Persian Wars

The Persian War was 499-449 BCE. It comprised several phases, not the erroneous idea peddled by some today.

It began with the Ionian Revolt in western Asia Minor 499-493 BCE.

This was followed by the Persian punitive expedition against Eretria and Athens 490 BCE.

Then followed the invasion of mainland Greece 480-479 BCE.

Then followed sporadic battles with the Delian League 478-450 BCE.

It was endedby the Peace of Callias 449 BCE.

Where in this are the First, Second etc Persian Wars?

The numbers of ships and troops at the crucial battles varied, but by and large were similar.

The Greeks won because the enployed superior strategy and tactics, boosted by their defending their own cities, as opposed to the invading Persians being a mercenary amy and their navy was a mix of Greeks, Phoenicians and Egyptians who had no vested interest in the outcome.

Persia had included a couple of hundred Greek city-states in its province in Asia Minor. The cities were under local Greek government with a Persian provincial governor as was usual throughout the Empire.

These city-states were colonised by the cities in mainland Greece, and these mother-cities often interfered on the side of the daughter cities.

When the cities revolted from 499 BCE Athens and Eretria sent an expedition to help Miletus and overdid it by burning down the Persian provincial capital of Sardis. The Persian king Darius I resolved to punish them and instal a friendly government to keep them under control, and sent an expedition in 490 BCE which captured and enslaved Eretria, but failed against Athens at the battle of Marathon.

The Persian king realised that to stop this interference in his empire he would have to bring all of mainland Greece into his empire, creating an ethnic frontier. He died before he could bring this to fruition but his son Xerxes I took up the task and sent a combined naval and military force to Greece in 480 BCE, first paving the way by coercing and bribing the states of northern Greece to join him.

The invasion failed, turned back at the naval Battle of Salamis and the land battles of Plataia and Mycale. The war went on until 449 BCE when a peace was arranged.

Later in the war Athens assumed leadership of an anti-Persian coalition of a couple of hundred Greek cities we call the Delian League. When peace was made with the Persian Empire, Athens converted this League into an empire of its own, and used it's funds for it's own benefit.

With this strength behind it, it began to impose itself on other cities outside its empire, which brought it into war with the Peloponnesian League led by it's ex-ally Sparta. The result was a 27-year war which devastated the Greek world which Athens lost and was stripped of its empire. Sporadic fighting between the Greek cities continued which gave Macedonia the opportunity to dominate a weakened Greece.

The Greek victories in Persian Wars were important because the Greeks were allowed to keep their city-states, as well as defeat a big army with such a little one. Therefore it also made the Greeks the "better" country.

The Persian war was a series of battles fought between Greece and Persia. Such as Battle of Thermopylae, Battle of Marathon and Battle of Salamis. Though both sides suffered heavy losses to their armies, Greece won the battle. They did this in the battle of Salamis. The kept retreated to the strait of Salamis and the Persians kept advancing. They did not know how to navigate in the waters and thus Greece sunk around 200 ships of the Persians and they surrendered. The Greeks had won a lengthy battle and this also led to the making of the Delian League.

A lot of soldiers and civilians and families were killed and injured, starved, dislocated, etc. Usual thing about wars.

The Persian Empire versus varying combinations of Greek city-states.

Loss of the Persian War stopped Persian expansion into the Greek world. The Peloponnesian War so weakened the Greek world that it became an easy target for takeover by Macedonia, which was then able to harness the combined Macedonian-Greek forces to takeover the Persian Empire.

The Persians began with bribery and so often faced a divided enemy. They used their infantry as a base, and their superior cavalry to outflank and surround the Greek infantry. They used their navy to threaten the Greek cities so that they would keep their armies at home protecting them, and not come out an unite, leaving the cities open to defeat one by one.

The Greeks countered by forming alliances of city-states and concentrating first on destroying the Persian navy, which removed the threat to the cities and allowed their armies to assemble, and also left the Persians without the sea supply line on which they relied.

