Persian War

The Greco-Persian Wars (also often called the Persian Wars) were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire of Persia (modern day Iran) and Greek city-states that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC.

The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus the Great conquered the Greek-inhabited region of Ionia in 547 BC.

There were other civilizations besides the ancient Greeks located around the Mediterranean Sea. One was ancient Egypt. Another was one of the most powerful and well organized civilizations of the time. It was called the Persian Empire.

The Persian Empire started in Turkey and stretched all the way to the ancient Indus River Valley.

The Persians sent warriors to the Greek peninsula to attack the Greeks. They attempted three times to conquer the Greeks at the famous battles of:

• Marathon,
• Thermopylae,
• and Salamis.

First stage of war:

In the first stage of the war between Persia and Greece the Persian armies were led by king Darius I (550-486 B. C.). The Persians lost to the Athenians and their Greek allies. In the famous land battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. the Persians were defeated by the Athenians and the Plataeans. News of the victory was delivered by a messenger who ran the 26 miles from Marathon to Athens, and who died afterwards.

This is the origin of the modern Olympic event of the marathon.

The second stage of war:

The second stage of the war saw the Persians arrive on the Greek shore with perhaps as many as 2,000,000 men, between their army and navy, under the command of king Xeres I (519-465 B.C.), son of the deceased Darius I. An advance party of only 5,000 Greeks, including Spartans, Phocians and Locrians, under the command of one of the Spartan kings, Leonidas (a descendent of Hercules), held off the advancing Persian forces at the narrow pass between the cliffs and the sea at Thermopylae (the famous "Pass of Thermopylae"). They were eventually defeated after the Persian soldiers were shown a secret mountain way around the pass, although every last Spartan fought until he was killed.

The Third stage of war:

In the naval battle at Salamis in 480 B.C., which was masterminded by the Athenian general Themistocles, the Athenian navy defeated the Persian navy. Then, in the land battle at Plataea in 479 B.C., the Spartan-led army defeated the Persian army. The Persians were driven from Greece. Insofar as Athens had masterminded the naval victory of Salamis, which was the decisive victory in the war, the Athenians could rightly be said to have saved all Greece from Persian domination.