After the death of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, queen Gorgo learns that Aristagoras, a former tyrant who sparked the Ionian revolt, has returned. Aristagoras seeks revenge as Gorgo counseled her father, king Cleomeones, to refuse his offer of a bribe twenty years before the Battle of Thermopylae. Gorgo provided counsel to her father when she was a young girl, and Aristagoras blames her for losing all his power and becoming an exile. After she did so, Sparta declined to help Aristagoras in his rebellion against Darius I, and he only had Athens as an ally in his attempt to depose Persian-appointed tyrants in the cities of Ionia. Aristagoras believes that he could have been the one to eliminate the threat of the Persian empire, and that he could have had the same glory as Leonidas. Aristagoras revels in the fact that Gorgo is a widow as he believes that her vulnerability will allow him to get revenge.