It took two days to hold them off
Greeks could have attacked before the Persians but a lot of the evidence points to the Persians attacking first, the Persians were most likely to have fought when they got off their boats and when they encountered in the valley, but, the Greeks were to have probably ran away into the valley than to have been chased.
The Greeks sank half the Persian fleet off the coast of Salamis.
They adopted a superior strategy of first defeating the Persian navy, and cutting off their sea supply line. The Persians had to send half their army home for the winter, and the Greeks united the city-state armies to defeat the depleted Persian army.
The Spartans combined with the other southern Greek states to repel a Persian invasion designed to incorporate mainland Greece within the Persian empire in 480-479 BCE.It is often called today the Persian War, however the Greeks fought the Persians off and on over two hundred years.
The sea battle which it was designed to precipitate, having failed, the reason for holding the land pass ceased. The Spartan commander sent his supporting citiy contingents off to seek the protection of friendly city walls, and to give them a clean break, continued to hold the pass with his 300-strong badoguard and 2,000 light infantry. They died in securing the safety of their allies.The Spartan sacrifice of The Three Hundred held up the Persian advance long enough for the various city-states to coalesce a unified resistance. The Athenian Fleet destroyed the Persian Fleet at Salamis, forcing the Persians to retreat overland, subjected to guerrilla raids until all the armies, under Spartan leadership, joined together to crush the Persians at Plataea.
The battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC.
The Greeks saw the Persians off, so nothing changed.
My guess is that you're talking about the Battle of Thermopylae. The Persians lost about 20,000 men, but there weren't "300 Greeks" ... there were 300 Spartans, in a mixed force totaling around 7,000 Greeks in all. They managed to hold off the Persian army for around a week, including two days of actual fighting.When the (much larger) Persian army found a way around the narrow pass to outflank the Greeks, the Spartan general Leonidas and a force of about 300 Spartans (and around 1200 other Greeks from various cities) remained to hold off the Persians while the bulk of the Greek force escaped to warn the cities of Greece that the Persians had taken the pass and were on their way. This rear guard was essentially annihilated on the third day of fighting. All told, the Greeks lost between 2,000 and 4,000 men in the battle.
Greeks could have attacked before the Persians but a lot of the evidence points to the Persians attacking first, the Persians were most likely to have fought when they got off their boats and when they encountered in the valley, but, the Greeks were to have probably ran away into the valley than to have been chased.
The Spartans, alongside other Greeks were able to hold the Persians by fighting in the narrow pass of Thermopylae with the sea on one side and cliffs on the other. They were a…
The Greeks sank half the Persian fleet off the coast of Salamis.
There was no city of Marathon. It was a plain 26 miles north of Athens.
Two days. The third day of the battle can perhaps be counted as well, although by then the Persians had been shown a way around, the Spartans remained to block the pass at Thermopylae until they were destroyed.
They didn't change. After seeing off the Persians, they went back to their usual fighting each other.
The Persians gave up trying the stop the Greeks disrupting peace by fighting amongst themselves. Having seen off the Persians the Greek cities went back to fighting each other, engaging in devastating wars. The Persians left them to it.
The Persians wanted peace and prosperity in their empire. It included the Greek cities of Asia Minor, who were restive and were stirred up and supported by Greek cities of mainland Greece. The Persians concluded that the only way to get peace was to incorporate the mainland Greek cities in their empire and appoint Greek tyrants to each city to keep them quiet. Some of the cities joined the Persians, the southern city-states resisted, putting aside temporarily their usual fighting between themselves and spent 50 years warding off the Persian Empire. The Persians became tired of this and agreed to stay out of Greece, and left the Greek cities to go back to their usual fighting amongst each other. Athens kept hold of the Greek cities which had supported them in the defence against the Persian Empire and converted them into an empire of its own.
The pass at Thermopylae in 480 BCE.