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The Ionian Revolt (499-493 BC) was a rebellion by Greek city-states, against the rule of the Persian Empire. This uprising was a serious challenge to the Persian Empire but was ultimately defeated. The Ionian Revolt nevertheless was to have a range of consequences for the Persian and the Greek Worlds.  In the short term, the city states that revolted recovered rapidly and were to flourish for centuries. However, the Ionian Enlightenment or Awakening, which saw the birth of Ancient Greek philosophy and science, was effectively ended by the crushing of the uprising by Emperor Darius’ army and navy. Finally, the revolt was to trigger a series of events that resulted in the Greek and Persian Wars, that transformed the ancient world.

During the so-called Greek Dark Ages, many Greeks migrated to the Aegean coast of Asia Minor in what is now Turkey.<ref. > Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War I, 7</ref>. Here the Aeolians, Dorians, and Ionians, established settlements that became city-states. Ionia was the area settled by the Ionian tribes, and it was composed of twelve cities. They were independent, but they shared common places of worship and regularly cooperated. Ionia became very wealthy especially Miletus, and it was in the 6th century the most important cultural center in the Greek world. <ref>, Holland, Tom. Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West (London, Doubleday, 2006), p 87</ref> These Greek city-states were conquered by the  The rising Kingdom of Lydia, ruled by the famed King Croesus, conquered these Greek city-states. The city-states were able to secure a great deal of autonomy and continued to flourish, under the Lydians. This arrangement was upset by the rise of the Persian Empire, based in modern Iran, which is often regarded as the first ‘World-Empire’ Empire.’ <ref>Holland, p 3</ref>. Cyrus the Second, sometimes known as the Great, conquered the Median and Neo-Babylonian Empires and annexed the kingdom of Lydia, thereby establishing the Achaemenid Empire, the first Persian Empire.  The Greek cities in Ionia were also annexed by Cyrus. The Achaemenid monarch and his successors respected local customs and religions and gave regions in their realms’ considerable autonomy<ref> Fine, JVA The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History (Harvard, Harvard University Press, 1983) </ref>. However, the Ionian Greeks who were very urbanized and their democratic political systems proved very difficult to fit into this system. To control the Greek cities, Cyrus appointed his son, Darius also adopted local rulers with dictatorial powers, who were answerable to a Persian satrap or governor and this policy. This caused great unrest in cities such as Ephesus and Colophon, which had traditionally been democracies’, but this was ignored by the local Persian Satrap.<ref> Hornblower, Simon The Greek World: 479–323 BC (4 ed.) (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011),p. 2 </ref>.  In 500 BC the Satrap of Asia Minor held an assembly with the rulers who governed the Ionian cities in the name of Darius. There was increasingly rivalry among the tyrants, as they were known, and each sought to expand their territories at the expense of their neighbors. To preserve peace and stability in Ionia, the rulers were obliged to ally and foreswore to attack each other. However, in BC 499, Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus sought to conquer the independent island of Naxos and add it to his territories. He tried to win support from his fellow Ionian tyrants’, but they refused. Aristagoras then secured some powerful Persians support and sought to conquer Naxos in the name of Darius .<ref>Herodotus, v, 118</ref>.  However, this invasion of Naxos was a military disaster, and moreover, he owed some of his backers a great deal of money. Aristagoras knew he could be imprisoned or executed for his failure on Naxos. The tyrant of Miletus decided to gamble on a rebellion. He devised an audacious plan; he encouraged the other Ionians cities to depose their pro-Persian rulers and to restore their old governments. The region was ripe for rebellion. He managed to incite a series of revolutions in Ionia that led to the inhabitants expelling or killing their pro-Persian governors. This also spread to the Aeolian and Dorian Greek communities on the Aegean Coast.

Aristagoras knew that the Persians would not accept Ionian independence and that Darius would swiftly seek to re-conquer the region with a huge army. In desperation, he traveled to Sparta to secure help from the most powerful state in Greece. When it refused, he traveled around Greece, seeking men, money, and ships. Only the Athenians and the Eretians agreed to provide help to the Ionian rebels whom they regarded as their fellow kinsmen .<ref>Herodotus, v, 114</ref>.

