position_held cleombrotus 
Theseus was the mythical ___MASK51___ of Athens and was the son of Aethra by two fathers : Aegeus and Poseidon . Megara is a historic town and a municipality in West Attica , Greece . It lies in the northern section of the Isthmus of Corinth opposite the island of Salamis , which belonged to Megara in archaic times , before being taken by Athens . Megara was one of the four districts of Attica , embodied in the four mythic sons of ___MASK51___ Pandion II , of whom Nisos was the ruler of Megara . Megara was also a trade port , its people using their ships and wealth as a way to gain leverage on armies of neighboring poleis . Megara specialized in the exportation of wool and other animal products including livestock such as horses . It possessed two harbors , Pegae , to the west on the Corinthian Gulf and Nisaea , to the east on the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea . The Isthmus of Corinth is the narrow land bridge which connects the Peloponnese peninsula with the rest of the mainland of Greece , near the city of Corinth . The word " isthmus " comes from the Ancient Greek word for " neck " and refers to the narrowness of the land . The Isthmus was known in the ancient world as the landmark separating the Peloponnese from mainland Greece . In the first century CE the geographer Strabo noted a stele on the Isthmus of Corinth , which bore two inscriptions . One towards the East , i . e . towards Megara , reading : "" Here is not Peloponnesus , but Ionia "" and the one towards the West , i . e . towards the Peloponnese : "" Here is Peloponnesus , not Ionia ""; Plutarch ascribed the erection of the stele to the Attic hero Theseus , on his way to Athens . The Ionian Revolt , and associated revolts in Aeolis , Doris , Cyprus and Caria , were military rebellions by several Greek regions of Asia Minor against Persian rule , lasting from 499 BC to 493 BC . At the heart of the rebellion was the dissatisfaction of the Greek cities of Asia Minor with the tyrants appointed by Persia to rule them , along with the individual actions of two Milesian tyrants , Histiaeus and Aristagoras . The cities of Ionia had been conquered by Persia around 540 BC , and thereafter were ruled by native tyrants , nominated by the Persian satrap in Sardis . In 499 BC , the then ___MASK52___ of Miletus , Aristagoras , launched a joint expedition with the Persian satrap Artaphernes to conquer Naxos , in an attempt to bolster his position . The mission was a debacle , and sensing his imminent removal as ___MASK52___ , Aristagoras chose to incite the whole of Ionia into rebellion against the Persian king Darius the Great . A ___MASK52___ ( Greek , " tyrannos "), in its modern English usage , is an absolute ruler unrestrained by law or person , or one who has usurped legitimate sovereignty . Often described as a cruel character , a ___MASK52___ defends his position by oppressive means , tending to control almost everything in the state . The original Greek term , however , merely meant an authoritarian sovereign without reference to character , bearing no pejorative connotation during the Archaic and early Classical periods . However , it was clearly a negative word to Plato , a Greek philosopher , and on account of the decisive influence of philosophy on politics , its negative connotations only increased , continuing into the Hellenistic period . Pleistarchus or Plistarch (" Pleistarkhos "; died 458 BC ) was the Agiad ___MASK82___ from 480 to 458 BC . Leonidas I ( or ; Doric , ""; Ionic and Attic Greek : , " Leníds ", ; " son of the lion "; died 11 August 480 BC ), was a warrior ___MASK51___ of the Greek city - state of Sparta . He was the husband of Gorgo , the daughter of Anaxandridas II of Sparta and the 17th of the Agiad line ; a dynasty which claimed descent from the mythological demigod Heracles . Leonidas had a notable participation in the Second Persian War , where he led the allied Greek forces to a last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae while attempting to defend the pass from the invading Persian army . A last stand is a general military situation in which a body of troops holds a defensive position in the face of overwhelming odds . The defensive force usually takes very heavy casualties or is completely destroyed , as happened at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC , the Battle of Karbala in 680 , the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 , the Georgian Three Hundred Aragvians in 1795 , the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 , the Battle of Shiroyama in 1877 , the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 , the Battle of Pavan Khind in 1660 , and Battle of Saragarhi in 1897 and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 . In some cases , troops will make a last stand to protect their ___MASK81___ or ___MASK87___ . Last stands loom large in history , as the heroism and sacrifice of the defenders exerts a large pull on the public ' s imagination . Some last stands have become a celebrated part of a fighting force ' s or a country ' s