First Persian War Research Paper

While the battle at Artemisium is considered indecisive (8.18), and the corresponding battle at Thermopylae a Pyrrhic victory for Xerxes, it was a huge victory of propaganda for the Greek side. A small force held off the best of the Persians for many days – showcasing the superiority of the Greek hoplite in close

The Role of Themistocles in the Greek Defeat of the Persians in 480 - 479 BC.

The Athenian general Meltiades persuaded the assembly of the Athenian democracy to dispatch him and the rest of the board of ten generals with 10000 hoplites to Marathon. Hoplites were heavily armed infantry soldiers. Philippides was sent to Sparta to ask the Spartans for aid. At the time, no one believed victory would be possible without the help of Sparta. They were the best-trained warriors in Greece. Phillippedes reached Sparta, 140 miles away, the day after he set out. The Spartans, however could not be hurried, and said that they would only dispatch their men after the six-day festival honoring Apollo. Sending any men before that time would insure

Contrasting with Persia's arrogant and assuming leaders, Greece produced the finest leadership after Marathon. Themistokles was an example of excellent leadership, as he prepared for the possibility of renewed attacks from Persia. He fortified the Piraeus bay, and used surplus to build 100 new triremes to fight against the Persians.

Who/What: The Persian war was a war between Persia and Greece That was led by King Darius I

The Persian Wars (499-479 BC) put the Greeks in the difficult position of having to defend their country against a vast empire with an army that greatly outnumbered

The Persian wars were a group of wars between the Persians (the largest empire) and the Greeks (city-states philosophers) from 492 bc to 449bc. The history is told in great part by Herodotus, a Greek historian, considered to write historical bias in regards to Greek & Persian history. Herodotus was said to investigate the Persian war, going through different lands and collecting personal inquiries, myths, legends and accounts of the Persian Wars. He was praised and honored for his recollection of the events, which were both factual and fictional. Herodotus wanted to pass down a history of why these two great people came into battle from a personal point of view.

The first Battle of the Persian War was the Battle of Marathon. The Persian king Xerxes led 100,000 troops into battle against 10,000 Greeks. The Persians outnumbered the Greeks ten to one, but the Greeks had strategy and their terrain on their side. They were led by the brilliant strategist Miltiades, who had a plan. The Persians charged at the Greeks. Then, Miltiades sent his men to the sides, surrounding the Persians. This is known as the pincer movement, or double envelopment, because the soldiers from the flanks envelop the enemy. The Persians were trapped, and were soon defeated. Miltiades’ maneuver is still regarded as one of the greatest strategies of all time.

Themistocles was aware that the only way to defeat the Persians was to cut of their naval power, so he devised a plan. He sent a slave to the Persians with a message that they were escaping, and the Persians sent ships to meet there escapees. The Athenian ships were prepared to face them. Their specialty in sea battles, along with the narrowness and swirls of the sea gave the Athenians an advantage. This strategy is what ultimately brought victory to the Greeks, as it left the Persians without a supply line and weakened their forces. The two events, the battle at Marathon and the battle at Salamis, showed that Athens was a great contributor to the war, both land and sea.

We had many revolutionary wars that shaped our world into becoming what it is today. The Persian Wars were one of those unforgettable events that inspired not only our military structure but government as well. The Persian Wars lasted for almost half a decade from 498 BCE to 448 BCE between the Persian Empire, of course, and Greek poleis. The war was centered around expanding the Empire of Persia as it claimed and took over land within battle and then ruling it as one while making a profit from it. Most of what we know about the Persian wars was written by Herodotus, who was born 484 BCE and gives us our primary source of what really took place during that time.

Moreover, in the Battle of Thermopylae, Persian forces led by Xerxes outnumbered the Greeks yet again. However, the militant Spartans took up arms and were able to defeat the large Persian army. Thermopylae allowed the Greek forces to come up with various tactics and strategies in order to defeat Persia. Next, the Battle of Salamis was a naval battle between several Greek city-states and Persia. This battle forms the turning point of the Greco-Persian Wars since it ultimately “saved Greece from being absorbed into the Persian Empire and ensured the emergence of Western civilization as a major force in the world.” The ending of the Battle of Salamis left the Persian army trapped in Greece, which paves the way for the final battle of the war, the Battle of Platea. In the battle, the “Greek army came and defeated the weakened Persians, the Persian Wars were over”. The mark of the ending of the Greco-Persian wars gave way to Athens arising from the ashes as the dominant and central city-state of Greece, which then provides political and cultural advancements during its golden age.

The pre-eminence of the Greek soldier proved decisive in the Battle of Marathon. Although only ‘citizen soldiers’, the Greek hoplites were far more disciplined than their Persian counterparts and also better protected, with their bronze-visored helmets, solid bronze breastplates, shields and javelins. The Persians on the contrary were generally lightly dressed, with wicker shields and bows and arrows and sometimes had body armour of scales sewn to leather vest. Herodotus states that the Persians were “deficient in armour, untrained and greatly inferior in skill”. This crucial element destabilized the Persian assault as they fell at the hands of a much more skillful, better equipped and tactically superior Greek army. With their unprecedented use of battle strategy and intimate knowledge of their surroundings, the Greeks were able to defeat their Persian enemy.

The great Athenian general Miltiades came up with a shrewd battle plan. He decided to thin out the ranks in the center of the phalanx to strengthen the wings. During the battle, the Greek wings crushed the Persian wings and forced them to retreat. At the same time, the Persians in the middle managed to break through the weakened center of the phalanx. Instead of pursuing the retreating Persian wings, the Greek wings moved backward to attack the Persians that had broken through the Greek defenses. The Greek center then turned around so that they had the Persians surrounded. The Persians were slaughtered (5). According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the Persians lost 6400 men while te Greeks lost only 192 (4).

The first battle of the Persian War, the Battle of Marathon, took place in 490 BC. King Darius sent troops to Greece which stopped at each Greek island along the way demanding "earth and water," which both literally and symbolically represented submission to the Persian empire. The Battle of Marathon exemplifies the heroic action of the Greeks. The Athenians, led by one of their ten generals, Miltiades, unflinchingly faced the Persians, an army over twice the size of theirs, and triumphed. The Athenians won the Battle of Marathon because they employed superior military strategy. There are some discrepancies, however, between different literary sources about how the Greeks fought the Battle of Marathon. For instance, Herodotus claims that the ten Athenian generals could not decide whether to go into battle. He writes that Miltiades talked the other generals into fighting. Herodotus writes that they waited for days for Miltiades to lead the army, and then they went into battle (Hdt. 6.110-111.2). According to Nancy Demand, however, Herodotus, unaware of the right of the polemarch to make all final decisions, wrote that Miltiades decided when to lead the men into battle, because the longer they delayed the battle, the better chance the Athenians had that the Spartans would make it in time to help. Regardless of any conflict between sources, the heroism of the Athenians cannot be denied. Marathon represents "the victory of a small contingent of men fighting

The Battle of Thermopylae goes down in history for being one of the most heroic feats of bravery in any war. The Spartan King Leonidas led 300 Spartan warriors in a fight to block the Persian Army from passing into Greece through a two meter wide pass through the mountains of Thermopylae. The Persian army that vastly outnumbered the Spartans was beat back for two days and during those defeats they suffered heavy losses that outweighed the Spartans 20 to 1. All was lost on the third day after a traitor revealed to the Persian King Xexres that