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PERSIAN WAR

Date: (492-447 B.C.)

The Persian War was an international war that was between Persia

and Greece

The Cause: (499-494 B.C.)

Greece was divided into more than 100 city states in 500 BC, and

many states had come under the rule of the Persian King, Cyrus of Persia.

Persia, which lay east of Greece and stretched from the Aegean Sea to

Indian Sea, and from Russia to Egypt, was Greeks biggest enemy and it

overpowered Greece by population, land, and wealth.

In the years 500 B.C. to 499 B.C, Ionians, from the city state Melitus,

who was under the Persian rule, was tired of being ruled by Persia and

rebelled against Persia. The city states Athens and Eretria came to the aid of

Melitus and sent ships and soldiers over to help them. Then disaster struck

for the Persians, as the Ionians destroyed Sardis, which was the base of thePersian government. The Persians overcame their defeat and as a

punishment in 494 B.C. they destroyed the Ionians and burned Melitus and

Erertria. King Darius, who was the king of Persia at the time, plotted to take

over and invade Athens as a punishment for helping the Ionians.

Battle of Marathon (490 B.C.)

King Darius never forgave Athens for helping the Ionians rebel

against him and in the year 490 B.C, King Dairus and his

60 000 foot soldiers landed on Marathon Bay, which is 20 miles north of

Athens. Athens and her allies, made an army of 10 000 troops led byMiltidaues. Even though the Persians had more soldiers than Greece, the

Greek hoplites were better than the Persian soldiers, and the Greeks won the

battle of Marathon.

Second Persian Invasion (Battle of Thermopylae) (480 B.C.)

King Dairus had a son named Xerxus, and when Dairus died, Xerxus

was determined to follow in his fathers footsteps and defeat the Greeks and

Athens. Meanwhile, the Greeks knew that the Persians would invade again,

so they prepared to fight. They did this by consulting an Oracle. In those

days, when the Greeks had a question to ask, or a problem, they would visit

an oracle, where special priests or priestess would speak for their gods. Sothey consulted an oracle, and were told that Athens would only be saved by

a wooden wall. The Athenians interpreted that as meaning that the wall

was actually wooden ships in a navy. So they prepared for a navel battle

from the Persians. As the Athenians had predicted, the Persians did try to

invade Athens, but a small army led by King Leonidas of Sparta tricked

them to come to a narrow mountain named Therpyloe. So that Persian army

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came to the mountain of Therpyloe, and met the army of Sparta, who were

there to distract them from the Athenians and their war ships. A traitor from

Athens showed the Persians another way out making it so that the Persians

outnumbered the Spartans and killed 300 of them.

Destruction of Athens (Interlude between Wars)

After the traitor had showed the Persians a way out from Therpyloe,

helping them defeat the Spartans, the Persians went south to attack Athens.

Xerxes men went through the city of Athens, but when they got there, they

found that it was almost deserted. That was because the Athenian Leader,

Themistades, withdrew his troops from Athens so that they would be able to

fight at sea. The Persians took that opportunity to seize Athens and the

murdured the existing Athenisnans, ransacked the city, and burned all the

temples leaving behind nothing. Then they went on to fight the Athenians at

sea.

Battle of Salamis. (480-479 B.C.)After they got defeated, the Persians sent in a naval force (as opposed to

a army force) to attack the Greeks by sea. This sea battle took place in the

island of Salamis, which is close to Greece. The Persians couldnt get past

the Greeks in the narrow Isthmus of Corinth so the only way to get past was

by sea. Themistalcles tricked the Persians into coming to a channel of water

between Salamis and the mainland by sending Xerxus a secreat message to

go to Salami. Xerxus fell into a trap, for the Greeks were there ready to

pounce on the Persian ships. The Persians lost their ships in battle and

Athens had defeated Persian at Salamis. Defeated, the Persians went back

home.

Battle of Plataea (479 B.C.)

After they got defeated at Salamis, Xerxus and his army went back to

Persia to plan their next attack. Xerxus left his army with general

Mardonius, and went to hide. The Greeks werent frightened by the Persians

anymore, since the Greeks had defeated the Persians already. In 479 B.C.,

the Greeks put together a huge army led by the Spartans, and defeated the

Persian army and killed Mardonius at Plataea. At the same time, the Greek

navy had attacked and burned the remaining Persian ships at Asia Minor.

This led to the end of the Persian invasion, the Greeks defeating the Persiansat last.

Outcome + Final Conclusion (445 B.C.)

The Greeks had succeeded in stopping the Persians from invading

Athens again, but the wars didnt come to a complete end. Even though the

Greeks had defeated the Persians, they stilled feared Persia and they

continued to fight them over land.

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PELOPONNESIAN WAR

Date: (431-404 B.C.)

