Ancient Wars

Athens.

Marathon was a plain, not a tiny seaport town.

Firstly by conquering Messenia and reducing its population to serfdom, thus providing an economic base which allowed Spartans to concentrate on military training and become a strong military power.

Secondly, from that base by defeating their rivals, persuading most to become allies, and using that power bloc, to neutralise the remainder.

The Battle of Thermopylae ~ see related link below for additional information .

This website says it all: http://www.unrv.com/military/legion.php

The Hellenistic kingdoms

The Carthaginians were Phoenicians - look at today's Lebanese and you will have a good idea.

The pre-history ones are uncertain - following original nomads in perhaps 10,000 BCE, other groups moved in. These left no written record and it is unsafe to describe them as Celts, as that represents a culture (including language from which Gaelic, Welsh, Scots originates). So the waves of invaders/settlers is subject to speculation, linked to the artefacts they have left.

Julius Caesar invaded in 55-54 BCE, imposed tribute and ended the Britons supporting their cousins in Gaul against Rome. He left them to self-rule.

The Romans under Claudius took possession of England in the 1st Century CE, leaving at the beginning of the 5th Century CE as the western Roman Empire was disintegrating.

The Romanisd kings left in control used Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes as mercenaries. These tribes then took control.

These were followed by the Norsemen who raided and then occupied large areas, principally in the east.

Further Norse invasions culminated with William (a Norseman = Norman) and there were spasmodic attempts threatened by France, Spain (Armada), France again (Napoleon) and Germany (Hitler).

The attack on Athens in 490 BCE was by the sea road, landing at Marathon where the army was defeated and reembarked.

The capture of Athens in 480 BCE was by the coastal road which roughly followed today's Highway 1.

According to most historians, Marius died of natural causes in 86 BCE. Arguments to the counter however involve precedence. Like Gaius Marius, both Gaius Gracchus and his brother Tiberius Gracchus supported land reforms that sought to redistribute land holdings (at that time, the only commodity that held any sustained economic value and thus wealth) among the landless and poor, especially to the common legionaries that fought during the Punic Wars and the later wars against the Germanic tribes. Tiberius was murdered by the chief priest of the Roman Senate (133 BCE) and his brother was killed in 121 BCE by order of the Senate. Gaius Marius' death occurred in 86 BCE, right in the middle of civil war. Some argue he may have been poisoned while he occupied the city of Rome to make it look like a natural death. But lack of evidence states that no, Marius was not murdered.

They were open borders which anyone could cross unless opposed by superior force. Like any border. They were also long - from the Rhine-Danube across Europe, through Asia Minor, the Middle East and along all of North Africa.

This is a rarher big ask requiring more soldiers than Rome could possibly maintain. Force had to be supplemented by diplomacy where this could work. The emperors from Augustus onwards used both, but as the centuries wore on, the masses of peoples moving across from the east overwhelmed the defences.

He has not influenced the world. He was involved in a small part of the history of a small part of the world.

The major effect was that the Athenian Empire was destroyed and Sparta became the dominant city-state in Greece, until Sparta was defeated by Thebes.

They were different - one was Persia versus a coalition of Greek city-states; the other was Greek city-states versus Greek city-states.

Northwest Europe was home to the Celtic tribes during the early Roman period. Julius Caesar conquered the Celtic tribe called the Gauls in what is now France. Before Roman power developed, the Gauls were expanding in Europe, extending there territory to central Turkey, where they were called the Galatians.

Later Romans conquered the southern part of Great Britain, while German tribes moved into eastern, central, and then western Europe. During most of the rest of the western Empire, the Romans were fighting the Germans, often using German mercenaries. German tribes called Angles and Saxons conquered southern Great Britain, driving a tribe called the Bretons from England to the part of France now called Brittany.

A Germanic tribe called the Franks settled in northwestern Europe and became the power in the area as Roman power faded.

Darius I in 490 BC, and his son Xerxes in 480 BC.

Athens had determined to evacuate its people to cities in the Peloponnese for security, as they could not defend it against a Persian land and sea invasion. It decided to put all of it's effort in helping oppose the Persians at sea. It embarked its people of military age on its 180 warships and joined the Greek fleet in the Strait of Artemesion while a small land force of a dozen other cities held the nearby pass at Thermopylai.

The Greek plan was, by holding the pass, they would force the Persians to try to turn it with their navy, and the Greek fleet would engage and destroy the Persian fleet. If this could be achieved, the Persian fleet could no longer threaten the Greek cities with amphibious attack, and the Greek cities of the south could send out their armies, which were being kept at home to defend their cities against such a seaborne attack, to concentrate against the Persian army. And the lack of supplies sent by Persia to support its army in Greece would force a withdrawal.

The pass at Thermopylai was held for three days and on each day a sea battle was fought. The Greek fleet lost and retired to Salamis to try again there. The small force at Thermopylai, its mission completed, was withdrawn. The Spartan and Thespian contingents remained behind to cover their withdrawal and were lost.

So the battle of Thermopylai supported the Greek fleet which included the major Athenian component, rather than the fleet supporting Thermopylai. The sea battle was then refought at Salamis, near the deserted city of Athens, and the Greek fleet won this time.

The Persians had to send half their army home as they could not get enough food in such a poor country as Greece, and could no longer supply them by sea convoys now that the Greeks controlled the sea. The remainder of the Persian army was defeated the following spring at Plataia when the Greek cities sent out their armies, secure in the knowledge that the Persian fleet could no longer swoop on their home cities.

No, they did not have guns yet. [You don't need guns to have cavalry in a pre-gunpowder era. All you need are horses and whatever military weaponry was available.] Chariots were used by the Egyptians and Sumerians, but the Hittites were the first to breed a horse large enough for a soldier to ride. Because the terrain of Greece was not conducive to large-scale cavalry operations, Greek cavalry were used mostly for scouting and skirmishing. Their Macedonian cousins to the North where the terrain was more level put a greater emphasis on cavalry. At the Battle of Chaeronea, a 16-year old Macedonian prince named Alexander and the Companion Cavalry were instrumental in defeating the Greeks led by the city-state of Thebes. Afterward, Alexander became king and defeated the Persian Army four times and the Indian Army once to carve the greatest empire the world had yet seen. Each time, he personally led the Companions which were the best heavy cavalry in the world at that time, while the general Parmenio led the Greco-Macedonian infantry phalanx. [If anyone is interested, you don't need guns to have artillery either. The Greeks had missile-launcing devices called catapaults. Greek infantry were armed with spears, swords, bows, slings, and javelins, but the principle is the same as modern infantry armed with guns. The Macedonian Companion Cavalry which united Greece and invaded Persia was considered heavy cavalry. After their contact with Persia and India, some Greek armies used war elephants as ultra-heavy cavalry.

221-218 BCE.

It wasn't. But it still was valuable in a sense because salt provided the best-known food preservative at the time, especially for meat, allowing there was no refrigeration.

It is widely, though incorrectly, believed that troops in the Roman army were paid in salt. Even widely-respected historical works repeat this error.

The ancient Romans did, and believe it or not, some aqueducts are still in use today.

Ancient Hawaiians had many weapons, but they did not use bows because they used it only for hunting. Some weapons used were knives made of bone, wood, or rock.

We dont know the day - some time in our calendar August-September 490 BCE during their month of Hekatombeion.

Rome was a city-state. The rest was its empire, so the countries which Rome invaded were those which it incorporated into its empire in Western Europe and around the Mediterranean Sea.