The Persian Wars, also known as Greco-Persian Wars, were a series of two battles. Both wars were led by two separate kings, King Darius (550-486 B.C.) and his son, King Xerxes I (519- 465 B.C.). Due to both different rulers the war was considered to be in two stages, involving the same people against each other but much different tribulations- but yet still had the same victors.
How did the Persian Wars begin, well it began after the Ionian Revolt. The Revolt began due to too many battles before that were between the Atheians, Erectrians, and the Ionians. The Persians, which by this time were now led by King Darius, were outrages that the Athenians and Eretrians made treaties and agreements with Ionians. Reason being because the Athenians
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They were outnumbered in the battle has the Persians lost over 200 ships.
Then in the land battle at Plataea in 479 BC, the spartan-led army defeated the Persian Army. The Persians were driven from Greece. Athens came up with a plan that included the naval victory of Salamis, which was the decisive victory in the war, the Athenians could rightly be said to have saved all of Greece from Persian domination. In the last joint campaign by Sparta and Athens the strategically important city of Byzantium is liberated from Persian rule. Representatives from both athens and other Aegan aty-states met in Delos to form a coalition, that was later known as the Delian League. The Delian Legue was formed for mutual defense, but it was also made to liberate the Greek Cities of Lonia from the Persian rule. A couple of years the Athenian General Cimon wins a great victory over the Persians at the mouth of the Eurymedon River, in southwest Turkey. Herodotus, known as the “father of history; wrote his accounts of the Greco-Persian wars from a vantage point in Asia Minor in 460 BC. it is now 455 BC and the Greeks suffer a major reverse, when their fleet is trapped in the Nile and destroyed by the Persians. The Athenians mount successful attacks on the Persian forces occupying the Greek Island of Cyprus. 448 BC, in the peace of Kallias the Persians acknowledge the independence of Greek Lonia, and come to an agreement to not bring their fleet into the
Sparta was not going to let itself being conquered or their freedom being taken away. Some battles that Spartans were known for were Thermopylae and Plataea in the 5th century BC. The battle of Thermopylae was the first battle between the Persians and the Greeks; the Persian army was vast compared to the small Greek and Spartan armies. Persian King Xerxes had already the Thessalains in the Persian side but the rest of the Greek city-states banded together and put Sparta in charge of the Greek army. The Greeks had to defend a narrow pass that could lead the Persians into Greece from the North, this pass was called Thermopylae.
The war lasted from 1095 bc to 1204 bc. Two religions fight for land, money and power. This leaves two questions to people. Why did these religions hate each other so much? They hated each other so much because of their difference of religion and gods.
Being alive to witness the events that occurred in and around fifth century B. C. E. Greece meant that Thucydides could not help but write down his experiences. The Athenians of Greece and the people of the Persian Empire were constantly at odds with each other, and these differences eventually led to the Peloponnesian war. This war lasted from 431-404 B.C.E. and began an era of conflict between the two peoples (Bulliet). This power struggle not only inflated the ego of the Athenians, but created many negative viewpoints of the Persians. Thucydides, being an Athenian, was therefore extremely biased against the Persians.
In the years leading up to the war between the Persian Wars, the Persian Empire had rapidly expanded across the Mediterranean. Under the King Darius the Great, the vast Persian Empire experienced a number of revolts from the peoples they had subjugated. One of the rebelling regions was Ionia, a place on the coast of Anatolia. Ionia was originally settled by the Greeks, and when the Ionian Rebellion began, the Greek city-state of Athens offered some assistance to the rebels. The Persian Empire, with its massive army, soon put down the Ionian rebellion.
This is because Athens were better at commanding a successful naval battle, in a way the Spartans never could. Without Themistocles persuasion in his speech, echoing the words of Miltiades from the Battle of Marathon, ‘This is your chance to save Greece’, they would not have been able to afford the ‘heavy ships’ that worked as battering rams against the Persians lighter ships. Therefore, the Spartans do not deserve as much credit as the Athenians as the Athenians could still have won the battle of Salamis without Spartan aid. However, Herodotus claims that in Themistocles speech ot the allies, he states, ‘their land forces will keep pace with the fleet’. This acknowledges the fact that Themistocles, and in turn Athens, knew that this would not be the end of the battle.
