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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.
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