If there is a single moment in time in which the fate of Western civilization was decided, it is the battle of Marathon, 490 BC. The Persians under their king Darius landed in Greece, only 26 miles from Athens itself. A vastly outnumbered Greek force marched out to meet them. The Persians had already conquered huge swathes of the Middle East and South Asia. A relative handful of quarrelsome Greeks seemed unlikely to pose much of a challenge to them. But they were. When the day was done, the Persians were vanquished. The idea of Persian invincibility was destroyed forever....