There was no Spartan-Persian War, unless you are talking about Agesilaus' efforts in Asia Minor during the 390s BCE. He didn't defeat them and they didn't defeat him. He was recalled with his forces for urgent business at home. If you are talking about Thermopylai, The Persians invaded mainland Greece. The combined Greek fleet defeated the combined Persian fleet at Salamis in 480 BCE. The following year the combined southern Greek army defeated the combined Persian and northern Greek army at Plataia, while the combined Greek fleet defeated the remainder of the combined Persian fleet at Mykale. The Spartans were a very minor part of the Greek fleet. They were a small part of the Greek army. They were a small part of the 5,000 which defended the pass at Thermopylai. Read some of the other questions on the subject and the answers will fill in some gaps.

The anti-Persian (Delian) League which it led resented Athens continuing to levy the contributions to the League and using them to pay for the glorification of Athens (Parthenon etc) and putting half its citzens on the public payroll. They also resented Athens collecting these contributions by force using the money to pay for the Athenian navy which extorted the money from them.

The Peloponnesian League led by Sparta resented Athens using this naval power to interfere in the affairs of the cities of their League.

The Persians temporarily resented their defeat, and when the Athenian league came to war with the Peloponnesian League, eventually supplied the Peloponnesians with the money to fund a fleet to match the Athenians, resulting in Athens losing the war and being stripped of the empire it had turned the Delian League into.

1. The Ionian Revoly by the Greek city-states within his empire.

2. The intervention in that revolt by the mainland Greek city-states of Eretria and Athens which ended up burning his provincial capital of Sardis.

3. Failure of the punitive expedition he sent against the two cities at Marathon, which led him to plan to bring all peninsular Greece within his empire to keep these cities quiet.

Athens provided the main component of the war fleet which defeated the Persian fleet at Salamis, so eliminating the Persian amphibious threat to the Greek cities and allowing them to concentrate a land army at Plataia the following year to defeat the Persian army and its Greek allies. It also exposed the Persian sea supply fleet, which forced Xerxes to take half his army home before the crucial battle. Sparta provided only a few ships, its principal contribution was leadership, and at the land battle of Plataia, perhaps the most effective component of the Greek land force.

Athens.

They lost a good amount of people but then became very rich from winning the Persian Wars and gaining wealth. They formed with almost all the city-states except for Sparta to form the Delian League. They were a very strong area for a long time.

The Greek colonies in Asia Minor had been incorporated within the Persian Empire. They often revolted and were given assistance by their mother-cities in mainland Greece. When Miletus revolted, Athens and Eretria provided military support, and went so far as to burn down the Persian provincial capital of Sardis. A Persian punitive expedition in response to this was defeated at Marathon and in front of Athens in 490 BCE.

Persia then decided that the only way to put a final end to this was to incorporate mainland Greece in its empire, and so establish an ethnic frontier. Many of the northern Greek cities were bribed to come to the Persian side, and Persian king Xerxes invaded southern Greece in 480 BCE.

The war went on for 50 years 499-449 BCE. The figures we have are sketchy. At the battle of Plataia in 479 BCE there were about 150,000 on each side.

The Greek tyrant of the Greek city-state of Miletus in Asia Minor persuaded the Persian provincial governor the become involved in an expedition to capture the island city of Naxos The expedition was defeated, and knowing that retribution was coming, he organised a revolt by all the Greek cities in Asia Minor. This Ionian Revolt spread, encouraging the Persians to try to bring all the Greek cities under its control.

Sparta led the defence of the Greek mainland up to the defeat of the Persian in 480-479 BCE. Athens led the second phase of organising the protection of the liberated cities in Asia Minor thereafter until peace in 449 BCE.

Presumably defeating the invasion was the critical part.

When the Persians left Greece, Pericles was still a youth, so the rebuilding task fell to others.

He was a meticulous researcher (his book's name Historia means 'researches') and got most of his account right. There are some glitches such as the strength of Xerxes' army, where he gives its strength as over 2 million, which was the strength of the empire levy, not the best troops he took with him numbering 180,000. Similarly the naval strength of 1200 at the battles was realistically about 400, not much more than the 370 of the Greek fleet.

The Persians were unable to wear down the resistance of the Delian League which opposed their attempts to reimpose rule on the Greek city-states in the eastern Mediterranean. They agreed in the Peace of Callias in 449 BCE to stay away from the cities and so ended 50 years of warfare.

The combined Greek city-states of the eastern Mediterranean.