Graeco-Persian wars (540s-330s bc). The Greeks first came into conflict with the Persians in Asia Minor, as a result of the conquest of Lydia by Cyrus ‘the Great’, probably in 546 bc. Following an abortive Lydian revolt in which some of them participated, many of their towns were taken by assault, and the rest acquiesced in Persian rule.
In the early years of the 5th century bc there was a widespread rebellion from Byzantium to Caria, in which Cyprus, which had a substantial Greek population, joined. On the mainland of Asia Minor, with the advantage of ‘interior lines’ and superior numbers, the Persians were able to operate in more than one theatre at once, and to use the river valleys as a means of attack, whereas communications were more difficult for the Greeks. Five land battles are recorded, in four of which the Persians were victorious, but almost no details have survived, save that at Malene the Persian cavalry somehow played the decisive role; the one battle the Greeks managed to win was when they ambushed a Persian force at night. Meanwhile, despite a Greek victory at sea off the island, Cyprus was reconquered. The decisive Persian victory was also at sea, off Lade, which was followed by the capture of nearby Miletus, the heart of the revolt, probably in 494. Elsewhere resistance was crushed or petered out, and the Persians went on to conquer Thrace, including its Greek coastal cities, and now, if not before, to bring even Macedonia under their control.
Two mainland cities, Athens and Eretria, helped the Asiatic Greeks in the early stages of their rebellion, and this led, in 490, to the first Persian attack on Greece proper. A fleet of perhaps 600 ships, carrying possibly some 25, 000 men, including cavalry, first subdued the Cyclades, then took Carystus and Eretria, in Euboea. But when it landed its troops at Marathon, they were defeated by the Athenians with Plataean support.
The Graeco-Persian wars
(Click to enlarge)
Ten years later, in 480, the Persians were back, this time overland by way of Thrace and Macedonia, and led by King Xerxes in person. The size of his forces is a notorious problem, but his army was perhaps something like 50, 000-100, 000 strong, and his navy perhaps contained over 1, 000 warships. Resistance in Greece centred on Sparta and her Peloponnesian allies, but Athens also joined the alliance, with a scattering of other states in central Greece and nearby islands, and at first other states as far north as Thessaly were willing to fight. Following an appeal from Thessaly, a force was sent to hold the pass of Tempe. But this withdrew after a warning of the size of Xerxes' forces, and realizing that Tempe could be turned. It was then decided to hold Thermopylae, while stationing a fleet at Artemisium, some 40 miles (64 km) to the east, on the north coast of Euboea. Here for three days the Greeks more than held their own, although the losses they sustained and the fall of Thermopylae eventually compelled withdrawal.
Most of central Greece now more or less willingly went over to the enemy, but the people of Thespiae and Plataea in Boeotia took refuge in the Peloponnese, and now if not before, Attica, too, was evacuated. The Greek fleet took station at Salamis, and it was here that the first decisive encounter of the war took place, when the Persian fleet ventured into the channel between the island and the mainland, perhaps as a result of a message from the Athenian commander, Themistocles, and was badly beaten. It still possibly had more ships than the Greeks, but its morale had gone, and it now withdrew to Asia Minor, followed by Xerxes himself. Salamis certainly did not end the war, though in their euphoria the Greeks may have thought it did, making dedications for victory, and trying to decide who was to receive prizes for their part in it. But the Persian army still remained undefeated, and Xerxes probably left the bulk of his army behind, under his cousin, Mardonius.
Wintering in Thessaly, Mardonius tried by diplomatic means to woo Athens to his side, and when this failed, marched south again in late spring, compelling the re-evacuation of Attica. A second embassy, this time to Salamis, still failed to win the Athenians over, but Spartan procrastination almost succeeded where Persian diplomacy had failed, and at one point Athens actually threatened to make peace with the Persians. In the end the Spartans realized that their defences across the Isthmus would not save them if the Athenian navy passed under Persian control, and mobilized their army. Mardonius fell back to Boeotia, and it was here, just east of Plataea, that the final encounter took place, probably in August, when the largest army of hoplites ever assembled—eventually it totalled more than 38, 000—under the Spartan regent Pausanias, annihilated most of Mardonius' Asiatic troops.
In the end, the Greeks won, not by brilliant strategy or tactics, or superior training and equipment, but because, in the two battles that mattered, the Persians allowed themselves to be drawn into a kind of fighting which did not suit them. At Salamis, their numerical superiority—if they still had it—and the speed and manoeuvrability of their ships were all nullified by the narrow waters in which the battle was fought. At Plataea, when he had the enemy on the run, Mardonius blundered into a close-quarter battle which suited hoplites far better than his own more mobile, missile-armed troops.
Supposedly on the same day as Plataea, a small Greek fleet destroyed Persian ships drawn ashore at Mycale in Asia Minor, and in the following years, now under Athenian leadership, the Greeks swept the Persians from the Aegean; possibly in 468, yet another victory was won at the Eurymedon. But attempts to liberate Cyprus and Egypt failed, and between 412 and 386 the Persians largely recovered control of western Asia Minor. It was left to Alexander ‘the Great’ finally to bring the conflict to a close.
Bibliography
- Burn, A. R., Persia and the Greeks (London, 1962).
- Lazenby, J. F., The Defence of Greece (Warminster, 1993)
— John Lazenby
