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Pythagoras’ Greed Cup and Other Lesser-Known Ancient World Facts

Khalid Elhassan July 31, 2020 34 min

Roman Empire - Roman emperor — The assassination of Caligula. Quora

13. The Great Greek Traitor

Xerxes, to whom Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks at Thermopylae. Flickr

Ephialtes son of Eurydemos, better known to history as Ephialtes of Traches, was a member of ancient Greece’s Malian tribe, after whom the Malian Gulf in the northwestern Aegean is named. When King Xerxes of Persia invaded Greece in the fifth century BC, Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks by showing the Persians a path that allowed them to bypass and surround a Spartan force that had halted the invaders at Thermopylae.

The invasion came after decades of mounting tensions, spurred by Athens’ support during the reign of Persia’s King Darius I of a failed rebellion by his Ionian Greek subjects in Asia Minor. That led to a Persian punitive expedition against Athens, which was defeated at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. In 480 BC, Darius’ son and successor, King Xerxes, gathered forces for a massive campaign to conquer and subdue Greece once and for all.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.