Furthermore, both of these cities were democracies, and Aristagoras impassioned pleadings swayed the popular assemblies. The Athenians and Eretians sent a large number of hoplites and ships to support the Ionians. The arrivals of these reinforcements persuaded the rebel to go on the offensive in 498 BC. The allies marched on the principal city of Sardis and burned most of the town but could not seize the citadel. The rebels retreated to Ephesus, but they were demolished by a large force of Persians <ref>Brosius, Maria. "The Ionian Revolt, 498–494 BC." The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Battles (2017): 1-7</ref>. Aristagoras, decided to continue the revolt and convinced more Greek cities to join him and even persuaded the Carians to join an anti-Persian alliance .<ref>Herodotus, v 115</ref>.

====The End of the Ionian Enlightenment====Ionia was one of the cradles of western philosophy and science <ref> Russell, Bertrand. History of Western Philosophy (New York, Simon, and Schuster, 1999), p 12</ref>. Traditionally the Ionian cities, was where Greek science and philosophy began. This was due to the wealth of the city-states, freedom of thought and the influence of Babylon and Egypt intellectual traditions. Here for the first time in the West, individuals offered explanations for the origin of the world without recourse to some deity <ref>Russel, p 14</ref>. They used reason and observation to develop theories on the nature of the world. Thales from Miletus (6th century BC) was probably the first philosopher and scientist in the western tradition. He argued that life came from the sea and was also an astronomer and he successfully predicted an eclipse. The philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras came from Samos. Xenophanes was another important philosopher who criticized Greek polytheism and was arguably the first monotheist. The great revolt did not destroy the flourishing intellectual life of the region as seen in the works of the great philosopher Heraclitus or the writings of the historian and geographer Hecateus. However, the great revolt and the subsequent rule of tyrants forced many thinkers to leave.Moreover, philosophers no longer had the intellectual freedom or patronage that they required for their studies and investigations and intellectual life declined in the decades after Darius crushed the revolt. Many thinkers and scientists, after the collapse of the rebellion, traveled widely through the Greek world and spread the ideas of the Ionian awakening. These Ionians played a crucial part in the development of philosophy in other parts of the Hellenic World, especially Athens. While the Ionian Revolt led to the end of the first stage of Ancient Greek philosophy, it contributed to a great flourishing in scientific investigation and metaphysical speculation elsewhere in the Hellenic world .<ref> Russell, p. 17</ref>.

The Greek historian Herodotus argued that the Ionian Revolt was very important in history because it marked the beginning of the Greek-Persian Wars. Darius was greatly angered by the Athenians and Eretians involvement in the rebellion. The Ionian Revolt had destabilized a part of his Empire, and he feared a repeat of this in the future. According to Herodotus, Darius ordered his servants to remind him, daily, of the Athenians and their role in the rebellion .<ref>Herodotus, v, 118</ref>. This is probably a literary invention. However, the Persians had become concerned about potential unrest in the western reaches of their Empire. Athens had shown itself to be a threat to their interests and it was feared that it could encourage more uprising in the future. This was to lead to the first Persian Invasion of Greece. This can be considered to be a punitive expedition that was aimed at punishing those who supported the Ionian rebels .<ref> Herodotus, v 119</ref>.  In 490 BC, a Persian amphibious force attacked several Greek cities and islands before landing near Athens. They were defeated by the Athenians at the Battle of Marathon 490 BC .<ref> Holland, p 119</ref>. This defeat made Darius more determined than ever to punish the Athenians, but he died before he could invade Greece. Therefore, the defeat at Marathon did not end the Persian ambitions to subdue the Greeks. Xerxes the successor of Darius, did not only want to punish the Athenians but wanted to conquer all of Greece. He launched the second invasion of Greece and he moved his army via the Balkans into Hellenic territory but was later defeated on the sea at Salamis and on the land at Platea. It is highly likely that if it were not for the Ionian Revolt that there may not have been any Persian attacks on mainland Greece. This rebellion caused two major wars and these conflicts directly led to the rise of Athens and Sparta and weakened Persia.