history . Cleombrotus ( Greek :  , Kleómbrotos ) , regent of Sparta between 480 and 479 BC . He was a member of the Agiad family , the son of Anaxandridas II and the brother of Cleomenes I , Dorieus and of Leonidas I . When the latter died , he became the tutor of his nephew Pleistarchus , son of Leonidas , and ___MASK87___ of the Greek infantry at the beginning of the second phase of the Greco - Persian Wars . Cleombrotus was in command of the Spartan and Peloponnesian troops who built the wall across the Isthmus of Corinth that was intended to keep the Persian army out of the Peloponnese . He died soon after returning to Sparta from the Isthmus . He was the father of Pausanias and the Spartan general Nicomedes . The Battle of Thermopylae (; Greek : , " Mach tn Thermopyln ") was fought between an alliance of Greek city - states , led by ___MASK51___ Leonidas of Sparta , and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I over the course of three days , during the second Persian invasion of Greece . It took place simultaneously with the naval battle at Artemisium , in August or September 480 BC , at the narrow coastal pass of Thermopylae (" The Hot Gates "). The Persian invasion was a delayed response to the defeat of the first Persian invasion of Greece , which had been ended by the Athenian victory at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC . Xerxes had amassed a huge army and navy , and set out to conquer all of Greece . The Athenian general Themistocles had proposed that the allied Greeks block the advance of the Persian army at the pass of Thermopylae , and simultaneously block the Persian navy at the Straits of Artemisium . Athens (" Athína " ) is the capital and largest city of Greece . Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world ' s oldest cities , with its recorded history spanning over ___MASK94___ , 400 years , and its earliest human presence starting somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BC . Classical Athens was a powerful city - state that emerged in conjunction with the seagoing development of the port of Piraeus , which had been a distinct city ___MASK93___ to its 5th century BC incorporation with Athens . A centre for the arts , learning and philosophy , home of Plato ' s Academy and Aristotle ' s Lyceum , it is widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy , largely because of its cultural and political impact on the European continent , and in particular the Romans . In modern times , Athens is a large cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic , financial , industrial , maritime , political and cultural life in Greece . In 2015 , Athens was ranked the world ' s 29th richest city by purchasing power and the 67th most expensive in a UBS study . Cleomenes ( Greek  " Kleomenes "; died c . 489 BC ) was an Agiad ___MASK82___ in the late 6th and early 5th centuries BC . During his reign , which started around 519 BC , he pursued an adventurous and at times unscrupulous foreign policy aimed at crushing Argos and extending Sparta ' s influence both inside and outside the Peloponnese . He was a brilliant tactician . It was during his reign that the Peloponnesian League came formally into existence . During his reign , he intervened twice successfully in Athenian affairs but kept Sparta out of the Ionian Revolt . He died in prison in mysterious circumstances , with the Spartan authorities claiming his death was suicide due to insanity . Cyrus II of Persia (" Kruš "; New Persian : " Krosh "; Hebrew :       " Koresh "; c . 600 or 576  530 BC ), commonly known as Cyrus the Great and also called Cyrus the Elder by the Greeks , was the ___MASK83___ of the Achaemenid Empire . Under his rule , the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East , expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Southwest Asia and much of Central Asia and the Caucasus . From the Mediterranean Sea and Hellespont in the west to the Indus River in the east , Cyrus the Great created the largest empire the world had yet seen . Under his successors , the empire eventually stretched at its maximum extent from parts of the Balkans ( Bulgaria - Paeonia and Thrace - Macedonia ) and Eastern Europe proper in the west , to the Indus Valley in the east . His regal titles in full were The Great King , King of Persia , King of Anshan , King of Media , King of Babylon , King of Sumer and Akkad , and King of the Four Corners of the World . Anaxandridas II was a ___MASK82___ between 560 and 525 BC , father of Leonidas I and grandfather of Pleistarchus . The Greco - Persian Wars ( also often called the Persian Wars ) were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire of Persia and Greek city - states that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC . The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus the Great conquered the Greek - inhabited region of Ionia in 547 BC . Struggling to rule the independent - minded cities of Ionia , the Persians appointed tyrants to rule each of them . This would prove to be the source of much trouble for the Greeks and Persians alike .