The Ionian Revolt: The start of First Persian War?
The Greco-Persian Wars are a sequence of wars fought between the great empire of Persia and the coalition of Greek city-states. It lasted for about half a decade from 499 BC to 488 BC. Even as we say Greco-Persian Wars its not always that all of Greece fought against Persian as their strength and authority was much greater.
The Ionian Revolt initiated the First Major Persian War. During 539 BC Cyrus The Great ruled Persia and most of West Asia. During his reign his first captured Lydia, which lay along the coast of Anatolia. The cities that were dependent of Lydia automatically became helpless and Cyrus next move was to capture those cities. The residents of these were then called Ionians. Ionia is today based in Modern Turkey. Cyrus was cruel ruler. He increased the taxes and appointed tyrants in these regions.
His son Cambyses supported Cyrus and he too captured Egypt and some Greek islands between Anatolia and Greece, the most important one being the island of Samos.
Later Darius, Cambyses son who became the king, attacked the Scythians, but he lost. He along with his army returned back to Persia.
Darius move proved useful to him, as the other Greek states thought that they were next in line to be attacked. Macedon sought a peace treaty with Persia in 510 BC. When Persia decided to attack Naxos, Aristagoras was appointed to lead the battle. Aristagoras was a tyrant of Miletus known to be close to King of Persia. But the Persians lost. Seeing that strong rulers like Persia could lose two consecutive times the Persian occupied Greek city-states decided to revolt. This is known as the Ionian revolt. But the Ionians were defeated in the Battle of Lade in 494 BC. The Ionian revolt lasted for about half a decade.