Acropolis — and the Sardis Fire 18 Years Before

History Onion · 2:51

On October 7, 2026, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood on the Pnyx in Athens, with the Acropolis behind him, and told the story of the day in 480 BC when the army of Xerxes burned it. Later in the same speech he called "the radical mullahs of Iran" fanatics with a "cult of death." Officials of the Islamic Republic protested; Iranians opposed to it were divided over the speech. His account of 480 BC follows Herodotus, the Greek historian who recorded it. Herodotus also traces the burning back eighteen years: in 498 BC, Athenian troops and their allies broke into Sardis, the seat of Persia's governor in the west, and a temple of the local goddess burned with the city. Herodotus says the Persians later made that temple their pretext for burning the temples of Greece. Marathon followed in 490. In 480, Xerxes — who had vowed to burn Athens for Sardis and to bring all of Europe under Persian rule — took the Acropolis, then lost at Salamis. A hundred and fifty years later, Alexander of Macedon burned the palace at Persepolis and called it punishment for Athens. Notes: Herodotus is our main source for these wars. No Persian account of them survives, and the Persian royal inscriptions never mention them. Xerxes and Darius are the Greek forms of the Old Persian names Xšayāršā and Dārayavauš (in modern Persian, خشایارشا and داریوش). Reaction as reported by Al Jazeera (Qatar-based, 10 Oct 2026), Tehran Times (Iranian state-aligned, 10–11 Oct) and Iran International (Iranian opposition, 11–12 Oct). The Acropolis shown in the 480 BC scenes is the one the Persians found — an archaic temple of Athena and an unfinished temple platform; the Parthenon was begun in 447 BC. Follow for more of the history behind the headlines.