The Persian King felt that a lord of his majesty should not have to take any nonsense from an overgrown river.
In 483 BC, Xerxes I (r. 486-465 BC) rallied all Persia for a second attempted conquest of Greece, after the failure of Darius I at Marathon seven years earlier. He planned his route meticulously, throwing two bridges across the Hellespont, the narrow stretch of water between the mainland of Asia Minor and the Gallipoli peninsula in what is now Turkey, but it was not a straightforward business.