I think the Athenian defeat of the Persian fleet at Salamis was the most important event of the Persian/Greek wars. More important than Thermopylae and Plataea.
I wonder what happened to the Athenian Priestesses who remained on the Acropolis? Did Xerxes have them killed?
Salamis was indeed, and while it was Themistocles’ brainstorm, he was denied overall leadership at the battle, because the Spartans wouldn’t participate unless a Spartan was in charge. Spartans were landlubbers you know, and didn’t play a role in the victory.
The Persian land army was forced to live off the land after the destruction of the navy, and couldn’t be resupplied, reinforced, or rotated by sea. Salamis made the denouement possible. It also swept and kept the Persians out of Aegean.
The temple that preceded the Parthenon was wood, and the Persians burned it. Perhaps the staff died in the fire, perhaps they were taken alive and dragged off to Persia, and of course, perhaps they decided to bag it and GTFO when they saw the soldiers carrying torches. That act by the Persians laid the precedent for the massive arson performed by Alexander the Great at Persepolis.
Thermopylae was militarily insignificant; furthermore, it was made necessary from Sparta’s earlier blowing off of the resistance to the Persian invasion, when Athens led its coalition of the willing to victory at Marathon.
I also wonder if Spartan politics played a role, as they did at Leuktra, when Agesilaus sent his co-ruler to fight the Thebans, a battle that literally and unexpectedly ended the hideous slave empire of the Spartans.
There’s a cool vignette in Herodotus, the Greek naval forces met with Leonidas on the shore near the Gates, just a few days before the last stand. There was some expectation of earlier engagements with the Persian navy, and those did occur, but the Persians were headed straight down toward Athens, on a mission.
Themistocles had their number.