What role did Athens play in the Persian War and Peloponnesian War?

Answer 1

First, in 498 BCE during the Ionian Revolt of cities within the Persian Empire, Athens sent across a force which became involved in the burning of the Persian provincial capital of Sardis, which attracted a Persian punitive expedition against it in 490 BCE, repelled at Marathon.

Athens was an early target in the Persian invasion of peninsular Greece a decade later. Exposed to immediate attack, it sent its population to refuge in the Peloponnesian cities and embarked its forces into its ships and fought at sea at Artemesion and Salamis. When the sea war was won, its soldiers joined the land forces for the land battles the following year at Plataia and Mykale.

After the invasion was repelled, Athens led the Delian League to harrass the Persians in Asia Minor and the Islands, for thirty years.

Callias, an Athenian negotiated a peace in 449 BCE which gave portection to the Greek city-states in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Answer 2

In the Persian War it intervened in the Ionian Revolt, burning down the provincial capital of Sardis and so drawing Persian attention on the Greek city-states of mainland Greece which were outside the Persian Empire.

Persia then sent a punitive expedition against Eretria and Athens in retaliation; Athens defeated it at Marathon.

Persia then mounted a full scale invasion of mainland Greece in which Athens was part of the defensive force which was defeated at Artemesion, then repelled the Persians at Salamis, Plataia and Mykale.

Athens then led the Delian of a couple of hundred city-states around the Aegean Sea, which defeated the Persians at several battles, most decisively at Eurymedon and Cyprus, at which stage Persia gave up trying to impose peace on the Greeks and left them to their usual fighting amongst themselves.

Athens then converted the anti-Persian league into an empire of its own and for a period lived well on the proceeds. By using part of the proceeds to maintain a strong fleet, it converted the league into an empire of its own, and used the power to meddle in the affairs of cities outside its empire. This brought it into confrontation with the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League, and the ensuing 27-year war devastated the Greek world.

Athens eventually lost, after Persia intervened on the side of the Peloponnesians, and was stripped of its empire, becoming thereafter a second rate power, and no longer able to afford the high lifestyle which its empire had provided for it.

Answer 3

For the first half, it provided the strongest naval contingent and in the land battles, the second strongest army contingent. In the last 30 years, it led the Delian League in keeping the liberated Asia Minor Greek city-states free of Persian reassertion of control.

Answer 4

It intervened in the Ionian revolt against Persia and invoked retaliation.