As a world-renowned Athenian historian and general, Thucydides famed history The Peloponnesian War recounts some of Athens’ and other Greeks’ most telling moments world powers. Thucydides, unlike his predecessor Herodotus, approaches his history with a generally detached and serious tone, yet his opinion does shine through his writing at times. Perhaps, the Athenians’ Sicilian Expedition (415 BCE- 413 BCE) sections in the histories features the most of Thucydides’ opinion on a particular subject sneaking into the text. The Sicilian Expedition began with Athens’ distant Sicilian allies seeking help from Athens for civil strife, and Athens eventually agreed to assist and sent numerous ships and troops under the command of Nicias, Alcibiades,
The Persian empire was established by Cyrus the Great. Cyrus the Great controlled areas from Asia Minor to India up until his death in 530 b.c. At the time the Achaemenid Empire, in which he founded, was the largest empire in the world. The Persian Empire lasted from 539 b.c., to 330 b.c. While he was ruling the Persian Empire, he conquered most of Southwest Asia and much of Central Asia as well.
When we think of the two large and power empires that experienced many interesting and salient occurrences, they are going to be the Persian Empire and the Roman Empire. The Persian Empire and the Roman Empire ended up with some noticeable similarities that were their tolerance to other people’s beliefs and their regional governments. First of all, because of their expansions, they were both very multicultural, and the two empires confronted a large numbers of diversity of ethnicities, cultures, and religions.
Darius the First, ruled the Persian Kingdom located in modern day Iran for a period of 35years (522 BCE- 486 BCE.) Upon the early years of his reign as king, Darius successfully expanded the size of his newly acquired kingdom, which ranged from Mesopotamia in the west to India in the east. Darius the First, is credited with the creation of history’s first empire. According to ancient historians, Darius the First became Darius the Great for having led the largest recorded empire in Persian history.
These intellectual changes led to a political tension by harsh treatment of its own allies and economic sanctions against Sparta’s allies (Hunt 90). Athenians started to connect philosophical ideas to a nature of justice that influenced the perception of its foreign policy in general. The second fault from Athens’ that eventually became the reason of a beginning of the Peloponnesian War was a rejecting the ultimatum from Sparta. Sparta was alarmed by Athens’ rapid growing and started to get complaining from Corinth and Megara, crucial Spartan allies. Sparta’s leaders therefore gave Athens an ultimatum- stop mistreating our allies.
By showing that both the Greeks and Persians were obsessed with revenge, which often lead to further conflict, Herodotus suggests that the Greco-Persian Wars would continue for decades after the Greeks won the invasion. The Siege of Sestos shows the Greek’s desire to be as powerful and dominant as the Persians once were through striving to conquer all territory that had previously been owned by the Persians. Herodotus includes this digression at the end of his narrative to connote that because the Athenians were now as powerful as the Persians were in the beginning of Histories, they would eventually fall, similar to the way the Persians did in the narrative. Therefore, Herodotus can end his narrative with the first book because he implies the outcome and continuation of the next thirty years of Greco-Persian
At the beginning of the battle, the Greeks fought in a phalanx formation at the narrowest part of the pass. Persian forces were unable to defeat the Greeks for two days, but Ephialtes alerted Xerxes to the mountain path which led behind the Greek army. When Leonidas heard, he sent most of the allies to retreat, in order to save as many lives as possible for the continuation of the war. Leonidas and the remaining army inflicted further heavy losses on the Persians, but eventually they all perished. Due to Leonidas, the Persians were delayed, which therefore allowed sufficient time for the Athenians to flee Athens.
After the formation of the Hellenic League which successfully repelled Persia from Greece, the alliance broke up into two major forces. Thucydides claims “at the head of the one stood Athens, at the head of the other Lacedaemon, one the first naval, the other the first military power in Hellas.” (1.18) Athens and allies became the Delian League, which continued fighting in Asia Minor in order to conquer and liberate Persian controlled Greek states, and Sparta and allies formed the Peloponnesian League. However, once peace had been established with Persia in 449, the Delian League was reformed and Athens held hegemony over the allies and utilized them as tribute paying subjects.
This series of wars started for various reasons including religious, dynastic, territorial, and commercial rivalries. Another fundamental war that happened in this time was the Safavid and Ottoman war and it was the last of a series of conflicts and wars that have been fought between the Ottoman Empire (Turkey today) and Safavid Persia (Iran
Primary Source Analysis: The History of Herodotus; Book I: Clio The Histories, by Herodotus, is a detailed account of the aggression and later violence between the Greeks and Persians, and was the first ever written record of a historical event. It was due to its name and example that history has even been continuously recorded, and how Herodotus earned his nickname “The Father of History”. Because of it was separated into nine books, each named after one of the nine Muses, the focus of this analysis will be of Book I, Clio, which tells the beginning of the transgressions between the Greeks and the Persians.