The Persian Wars

The Persian Wars were the great struggle in which the Greek city-states turned back two invasions by the vast Persian Empire, the superpower of the age. The conflict grew out of the failed revolt of the Ionian Greeks against Persian rule, which Athens had supported.

Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis

In 490 BCE the Athenians astonished the Greek world by defeating a Persian punitive expedition on the plain of Marathon. Ten years later the Persian king Xerxes returned with an enormous army and fleet. A small Greek force led by the Spartan king Leonidas died to the last man holding the pass at Thermopylae; but the Athenian navy then shattered the Persian fleet at Salamis (480 BCE), and the following year the combined Greek army destroyed the Persian land force at Plataea (479 BCE).

A turning point

Against all expectation the Greeks had preserved their independence. The victory gave the Greek world, and Athens above all, an immense surge of confidence and prestige that helped launch the golden age of the Classical period. The wars were memorably recorded by Herodotus, the 'father of history'.