A brilliant new account of the world's very first clash of civilisations between the Persians and the Greeks in 480BC. It was 2, 500 years ago that East and West first went to war. In the early 5th century BC, a global superpower was determined to bring truth and order to what it regarded as two terrorist states. The superpower was Persia. The terrorist states were Athens and Sparta. The story of how their citizens took on the most powerful man on the planet, and defeated him is as heart-stopping as any episode in history.