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Name _____________________________ Greece was not alone in the ancient World. Egypt was flourishing. Other civilizations were developing around the Mediterranean. One of the largest and most powerful was the Persian Empire. The Persian Empire was huge. It stretched from the Mediterranean Sea all the way to the Indus River in Pakistan. The Greek Empire was tiny. It covered the small area of the Greek peninsula under the word Greece on the map above. When Persia turned her eyes on Greece, they had no doubt that the Greeks would be easy to conquer. They were so outnumbered - what chance did they have? What the Persians forgot was that the Greeks were incredible warriors. Athens had a wonderful navy, with ships that were tiny and easy to maneuver. The Spartan army was fierce. The Persians came three times, each time convinced that they could easily conquer ancient Greece. Each time, the Greeks drove them away. During the third battle, the Greek navy led was able to toss burning wood aboard the huge and heavy Persian ships. The men had to abandon ship. Those who made it to shore were greeted by the Spartan army. The Greeks took the day. The Persian threat to ancient Greece was ended. The Persian Wars: Greece's Finest Hours The Persian Wars lasted from 492 - 449 B.C. Two Giants Collide Conflict between the Greek city-states and the Persian Empire was probably inevitable. They were too big and too close together and also too ambitious to not have clashed. And in 499 B.C., they clashed. For several decades leading up to this clash, Greeks had settled in Asia Minor, on the western coast. The Persians then conquered these colonies and added them to the Empire. The Greeks living in these colonies were used to having their own government of elected officials. Athens was the birthplace of democracy. They soon revolted against the Persians; and in 499, their fellow Greeks (specifically, Athens) sent troops to support this revolt. This was the beginning of the Persian Wars. Even with Athens' help, the colonies didn't hold out long against the much larger and stronger Persian army. And when the revolt was crushed, Persian Emperor Darius wanted to punish Athens for aiding the Asia Minor colonies. A few years later, when his army was trained and ready, Darius led his troops on an invasion of Greece. They sailed to the Bay of Marathon, where one of the most famous battles of all time took place. The Battle of Marathon Athens had appealed to Sparta for reinforcements, but the messenger had returned with the message that Spartan troops wouldn't arrive for nine days because they were in the middle of religious festivals. Marathon was very close to Athens itself. Other city-states were jealous of Athens' growing power and hadn't sent troops, either. So Athens was on its own. On paper, it was a mismatch. Persian troops numbered about 100,000. Athenian troops numbered 20,000. How could Athens hope to win against such overwhelming odds? The victory was due more to surprise and discipline than anything else. The well-trained Athenian soldiers did not break formation as they suddenly charged the Persian lines. In the face of such a determined charge, Persian soldiers broke ranks and ran, and were slaughtered from behind. The Persians were expecting individual, hand-to-hand fighting. The Athenians gave them a mass, united charge. The sheer weight of the charge must have been astounding. The Persian force was large but scattered and poorly organized. The Athenian force was not intimidated by the larger numbers of their opponents. They almost literally drove their opponents into the sea. In the Battle of Marathon, the Persians counted 6,400 dead soldiers and many more captured. The Athenian dead totaled only 192. And even though the Persians still badly outnumbered the Athenians, Darius turned for home, convinced that he was beaten. Persian Wars Battle at Salamis 479 B.C. The Battle at Salamis was a victory for the Greeks against the Persians. Salamis Definition: Naval battle that ended in a decisive defeat for Persia. Greek ships were outnumbered but still won. The great naval war hero Alcibiades tricked the Persians into rushing into Salamis Bay, where their large ships proved no match for the smaller, more maneuverable Greek ships. While the Persian emperor Xerxes watched from an overlooking cliff, his fleet was virtually destroyed. The Athenian statesman Themistocles (c. 514-449 B.C.) stationed the Athenian fleet at Salamis in 479 B.C., feigned retreat, and lured the Persians into the strait. The Persians were beaten in the naval battle and retreated. Delian League Delian League (dē'lēun) [key], confederation of Greek city-states under the leadership of Athens. The name is used to designate two distinct periods of alliance, the first 478–404 B.C., the second 378–338 B.C. The first alliance was made between Athens and a number of Ionian states (chiefly maritime) for the purpose of prosecuting the war against Persia. All the members were given equal vote in a council established in the temple of Apollo at Delos, a politically neutral island, where the league's