In the 5th century BCE Greek city-states were most often battling one another for land, resources, prestige, and power. When threatened by King Darius the Great and the mighty Persian Empire in 490 BCE, however, they banded together to take on the most powerful army the world had ever seen, and so began the Greco-Persian Wars, a series of battles that stretched over the course of decades.
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The Persian Wars represent one of those truly pivotal moments in History when the past and the future collide. Persia was symbolic of the old ways — a world inhabited by priests and god-kings. Theirs was a world where priests stood guard over knowledge and emperors treated even their highest subjects as slaves. The Greeks symbolized all that was new. They had recently cast off their own god-kings and were just beginning to test a limited concept of political freedom, democracy. At the same time, they were innovating in art, literature and religion, and their philosophies offered new ways to understand the world, unfettered by priestly tradition.
If the underdog Greeks had not been victorious in the Greco-Persian Wars, with the rest of Europe in its sights, Persia might have easily swept past Greece and easily dominated an emerging Latin culture in a very young Rome. Had that happened, our cultural roots, the things we value, indeed, the history we celebrate would be very, very different. Instead, Greek victory led to the "classical age" in Greece, a time that saw advances in art, literature, philosophy, and technology and, for the time, unmatched Greek prosperity. While the Greco-Persian Wars lasted decades and consisted of dozens of battles, for this lesson you will examine the strategies and outcomes of three of the most important contests: Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis.
Why did Persia invade Greece?
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The Battle at Marathon: Persia was a great and huge empire, led by a powerful king and controlled by a highly organized government. In 500 BCE, the Persian Empire led by Darius the Great dominated Greece and everyone else with their size, wealth, and military might. Darius' command stretched from the Mediterranean Sea all the way to the Indus River in Pakistan. At that time, the Greek city-states were not united, and they were tiny compared to the size and population of the vast Persian Empire. Athens, the largest of the Greek city-states only had about 200,000 people living in it.
In 499 BCE, several cities on the coast of modern-day Turkey, cities that had been founded by the Greeks, rebelled against their Persian rulers. Their rebellion is known as the Ionian revolt. Athens sent ships and supplies to help the cities. Even though the Athenian aid did nothing to save the cities, the action made the Persian emperor, Darius, very angry. He decided to teach the Greeks a lesson. In anger Darius gathered together his army and navy and invaded Greece. His sights were set on nothing less than conquest. This set the stage for the battle of Marathon.
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In 490 BCE, Darius the Great, the Persian Emperor pictured at left, brought 600 ships and 20,000 infantry to invade Greece. Because it was big enough to allow his cavalry and their horses room to maneuver, Darius landed his army on the plain of Marathon, up the coast from Athens. At Marathon Darius prepared his attack.
In the hills overlooking Marathon, the Greek army waited and wondered how to handle the Persian army massing on the beaches below. The Greeks knew that if they did not defeat Darius the Persians would not stop fighting until they had conquered all of Greece. Badly outnumbered, Greek commanders in the hills above Marathon sent a messenger named Phidipedes to Sparta to ask for Spartan aid. As the Greeks gathered their army together, they received some disappointing news. The Spartans were not coming. The Spartans were in the midst of a religious holiday that they would not disrupt. (The gods would be angry.)