The at the Battle of Marathon. This first

The at the Battle of Marathon. This first

The alliance of the Persian Empire, ruled by Cyrus the Great, was a major threat to the states of Greece. The solution of the clash between the East and the West was to create the entire future for the region. It was a question of survival for the Greeks; however, for the Persians, occupying Greece was the main focus of the plan. Nonetheless, the Persian Wars were important because the final result was the separation of Greece and the Near East. There was the first Persian war in 490 BC, but the Persians were routed.As they took on a new approach ten years later, the second Persian war unraveled.

The second Persian war was a war of much significance to European history. It was the invasion of Greece from 480 BC to 479 BC; King Xerxes I, of Persia, was determined to conquer Greece during the Greco-Persian Wars; he had an army of over 100,000 men. The invasion was an immediate call to the defeat of the first Persian war of Greece that lasted from 492 BC to 490 BC at the Battle of Marathon.

This first invasion ended ruler Darius I’s endeavor to subjugate Greece.After his death, Xerxes, his son, planned the second war and gathered an enormous navy and army. Of his many preparations, he sent delegates to spread disoriented information that was designed to erupt many areas of Greece to submit without causing a fight, if possible. In 481 BC, a year before the official invasion, he set his headquarters at Sardes in Lydia.

He compiled troops from every location of the Persian empire, had the top cavalry of the Mediterranean area armed with spear and bow, a fleet of approximately 1,200 ships, and sent envoys to Greek city-states with an exception of Athens and Sparta.The Spartans and the Athenians guided the Greek resistance; about seventy states joined the Allied effort, but most Greek cities submitted to Xerxes or did not side. From the extensive planning, he even made agreements with the Phoenician and Carthaginian cities of the Western Mediterranean to invade the Greek Western Colonies and bind Greek resources. The official invasion began in 480 BC. In the spring, the Persian army navigated through the strait of Hellespont, Turkey and, later, through Thrace, Europe and the kingdom of Macedon to Thessaly in the region of Greece.The Persians’ advancement faced an obstacle at Thermopylae by King Leonidas I’s Allied force.

At the same time, the Persian fleet faced another obstacle, once again; this time, at the straits of Artemisium. During the Battle of Thermopylae, the Allies held the Persians back for seven days before the Allies’ rearguard was confined and annihilated. The Allied fleet inevitably withstood two days at the Battle of Artemisium against the Persian fleet. Once they heard of the disaster at Thermopylae, they fled to Salamis in the Saronic Gulf.After Thermopylae, all of Attica – the capital of Greece – and Boeotia lost to the Persian army, who burnt Athens, Greece. In 481 BC, the Greeks gathered at Corinth to discuss strategies and what needed to be done to help defend Greece against awaiting Persian invasions.

The Delphic Oracle, at that time, predicted disaster for the Greeks and advised the only security for the Athenians would be a wooden wall. Therefore, the Allied army secured a narrow land bridge at the Isthmus of Corinth; this allowed protection for the Peloponnesus.Most of its people interpreted this as the wooden palisades surrounding the Acropolis, but to Themistocles, the General of Athens, this meant the Greek fleet. The Athenians did not have the power to fight on sea and land, but they were aware that fighting the Persians would strongly need an alliance of over three Greek city-states. Both sides were in favor of a naval victory, possibly altering the course of war.

However, the plan at the Isthmus of Corinth did not seem to appear as existent because it would leave the defenders available to being conquered at sea and attacked at the same time from two different sides.Unfortunately, it was decided that a group would be sent to currently hold the Persians in Thessaly. Because of the Greeks’ numbers, it would be possible only if the small passes were able to be defended. Themistocles accomplished his bait in guiding the Persians into the Straits of Salamis; many Persian ships lost to the Allied fleet. Therefore, Xerxes went to Asia and left Mardonius, his general, to complete the conquest. The following spring, the Allies gathered the largest hoplite – a citizen-soldier of the ancient Greek city-states – army at that time.The Thessalonians requested a force of of 10,000 hoplites under the command of Themistocles and Evaenetus, a Spartan.

By ship, they were transported to Hallos and, then, were marched to the Vale of Tempe. On arrival, Evaenetus concluded that too many passes at the location could not stabilize the amount of men he had. Then, they marched north to confront Mardonius, a Persian military commander. The Greek infantry proudly proved its authority where they administered a brutal defeat on the Persians, along with the killing of Mardonius, at the Battle of Plataea.At this battle, under the Spartan general Pausanias, the Spartans made their way against their enemies, leaving the Greeks victorious.

During this land battle, the Greeks’ fleet simultaneously traveled over the Aegean Sea, an embankment of the Mediterranean Sea, and demolished several forces of the Persian fleet. Once they crossed the Aegean Sea during a new battle, Battle of Mycale, an Allied navy demolished the rest of the Persian navy. With these two defeats, the end arrived to the invasion.The Greeks, then, moved to the offensive line, expelling the Persians from Europe, Ionia, and the Aegan islands before the war ended in 479 BC. The Persian Wars’ most important result was a barrier located between Greece and the Near East. This barrier was not broken until the next century. Since the Persian empire was defeated, mainly because of the Spartan army, many thought Sparta would continue to be the leader for Greece, but the Spartans seemed to have more interest in the Peloponnesus.

Sparta proposed two ideas to stray away from the likeness of the Peloponnesus such as the following: gathering a large fleet, like the Athenians, and the prevention of the rebuilding of Athens’ city walls. When these two ideas failed, the plan was elaborated that Athens should be the main city of Greece. To start the rebuilding and protection of Greece, an alliance was formed called the Delian League. Several islands throughout the Aegan, Ionic, and Aeolian colonies were involved in Asia Minor with this alliance. It was decided that if and when an attack was to approach, all of the cities would e required to support and help one another. When the Egyptians were bound to confront the Persians, Athens sent a fleet of approximately two hundred ships; much of the fleet was destroyed.

After another battle between the Persians and the Greeks in Cyprus, which the Greeks were victorious in the previous battle, a formal agreement between these Persians and Greeks were formed – Persia’s people would not attack the country of Greece. Finally, the Delian League turned Athens, in effect, into a great empire. The yearly contribution of ships and money allowed Athens to reach a new age – the age of Pericles.