treasury was kept. The assessments to be levied on the members were originally fixed by Athens, and the fairness with which these were apportioned contributed much toward maintaining the initial enthusiasm. States contributed funds, troops, and ships to the league. After Persia suffered a decisive defeat at Eurymedon (468 B.C.), many members supported dissolution of the league. Athens, however, which had profited greatly from the league, argued that the danger from Persia was not over. When Naxos attempted to secede, Athens, taking the leadership from the assembly, forced (c.470 B.C.) Naxos to retain allegiance. Soon Thasos attempted the same maneuver and was likewise subdued (463 B.C.) by the Athenian general Cimon. The Athenians were so successful in their aims, using both force and persuasion, that by 454 B.C. the league had grown to c.140 members. An invasion by the league's enemies, Sparta and its supporters, was averted in 457 B.C., and Thebes, the traditional enemy of Athens, was subjected (456 B.C.). In 454 B.C., because of the real or pretended danger of Persian attack, the treasury was transported from Delos to the Athenian Acropolis. The league had in effect become an Athenian empire. However, its unity was not very stable, and in 446 B.C. Athens lost Boeotia. Gradually Athens lost its prestige as well as many of its alliances, and, with the Peloponnesian War (404 B.C.), the league came to an end. The Peloponnesian War Suspicious and fearful of Athenian power and wealth, the Spartans were not happy with the thirty year peace they had agreed to. The Athenians themselves had become chauvinistic and power hungry, and seemed ready to begin to reassert their power on the mainland of Greece. In 431, spurred on by a relatively trivial event in a distant part of the Greek mainland, Sparta and Athens fell into another war which is simply called, The Peloponnesian War. The Spartans wished to fight a land war, which they were very good at. They outnumbered the Athenians two to one, odds they believed the Athenians could stand up to only for a very short time. At the outbreak of the war, then, they invaded Attica and began burning crops in order to starve the Athenians into submission. The Athenians, however, had a harbor and a powerful navy. Pericles knew that they could hold out against the Spartans for several years on the tribute money from the Empire. He also knew that he could take the war right to the doorsteps of Spartan allies, by sailing troops along the coast of Greece and landing them far from Athenian lines. Although Pericles died in the second year of the war in a plague that devastated Athens, the Athenians, nevertheless, kept to the Periclean strategy of prosecuting the war. Both sides believed that their strategy would wear down the other side and force a surrender. However, this really didn't happen. After ten years of fighting and some disastrous events among allied cities, the situation was no different than it was at the beginning of the war. Both sides had become worn down, so Sparta and Athens signed a fifty year peace called the Peace of Nicias, after the Athenian politician and general who was leading Athens at the time. Essentially similar in view and ability to Pericles, Nicias was a brilliant and cautious man who managed to pull off an effective truce. Everyone was allowed to go home, and the territorial status as it stood at the time of the peace, was allowed to remain in place. Athens kept its continental territories and allies, and Sparta got to keep all the territories it had acquired. Nicias, however, had rivals in the democratic assembly. Perhaps the most talented of these rivals was a young, brilliant follower of the philosopher Socrates named Alcibiades. With creativity, energy, and immense oratorical ability, Alicibiades in 415 BC convinced the Athenians to attack the Greek city-states on the island of Sicily and bring them under the glove of the Athenian Empire. Although the expedition was in part under the leadership of Nicias, it soon turned into a disaster. In 413 BC, the entire army was defeated and captured and a large part of the great, powerful fleet of the Athenians was destroyed in the harbor of Syracuse. Athenian power since the Persian Wars had rested solely on the power of the navy; the disastrous Sicilian expedition left Athens almost completely powerless. Knowing a good thing when they saw it, the Spartans soon attacked Athens and—worse news piled on top of bad news—they were soon joined by the Persians who were still smarting from the war Athens had so vigorously prosecuted in the first half of the fifth century. For awhile the Athenians hung on, even enjoying tremendous victories when the war was shifed to the Aegean Sea. But in 405, the rest of their navy was destroyed in a surprise attack, and by the next year the situation was hopeless. In 404 BC, the Athenians surrendered totally to the Spartans, who tore down the walls of the city, barred them from ever having a navy, and installed their own oligarchic government, the Thirty. The Age of Athens, the Age of Pericles, the Classical Age, the Athenian Empire, had come to an end. .