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The War Between The Persian Empire And Greek City

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In the late 500s BCE, Persia was fast becoming an expanding empire. Under the rule of King Darius, Persia conquered Lydia, which is where the Ionian Greek city-states were. After some time, the Ionians revolted and fearing the retaliation, they asked the mainland Greeks for aid. Only the Athenians responded, but even with its help, Ionia once again fell to the Persians and was left under its rule (Butler). Although Darius didn’t retaliate immediately, he knew the Athenians would need to someday pay for their treacherous act of defiance. Darius sent an envoy to the Greeks to diplomatically offer them a way to submit, but the Greeks sarcastically said no thanks and formed an alliance in defense of the Greeks against the Persians …show more content…

This left their own center weak, which made the Persians think they could win. However, the Greeks rounded behind them and fought them off in such a way that sent them running back to their ships (Cartwright). The heavier and stronger armor of the Greeks and their cleverness in strategy allowed them to prevail in this decisive battle against all odds. The battle ended with around 6,000 dead Persians and only 192 dead Greeks (Herodotus). This triumph, however, was only the beginning of a war that would continue into the next decade. Due to Egyptian revolts and the death of King Darius, it took his successor, King Xerxes, around ten years to follow up on his father’s goal of conquering Greece (Butler). In August of 480 BCE, Xerxes took a force of nearly 300,000 men to the second main battle point at Thermopylae to cross into Greece (Dutton 54). In the years it took for Xerxes to return, the Greeks were able to prepare and were able to amass a troop size of 7,000 men led by King Leonidas of Sparta (Butler). The Greeks were ready to fight Xerxes and had a chance of winning given their knowledge of the land and the only known pass through it. The Greeks fought the Persians as they funneled into the small pass for two days. Unfortunately, a traitor named Ephialtes of Trachis gave the Persians knowledge of another way of getting past them, which enabled them to surround the

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