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
In early fifth century BC Greece, the Greeks consistently suffered from the threat of being conquered by the Persian Empire. Between the years 500-479 BC, the Greeks and the Persians fought two wars. Although the Persian power vastly surpassed the Greeks, the Greeks unexpectedly triumphed. In this Goliath versus David scenario, the Greeks as the underdog, defeated the Persians due to their heroic action, divine support, and Greek unity. The threat of the Persian Empire's expansion into Greece and the imminent possibility that they would lose their freedom and become subservient to the Persians, so horrified the Greeks that they united together and risked their lives in order to preserve the one thing they all shared in common, their
There are times in history that something will happen and it will defy all logic. It was one of those times when a few Greek city/states joined together and defeated the invasion force of the massive Persian Empire. The Greeks were able to win the Greco-Persian War because of their naval victories over the Persians, a few key strategic victories on land, as well as the cause for which they were fighting. The naval victories were the most important contribution to the overall success against the Persians. The Persian fleet was protecting the land forces from being outflanked and after they were defeated the longer had that protection. While the Greeks had very few overall victories in battle they
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.
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
The Role of Themistocles in the Greek Defeat of the Persians in 480 - 479 BC.
After the death of Darius, his son Xerxes was persuaded by his overconfident advisor Mardonius to attack the Greeks, and in doing so, Mardonius exaggerated Greek weaknesses and character. Even when Damaratus repeatedly told Xerxes that the Spartans were the bravest and best fighters of Greece, Xerxes still mocked them for their appearance and actions. "For four whole days he suffered to go by, expecting that the Greeks would run away." (Herodotus)
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).
The second invasion of Greece came at the Battle of Thermopylae and Artemesium under King Xerxes, the son of King Darius. Thermopylae was the gateway to central Greece and was chosen as the desired battleground
The Persians wanted to conquer the Greeks after the Greeks were allies to Aristogoras. Darius, the king of Persia, started to send agents to determine any potential allies in the Greek city-states. They found Argos and supplied the with men and money to get the job done. They failed as Spartans sliced and diced every soldier, as shown in the movie “300.” Spartans always came out on top due to their aggressive and “perfect” military. Athens had their entire fleet destroyed and were controlled by Sparta from there on
After King Darius died, his son, King Xerxes, organized another attack on Greece. Xerxes put together a huge army of more than 180,000 soldiers. To get his army to Greece, Xerxes chose to cross the Hellespont, a narrow sea channel between Europe and Asia. There he made two bridges by roping hundreds of boats together, with wooden boards across their bows. Then he walked his army his army across the channel into Europe. In 480 B.C.E. Xerxes marched west from the Hellespont and then south. Several Greek city-states were overwhelmed. Athens and Sparta decided to work together to fight the enemy. The Athenian navy would try to stop the Persian navy. Meanwhile the Spartan king, Leonidas, would try to stop the Persian army. Leonidas had only 6,000
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.
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 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 Persian Empire was the most powerful and aggressive power in the eastern Mediterranean at the time.” (Many Europes; pg 51). Before expanding the land, The Persian Empire had land that expanded west of Asia and included Egypt. With the defeat of the Assyrians Empire around 550 BCE with the leadership of King Cyrus, this gave them the name of the Persian Empire. That’s when the Empire began to expand its land and power with overtaking many different city-sates, like Lydians, Mesopotamians, and Babylonians, and incorporating them into the Persian Empire. It wasn’t until King Darius, who ruled from 521 BCE to 485 BCE, started to rule that the invasions were directed to the Greece. Now many of the Greeks thought that the Persian Empire was different and that was for a good reason. Not only did the empire have a