When the Persians conquered the Lydian Empire, they inherited control of the Ionian Greek city-states on the Aegean coast of Anatolia which had previously belonged to Lydia. Forty years later the leader of one of these city-states tried to conquer the island of Naxos and failed disastrously. Fearing that the Persians would remove him from office, he incited several other city-states into revolt and launched a preemptive expedition that captured and burned Sardis, the capital of Persian Lydia. A couple of Greek cities outside Ionia—including Athens—supported the Ionian Revolt, and it took the Persians several years to regain control. Afterward the Persians launched a punitive expedition against the cities in mainland Greece that had supported the Ionians.