Why did the Persians not fully destroy Athens?

Answer 1

The Persians never fully destroyed Athens because, in truth, they never entered or even captured the city of Athens. If your asking why Persia never destroyed Greece- they did try. The battles of thermopylae, marathon, and plataea were just a few examples. They were crushed when the Greeks banded and united together for the first time in their history under the Spartan Banner.

A realistic view:

The Persians did capture Athens in autumn 480 BCE. They returned after wintering in northern Greece and reoccupied it in spring 479 BCE.

This was a return visit - Athens had defeated and repelled a Persian punitive expedition ten years earlier at Marathon in 490 BCE, so there was a debt still to be paid off: the Athenians had been involved in supporting a Greek revolt in Asia Minor in 498 BCE, and in the process burnt the Persian provincial capital of Sardis, including the temples and statues of their gods.

During the Persian advance 18 years after their Sardis raid and 10 years after the Marathon success, the Athenians evacuated Athens and joined the other Greek cities to fight off the invasion, as they could not defend the city. The Persians took the city, looted it and destroyed the gods in payback for the destroyed Sardis gods. They did not destroy the city as it was their aim to incorporate the Greek mainland cities into their empire, not to destroy them, so they did not engage in unnecessary destruction. They also used the houses as accommodation for their army in both 480 BCE and on their return in 479 BCE.

Interestingly, the broken Athenian statues were rediscovered by archaeologists in 1923 CE in a ravine beside the Acropolis. When the Athenians returned after the Persians withdrew, they didn't know what to do with the broken gods, so they stashed them in the ravine to wait for instructions from the gods. In time, they were forgotton and covered with debris and lay there for over two thousand years. Their discovery also shattered the idea that Greek statues were pristine marble. They were covered in gaudy paint - the Greeks lived in a riot of colour - their statues and buildings were painted reds and blues. Our buildings today with Greek-style stone facades and columns which people imagine are the same as the Greeks used are very dull compared to the originators' tastes. And the Romans copied the colours too.