Greece in 5th Century BC - The Persian Wars

The Persian Wars

In Ionia (the modern Aegean coast of Turkey) the Greek cities, which included great centres such as Miletus and Halicarnassus, were unable to maintain their independence and came under the rule of the Persian Empire in the mid-6th century BC. In 499 BC the Greeks rose in the Ionian Revolt, and Athens and some other Greek cities went to their aid, though they were at first quickly forced to back down after defeat in 494 BC at the battle of Lade. Asia Minor returned to Persian control.

In 492 BC, the Persian generals Mardonios and Datis launched a naval assault on the Aegean islands, causing them to submit, then attempted to disembark to Marathon in 490 to take Athens. In 490 BC the Persian Great King, Darius I, having suppressed the Ionian cities, sent a fleet to punish the Greeks. 100,000 Persians landed in Attica, attempting to take Athens, but were defeated at the Battle of Marathon by a Greek army of 9000 Athenian hoplites and 1000 Plateans led by the Athenian general Miltiades. The burial mound of the Athenian dead can still be seen at Marathon. The Persian fleet continued to Athens but, seeing it garrisoned, decided not to attempt an assault.

Ten years later, in 480 BC, Darius' successor Xerxes I sent a much more powerful force of 300,000 by land, with 1207 ships in support, across a double boat-bridge over the Hellespont. This army took Thrace, before descending on Thessaly and Boetia, whilst the Persian navy skirted the coast and resupplied the ground troops. The Greek fleet, meanwhile, dashed to block cape Artemision. After being delayed by the Spartan King Leonidas I at Thermopylae, Xerxes advanced into Attica, where he captured and burned Athens. But the Athenians had evacuated the city by sea, and under Themistocles they defeated the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis. (In the peacetime, in 483, a silver-bearing seam had been discovered in the Laurion (a small mountain range close to athens), and the hundreds of talents mined there had paid for the construction of 200 warships to fight Aegina's piracy.) A year later, the Greeks, under the Spartan Pausanias, defeated the Persian army at Plataea.

The Athenian fleet then turned to chasing the Persians out of the Aegean Sea, defeating their fleet decisively in the battle of cape Mycale, and in 478 BC the Athenian fleet captured Byzantium. In the course of doing so Athens enrolled all the island states and some mainland allies into an alliance, called the Delian League because its treasury was kept on the sacred island of Delos. The Spartans, although they had taken part in the war, withdrew into isolation after it, allowing Athens to establish unchallenged naval and commercial power.