Achaemenid destruction of Athens

The Persian army commander Mardonius oversaw the razing of several structures of political and religious significance throughout the city, including the Acropolis, the Old Temple of Athena, and the Older Parthenon.

[1] The Peloponnesians began to prepare a defensive line across the Isthmus of Corinth, building a wall and demolishing the road from Megara, thereby abandoning Athens to the Persians.

With the Persians' naval superiority removed from the war, Xerxes feared that the Greeks might sail to the Hellespont and destroy his pontoon bridges.

[7] According to Herodotus, Mardonius volunteered to remain in Greece and complete the campaign with a hand-picked group of troops while advising Xerxes to retreat to Asia with the bulk of the Persian army.

Thereby the whole number, with the horsemen, grew to three hundred thousand men.Mardonius remained in Thessaly, knowing an attack on the Isthmus was pointless, while the Allied Greeks refused to send an army outside of the Peloponessus.

[15] Moving to break the stalemate, Mardonius offered to the Athenians peace, self-government, and territorial expansion (with the aim of thereby removing their fleet from the Allied forces), using Alexander I of Macedon as an intermediary.

He made this decision after a drinking party and supposedly at the instigation of his companion Thaïs, though according to Plutarch and Diodorus, setting fire to Persepolis was intended to be retribution for the destruction of Athens during the Greco-Persian Wars.

Female musicians were present at the banquet, so the king led them all out for the comus to the sound of voices and flutes and pipes, Thaïs the courtesan leading the whole performance.

Xerxes also took away some of the artifacts, such as a bronze statue of Harmodius and Haristogiton, which was recovered in the city of Susa during the Wars of Alexander the Great and subsequently returned to Greece after nearly two centuries.

"The Citadel at Athens " at the time of Xerxes I (1900 impression by American writer Jacob Abbott )
Answer of Athenian army commander Aristides to the ambassadors of Persian army commander Mardonius : "As long as the Sun holds to its present course, we shall never come to terms with Xerxes ." [ 14 ]
Athenians rebuilding their city under the direction of Themistocles (1914 impression in Volume I of Hutchinson's History of Nations)
Alexander the Great lifting the torch-wielding Thaïs , who instigated the burning of the fallen Persian capital city Persepolis (1890 impression by French painter Georges Rochegrosse in L'incendie de Persepolis )
Foundations of the Old Temple of Athena , destroyed during the second Persian invasion (1909 impression in The Acropolis of Athens , by Dutch-born American scholar Martin Luther D'Ooge )