Greco-Persian Wars: A Visual History

The Greco-Persian Wars (499-449 BC) began with the Ionian Revolt of the Greek cities of Asia Minor against Darius I, aided by Athens and Eretria; after crushing it (Lade, 494) Darius sent a punitive expedition that was defeated by the Athenians at Marathon in 490. Xerxes' vast invasion of 480 by land and sea forced the pass of Thermopylae, where Leonidas's 300 Spartans died, and burned Athens, but Themistocles' fleet destroyed the Persian navy in the strait of Salamis; in 479 the Greek allies under Pausanias crushed Mardonius's army at Plataea and the fleet won at Mycale. Athens's Delian League carried the war to the Aegean and Egypt until the Peace of Callias around 449. The wars gave the Greeks their sense of themselves and Herodotus his subject.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

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Herodotus's numbers versus modern estimates for Xerxes' army

Timeline of the Greco-Persian Wars

1. 499 BC
   Ionian Revolt
2. 494 BC
   Lade; Miletus destroyed
3. 490 BC
   Marathon
4. 480 BC
   Thermopylae; Artemisium; Athens burned; Salamis
5. 479 BC
   Plataea; Mycale
6. 478 BC
   Delian League founded
7. 466 BC
   Eurymedon
8. 449 BC
   Peace of Callias

Ionia and Marathon

Aristagoras of Miletus led the Ionian cities in revolt in 499 and Athens sent 20 ships that helped burn Sardis; Darius reportedly had a servant remind him three times a day to 'remember the Athenians'. The revolt was crushed at Lade and Miletus was destroyed in 494. In 490 Datis and Artaphernes sailed with perhaps 25,000 men, sacked Eretria and landed at Marathon; the 10,000 Athenians and 1,000 Plataeans under Miltiades charged at a run and killed 6,400 Persians for 192 Athenian dead. The Spartans, delayed by a festival, arrived to view the corpses.

Xerxes: Thermopylae and Salamis

Xerxes bridged the Hellespont, canalised Athos and marched in 480 with an army Herodotus put at 1.7 million (modern guesses: 100,000 to 250,000) and 1,200 ships. Leonidas with 300 Spartans and about 7,000 allies held Thermopylae for three days until Ephialtes showed the Persians the mountain path; the Spartans and Thespians stayed and died. The Greek fleet fought at Artemisium and fell back; Athens was evacuated to Salamis and burned. On about 28 September Themistocles lured the Persian fleet into the narrow strait, where the heavier triremes were rammed and some 200 sunk while Xerxes watched from a throne. He went home, leaving Mardonius.

Plataea, Mycale and the Delian League

In 479 Mardonius burned Athens again and withdrew to Boeotia; the largest Greek army ever assembled, some 40,000 hoplites under Pausanias of Sparta, defeated him at Plataea in August, killing Mardonius; the same day, tradition says, the fleet destroyed the Persian ships beached at Mycale and Ionia rose again. Athens founded the Delian League in 478 to continue the war: Cimon's victory at the Eurymedon (about 466) crushed a Persian fleet and army, an Athenian expedition to Egypt was destroyed in 454, and around 449 the Peace of Callias, whose existence is disputed, ended hostilities. Athens turned the League into an empire and Sparta into an enemy.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Achaemenid Empire (550 BC to 330 BC)
• Macedonian Empire (359 BC to 323 BC)
• Lydia (680 BC to 546 BC)
• Median Empire (678 BC to 549 BC)
• Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt (Saite period) (664 BC to 525 BC)
• Scythia (800 BC to 300 BC)

Wars of the same era and region

• Wars of Alexander the Great (335 BC to 323 BC)

8 surprising things about the Greco-Persian Wars

1. The Marathon run of 42 km commemorates the (probably legendary) messenger Pheidippides, who ran to Athens with the news and died.
2. The 300 Spartans were accompanied by about 7,000 other Greeks on the first two days, and 700 Thespians died with them on the third.
3. Xerxes had the Hellespont whipped 300 times and branded when a storm broke his first bridge.
4. The Athenians abandoned their city twice, in 480 and 479, and Themistocles' 'wooden walls' oracle was interpreted as the fleet.
5. The Serpent Column dedicated at Delphi after Plataea listing the 31 allied cities stands today in Istanbul's hippodrome.
6. Aeschylus fought at Marathon and Salamis and wrote The Persians, the oldest surviving play, about the battle from the Persian side.
7. Herodotus's Histories, the first work of history, was written to record why Greeks and barbarians fought.
8. The Persian Empire outlasted the wars by 150 years and later funded Sparta's defeat of Athens.

Sources

• Greco-Persian Wars Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Greco-Persian Wars Wikipedia
• Persian Wars World History Encyclopedia
• Tom Holland, Persian Fire (2005) Little, Brown

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