The Corinthians: The First Persian War

The first battle of the Persian War, the Battle of Marathon, took place in 490 BC. King Darius sent troops to Greece which stopped at each Greek island along the way demanding "earth and water," which both literally and symbolically represented submission to the Persian empire. The Battle of Marathon exemplifies the heroic action of the Greeks. The Athenians, led by one of their ten generals, Miltiades, unflinchingly faced the Persians, an army over twice the size of theirs, and triumphed. The Athenians won the Battle of Marathon because they employed superior military strategy. There are some discrepancies, however, between different literary sources about how the Greeks fought the Battle of Marathon. For instance, Herodotus claims that the ten Athenian generals could not decide whether to go into battle. He writes that Miltiades talked the other generals into fighting. Herodotus writes that they waited for days for Miltiades to lead the army, and then they went into battle (Hdt. 6.110-111.2). According to Nancy Demand, however, Herodotus, unaware of the right of the polemarch to make all final decisions, wrote that Miltiades decided when to lead the men into battle, because the longer they delayed the battle, the better chance the Athenians had that the Spartans would make it in time to help. Regardless of any conflict between sources, the heroism of the Athenians cannot be denied. Marathon represents "the victory of a small contingent of men fighting

A large Persian contingent of about 200 ships was destroyed while on maneuver to get behind the Greek navy. More tragedy would strike the Persians when stormy weather struck and damaged their ships during the Battle of Artemisium.

Themistocles was aware that the only way to defeat the Persians was to cut of their naval power, so he devised a plan. He sent a slave to the Persians with a message that they were escaping, and the Persians sent ships to meet there escapees. The Athenian ships were prepared to face them. Their specialty in sea battles, along with the narrowness and swirls of the sea gave the Athenians an advantage. This strategy is what ultimately brought victory to the Greeks, as it left the Persians without a supply line and weakened their forces. The two events, the battle at Marathon and the battle at Salamis, showed that Athens was a great contributor to the war, both land and sea.

1) According to Thucydides, during the civil war at Corcyra a re-evaluation of values took place in the populace (3.82). Explain the nature of these re-evaluations, and the reason(s) they took place.

Herodotus’s The Histories uses the culture of different peoples as a category of historical explanation in order to explain the entire story behind the conflict between the Greeks and the Persians, though his conception and account of culture has been a topic of debate for many decades. Herodotus’ method when exploring the culture of other peoples is to compare them to the known culture, his own culture, of Greece. Through the comparison of ‘the other’ to Greece, Herodotus not only explains the culture and traditions of other countries or people, but he also affirms Greek identity by constantly comparing or relating to Greek customs in order to show the likeness or stark differences of cultures. Many scholars have, however, criticized Herodotus for doing this; naming him an ethnocentric for introducing all other peoples and cultures as inferior to his own. This essay will seek to expose whether Herodotus is an ethnocentric or a cultural relativist by exploring the ways in which Herodotus refers to ‘the other’ and the customs and culture of these people. Through the exploration of the Egyptians and the Scythians in Herodotus’s The Histories, this essay will determine that Herodotus’s conception of culture develops from a cultural relativist perspective rather than an ethnocentric point of view, where he uses his own well-known culture as a basis for explaining other cultures and customs, while respecting their difference as being of equal value in their own land, as Greek

Herodotus is the author of the first great narrative history produced in the ancient world, the History of the Persian Wars. It is a unified artistic masterpiece, with many illuminating digressions and anecdotes skillfully worked into the narrative. The Greeks referred to all other peoples as barbarians using it in the wider sense of foreigners and the Greeks cultural pride was unmistakable as Herodotus

The Role of Themistocles in the Greek Defeat of the Persians in 480 - 479 BC.

The great Athenian general Miltiades came up with a shrewd battle plan. He decided to thin out the ranks in the center of the phalanx to strengthen the wings. During the battle, the Greek wings crushed the Persian wings and forced them to retreat. At the same time, the Persians in the middle managed to break through the weakened center of the phalanx. Instead of pursuing the retreating Persian wings, the Greek wings moved backward to attack the Persians that had broken through the Greek defenses. The Greek center then turned around so that they had the Persians surrounded. The Persians were slaughtered (5). According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the Persians lost 6400 men while te Greeks lost only 192 (4).

Hence, the tactics and the paramount strategy devised by Miltiades in the Battle of Marathon as well as the unification of the Greek forces, both effectively crushed the Persian onslaught and significantly increased the confidence of the Greeks to incline themselves in a common cause if the Persians attacked again.

From 3000 BCE to 1500 CE their has been many events and people who have had an major impact on Western European civilization. The event I think had the most important affect is The Persian and Peloponnesian wars. The Persian war begun because the lonians city-states owed money to Persia and the lonians city-states were conquered by Cyrus II of Persia. The reasons for the Peloponnesian war are the democratic reforms of Cleisthenes but Sparta always denied this and Athenian control of the Delian League. Both of these wars affected Greek history.

Themistocles was responsible for the Greek victory in the Persian wars to a considerable extent. The key to Athens' strength in the 5th Century BC was in this general and statesman and therefore, as Greek victory relied so heavily on Athens, Themistocles vitally contributed to the outcome of the Persian king’s invasion of 480-479 BC. His early life reflects the character and skills developed that were responsible for these contributions. Five pivotal roles he undertook were of varying degrees responsible for Greece’s success against Xerxes. Themistocles possessed an incredible foresight

His force further had innumerable archers. It was with this in mind that the Athenians made the “fateful” decision to train 40,000 men for 200 ships in 481BCE. This force was relatively inexperienced compared to the Persian contingent, which included skilled Phoenician sailors (D.S 11.18.1). The Persians had light, fast boarding ships compared to the Greeks who had stout, strongly built ramming ships (8.10,60). This would prove critical later at the crowded straits of Salamis in 480BCE. If it were not for this fleet, the “Persian conquest of Greece would have been assured.” (7.139). If Persia had control of the sea, defeat by land would quickly have followed due to the inability of the city-states to hold a united front. The halt in city-state squabbles and the creation of the Hellenic League was “no small achievement” and was to the great disadvantage of Xerxes. This clearly was a factor in the overall demise of the campaign. The construction of the Athenian fleet, advocated by Themistocles, was a precursor to this.

Who/What: The Persian war was a war between Persia and Greece That was led by King Darius I

Thus giving them much confidence in the victory against the Greeks. However, this method ended in failure when they took the battle to sea and got slaughtered by the Greeks. Even though, before this the Persians had destroyed the Acropolis hindering the Greek’s confidence in fighting the battle. The Greeks first method however, was to run to get help from Sparta, but they said no. Without the help from Sparta at the battle of Marathon, Athens thought they were hopeless.

Though writing at different times and to different audiences, both Ignatius of Antioch and Cyprian of Carthage found their voices in addressing the topic of Church unity, among other themes. In the midst of impending or recent persecution, both Ignatius and Cyprian warned against schism and encouraged the Church to persevere in the face of confusion. Ignatius and Cyprian both treat church unity as a gift from the Holy Spirit to be preserved, and also claim that this unity is dependent on perseverance in faith, unified participation in the sacraments, and respecting the integrity of apostolic succession. Without unification of and among these three elements, both Ignatius and Cyprian resolve that true unity, and thus salvation, is unattainable.