The Peloponnesian war, unlike the Persian war is not a war against

their common enemy, but instead it is a war between two Greek city states:

Athens and Sparta.

Cause:

After the Persian War had ended, Athens had ended up in ruins with

nothing to hold it together. Athens wanted to build up her city again so she

asked all her allies to give them money and in return she would give them

safeness against warfare. She began getting more and more powerful and

fruitful, producing beautiful buildings, sculptures, and philosophers because

of the money she kept demanding of the city states. Soon she was bigger

than she had been before she was destroyed and she went on to building

huge walls known as the Long Walls.

Sparta had always been the opposite of Athens; Athens loved toproduce philosophers and scientists whereas Sparta was more military

oriented. Sparta began to get jealous of how much Athens was progressing

and started to be afraid of Athens. In 448-447 B.C. Athens and Sparta began

quarrelling with each other because Athens had begun building the Long

Walls connecting {Athens with its port at Piraeuslook up later} Sparta

thought that Athens was preparing for war, so they both decided to sign a

peace treaty called the Thirty Years Peace. They still remained suspicious

of one another, even after signing the peace treaty.

Sparta was looking for any opportunity to attack Athens and proclaim

war on her that when Corinth, an ally of Sparta, and Coroyra, an ally of

Athens, broke into a fight, Sparta declared war on Athens, thus starting the

Peloponnesian War.

Start of the War

Since Athens had began to get too arrogant after she had rebuilt her

city, when the Peloponnesian War started many of the city states that used to

be with Athens, went over to Sparta to give Sparta aid. Since she had an

extremely strong army, but a weaker navy, Sparta started invading Athens

on land instead of on sea. She did this by invading Attica, a city state inside

Athens. This made the Athenians fuming mad because unlike Sparta whohad a strong army but weak navy, Athens had a strong navy, but weak army,

making it so that the Athenians would be hopeless fighting on land. When

Sparta invaded Attica and burned all the crops, houses, and farms, the

Athenians stayed in the protection of their long walls, importing food from

the sea. The Spartans couldnt get through the long walls and they gave up

when plague broke out in Athens.

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Plague (430-427 B.C.)

In the year 430 B.C. Plague broke out in Athens, which lasted four

years. About a quarter of the population died including Pericles, the leader

of Athens. Sparta and Athens were too tired to fight, so in the year 421 B.C.,

they signed a peace treaty to stop fighting. This didnt last too long though,

and six years later, they were up fighting again.

Sicilian Expedition/TRAITOR (415-413 B.C.)

In the year 415 B.C. a politician by the name of Alcibiacles told

Athens to attack the city of Syracuse in Sicily. The Athenians trusted

Alcibiacles and started to work on attacking Sicily. What they didnt know,

however, was that Alcibiacles was being charged by his enemies and so he

betrayed Athens. Alcibiacles ran to Sparta and told Sparta how to defeat

Athens. In 413 B.C. Athens went to Sicily, expecting to defeat them, but

instead headed into an unexpected surprise. In Sicily, the Spartans were

waiting for the Athenians, and the Spartans attacked the Athenians anddestroyed half of all Athenians ships. The Athenians were defeated at Sicily.

Politicalness in Athens (411 B.C.)

All was not peaceful in Athens anymore. The defeat at Sicily had

disturbed Athens and life became hectic. 400 men rebelled to abolish

democracy and they got in control of power. After three months, and a lot of

people defying the power, democracy was recovered, but everything was

still in commotion and a lot of the allies of the Delian League withdrew.

Things were looking worser and worser for the Athenians.

Persia comes to help the Spartans (??? B.C.)

In order to defeat Athenians navy, Sparta needed money to create a

bigger navy. So Sparta made a deal with her former enemy Persia. Sparta

gave city-states to Persia and Persia gave gold to help Sparta attack Athens

on sea and on land. Sparta built more fleets and groups of ships that helped

them defeat Athens navy.

Battle of Aegospotami (405 B.C. )

In the year 405 B.C. a Spartan general named Lysander, surprised

Athens by attacking an Athenians fleet at Aegospotami. Sparta captured 170

Athenian ships there and killed about 4000 prisoners. They defeated the

Athenian fleet and Athens never recovered from that drastic blow.Outcome/Final Conclusion (405-404 B.C.)

After the battle at Aegospotami, Sparta blocked ships from bringing in

food to Athens. Athens had no food left and people began to starve. Athens,

not wanting people to starve, surrendered to Sparta and in 404 B.C. Sparta

had defeated Athens. As revenged from Athens, Sparta did four things to

Athens. She destroyed the Long Walls of Athens, she ended the Delian

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League, she eliminated democracy, and she installed a government called

oligarchic, which was a small group of people to govern called the Thirty

Tyrants.