Arguably, the most significant battles of the War included Sardis, which was burned by the Greeks in 498 BCE; Marathon in 490 BCE, the first Persian invasion of Greece; Thermopylae (480), the second invasion after which the Persians took Athens; Salamis, when the combined Greek navy decisively beat the Persians in 480; and Plataea, where the Greeks effectively ended the second Persian invasion in 479.
