Oedipus: A Short Story

The Greek victory against Persia was largely due to efforts of mainly Athens but also Sparta as well. Athens was responsible for the major turning points of the Persian invasions, while Sparta was responsible for the deciding battle. Miltiades, with his skilful battle strategies, defeated the Persians during their second invasion at Marathon, which gave Athens a confidence boost on their military. During the third invasion, when the Athenians were evacuated to Salamis, Themistocles had devised a plan to trick the Persians which had resulted in Persian army without a supply line. Sparta?s importance had revealed during their sacrifice at Thermopylae and at Plataea, where they provided the most effective part of the army.

Xeones relates the narrative of his life and experiences with the Spartans to Xerxes. It is through his eyes that the rigors of Spartan military life are revealed. He recounts his childhood, his capture by the Spartans and his interactions with the leading men and women of Sparta. He dies soon after the defeat of the Persian navy at Salamis. Alexandros and Dionekes are killed at Thermopylae with Leonidas and the other Spartans. Rooster, who is almost put to death for sedition, eventually redeems himself as a great Spartan warrior at the battle of Platea, which effectively ends the Persian invasion of Greece.

This was a naval battle between about 370 greek ships from various city states, and about 1200 Persians. The Greeks were led by their commander, Themistocles. The Persians were once again led by Xerxes. The Greeks lined their ships up between two river banks at a narrow point. The Persians charged ahead, but the Greeks were ready. The Persians got too bunched up at the blockade and were soon defeated. This is similar to what happened at the Battle of Thermopylae. We know this happened because we have a knife with a wood handle and an iron blade that was used in the battle. This battle proves yet again that numbers mean little when your opponent has a good

The Battle of Thermopylae, which Herodotus recorded in his writing The Histories, was one of the most arduous and notable battles of western history. Herodotus was an extremely significant historian who lived during the 5th century B.C. In this primary source writing, he portrays how Xerxes was superstitious and tyrannical, how the battle informs you about the Spartan culture, how the values of Greek promoted society, and he displayed how significant the Persian invasion was on Greek development, for example, their political and intellectual expansion. The Persian King Xerxes

The Persian Wars were a series of destructive and malevolent battles which occurred in the time frame of 490B.C and 480 – 479B.C. The Greek victory over the Persians in the Persian Wars cannot be attributed to only one factor, more it was a commixture of factors. Such factors include unity, leadership, strategy, tactics and the pre-eminence of the Greek soldier. Each contributing factor was to play a distinctive and pivotal role in the various battles to come, which ultimately would lead to the subsequent demise of the Persians.

In this paper I will discuss the play, The Persians, produced by the Greek playwright Aeschylus which was performed in 472 B.C. Throughout this paper I will be discussing how the battle of Salamis was viewed by the Persians as well as why the Greeks were able to win at Salamis and what it tells us about Xerxes according to Aeschylus. The play opens with a chorus of Persian elders anxiously awaiting news Xerxes’ expedition against the Greeks. They are soon joined by the Queen who who expresses her worry over the outcome of her son’s expedition. A messenger soon arrives and gives the Queen and elders a description of the battle of Salamis and its outcome. The messenger then lists off all of the generals who have died and retells the gruesome battle story from his view as the Greek soldiers charged into battle. The Queen then commands the chorus to summon the ghost of her former husband, Darius the Great. When he hears of the defeat his

Xerxes was a man of power. The Great King of Persia, his empire encompassed the majority of the known world. On his invasion of Greece in the spring of 480BCE, he reportedly commanded a horde of over two million men. Even the Greek oracle at Delphi encouraged prudence in face of such an overwhelming force (7.140). Thus the question arises of why such an army failed to compel Greece into submission. I will explore this with focus on the key battles and the important factors, most notably the timing of the attack, the quality of his expeditionary force and Xerxes’ personal faults.

Charles could see Erik giving up as sharply as he felt it, the small spark that he’d come to label in his own mind as ‘life force’ dwindling to an ember and extinguishing. He was stepping forward before he could stop himself, blooding rushing in his ears against time as he spoke. “Dēsístite!“

pass of Thermopylae. In the past, Leonidas' men repulsed the frontal attacks of the Persians for the first

In 480 BC, when the Persian horde, estimated by some historians to range from 300,000 to 1.7 million soldiers, landed on the shores of Thermopylae, the Persian King Xerxes sent emissaries to the leaders of the Greek city-states demanding their surrender and patronage to the Persian Empire (Frye, 2006). Despite the massive threat that was encamped on the shores off the Gulf of Maliakos in small town known as Trachis, the Greeks refused. Sparta, known for their superior military might, were chosen by the Greek leaders to lead a coalition of Greek warriors to defend their homeland from the invading Persian army (Frye, 2006).

The Persian army threw everything at the Spartans at Thermopylae, Xerxes even deployed his renowned “special forces”, the Immortals. It is said through Greek sources that over 20,000 Persians fell at Thermopylae, this a true testament to Sparta’s might in

The First Persian War took place at the Battle of the Marathon near Athens and it was known as one of the infamous battle between the Athenians and the Persians. In 501 B.C.E., a Greek tyrant named Aristogorus provoked the Persian rulers by instigating an uprising in Miletus and Ionia to revolt against the Persian Empire. In order to ward off the Persian Empire’s wrath, Aristogorus reached out to his compatriots on the mainland in Greece of Athens and Sparta. “Sparta refused, but Athens sent twenty ships-enough just to anger the Persians, but not to save Miletus.” Nevertheless, the Athenians conquered the Persian’s capital of Lydian in Sardis in order to steal the golds, but they accidentally ended up burning down the richest capital of Sardis.

Moreover, in the Battle of Thermopylae, Persian forces led by Xerxes outnumbered the Greeks yet again. However, the militant Spartans took up arms and were able to defeat the large Persian army. Thermopylae allowed the Greek forces to come up with various tactics and strategies in order to defeat Persia. Next, the Battle of Salamis was a naval battle between several Greek city-states and Persia. This battle forms the turning point of the Greco-Persian Wars since it ultimately “saved Greece from being absorbed into the Persian Empire and ensured the emergence of Western civilization as a major force in the world.” The ending of the Battle of Salamis left the Persian army trapped in Greece, which paves the way for the final battle of the war, the Battle of Platea. In the battle, the “Greek army came and defeated the weakened Persians, the Persian Wars were over”. The mark of the ending of the Greco-Persian wars gave way to Athens arising from the ashes as the dominant and central city-state of Greece, which then provides political and cultural advancements during its golden age.

The Greeks used the following methods to defeat Persia: at the town of Marathon, the Greeks employed the use of their hoplites’ efficiency with long spears in hand-to-hand combat, as well as their endurance to run long distances without stopping, to overpower the Persian troops. The Greeks allied with Sparta who helped them tremendously at the pass of Thermopylae. Three hundred Spartans and other soldiers blocked the forces of Xerxes I for several days at Thermopylae. At the time, Themistocles was the Athenian leader who was strategically innovative and possessed very good understanding of naval power. Using he skills, he tricked Xerxes into pursuing and fighting the Greeks’ navy in the narrow channel of Salamis. The triremes, Greeks’ warships,

In 491 BC King Dareios of Persia sent roughly 25,000 soldiers to key states of Greece (Brown, 1). King Dareios’s was looking to just gain a foothold in Greece so that he could soon send a lot more troops and supplies there. Naxos was the first place that the Persians took over. Luckily, the people of Naxos quickly fled out of their city unharmed when they realized that the Persians were coming.