The first battle of the war in…

Inarus, the son of a Libyan prince named Psamtik, presumably of the old Saite line, holds a kingship over the Libyans from Mareia (above Pharos) and the part of the Nile Delta around Sais.

With help from Amyrtaeus, also from Sais, who takes the northern marshes, Inarus drives out the tax-collectors and collects mercenaries, thus starting a revolt in Egypt during the reign of King Artaxerxes I of Persia after the assassination of King Xerxes I.

The Athenians take the ambitious decision to support the revolt in the Egyptian satrapy of the Persian empire, forming an alliance with the Egyptian leader Inaros against the Persians towards the end of the 460s BCE.

In order to reach the Nile delta and support the Egyptians, the Athenian fleet has to sail south.

Athens has secure landing sites for their triremes as far south as Cyprus but they need a way station between Cyprus and Egypt.

Ideally, they require a naval base on the coast of Lebanon or Palestine but the Phoenician cities of Sidon and Tyre hold much of the mainland coast and those cities are loyal to Persia.

Fifty miles south of those cities, however, the Athenians find an isolated and tempting target for establishing a way station.

Dor has many strategic advantages for the Athenians, starting with its distance from Sidon.

The Athenians have a maritime empire built on oared ships.

They do not need large tracts of land and instead need strategically situated coastal sites that haves fresh water, provisions and protection from bad weather and enemy attack.

Dor has an unfailing freshwater spring near the edge of the sea and to its south a lagoon and sandy beach enclosed by a chain of islets.

This is precisely what the Athenian fleet requires for landing their ships and resting their crews.

Dor itself is strategically situated.

Standing atop a rocky promontory, it is protected on its landward side by a marshy swale that forms a natural moat.

Beyond the coastal lowlands is Mount Carmel.

The town has Persian-built fortifications.

In addition to this, the town has straight streets and Phoenician dye pits for the purpling of cloth.

For these reasons, Dor, which the Athenians seize from Sidon in 460 BCE, becomes the most remote outpost of the Athenian navy.

Themistocles, who has issued some coins, in the past few years, allegedly commits suicide in about 460 when called upon by his Persian hosts to take part in a naval war against the Athenians.

The Athenian allies, from whom Inarus is paid one hundred triers, send troops and an army of more than two hundred ships led by Charitimides to aid him in 460 BCE.

The Messenian defenders of Mount Ithome leave the Peloponnese in about 460 BCE.

Corinth as far as is known had made no move to help Sparta at the time of the Ithome disaster but seems to have pursued expansionist goals of its own in the Peloponnese, perhaps at Argos' expense.

Now that Athens and Argos are allied, this indirectly tends to damage Corinth's hitherto good relations with Athens. (Corinth had fought well at Salamis, as even Herodotus was aware, although after 460 very different stories were circulating on this topic.)

More relevant than this is Athens' ready reception of a third ally, Megara; …

…like the Argives, the Megarians had also felt pressure from Corinth and turned to Athens.

This is the cause and beginning of the “violent hatred” between Corinth and Athens, which produces what modern scholars call the First Peloponnesian War (460-446).

The long running dispute between the cities of Argos and Clenoae over control of the Panhellenic Nemean games in Argolís, lasts until 460, when Argos prevails.

The Athenians, flexing imperial muscle, commit themselves to war with Corinth at the same time launching a large-scale invasion of Egypt (460-454), in ostensible continuance of the fight against Persia.

However, as Egypt has long been a rich and desirable Persian satrapy, exploited by absentee Persian landowners, Athenian motives may be largely economic.

The rebel army had confronted the Persian army of around four hundred thousand infantry and eighty ships led by the brother of Artaxerxes, the satrap Achaemenes, who, together with one hundred thousand of his four hundred thousand men, is defeated and killed at Pampremis.

The Persians retreat to Memphis.

The commanders of the Athenian fleet, Charitimides and Cimon, fight a naval battle with the Persians, in which forty Greek ships engage fifty Persians ships, of which twenty are captured with their crews, and the remaining thirty sunk.

To show that their victory is complete, the rebels send the dead body of satrap Achaemenes to the Persian king.