 Then, after taking an oath not to surrender, they died to a man fighting the Persians, foreshadowing and perhaps setting an example for Spartan conduct at the Battle of Thermopylae a few generations later.Archaeological evidence indicates there was a major fire on the acropolis of Xanthos in the mid-6th century BC but, as Antony Keen points out, there is no way to connect that fire with the event presented by Herodotus.It might have been another fire.