Alright, let's get right to it. Here are the Persian Wars in five minutes or less. Although the various Greek city-states have their differences, sometimes they banded together to fight a common enemy.
Between 499 BCE and 479 BCE, the Greek city-states took on the world's biggest empire at that time, Persia. The Persian Empire ruled over land in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, and by the 400s BCE, they invaded Greece. The smaller Greek city-states had much less less land, and far fewer people than Persia. It all started in 546 BCE when Persia conquered a wealthy Greek settlement called Ionia. The Persians took their farmland and forced the Ionians to pay the Persians a tax and serve in the Persian army.
By 499 BCE, the Greek settlements had had enough of the Persian rule and looked towards the Greek mainland for help. The Athenians had some success in fighting off the Persians, but left before the Persians Before the job was complete, by 493 BCE, the Persians defeated the Ionians and destroyed their city and sold some of its people into slavery. If you're keeping score, it is now 1-0 in favor of the Persian Empire. King Darius of the Persian Empire was mad after the Ionian revolt and decided to conquer the city-states of mainland Greece. He sent messengers to the Greek city-states to ask for presents of Greek earth and water, which basically...
meant that they would submit to the Persian Empire. The messengers were not received well and many were killed and thrown into pits and wells as made famous by this scene from the movie 300. In 490 BCE, an even more angry King Darius sent soldiers to the Plain of Marathon in preparation for battle. The Greeks had a great general on their side that used strategic battle formations in order to compensate for the outnumbering of troops. During the battle, these military strategy strategies proved to work because the Greeks had a stunning victory at Marathon. And if we keep score, it is now 1-1, all tied up.
King Darius died without knowing the ending of this story. His son Xerxes continued the fight in 480 BCE, with more than 180,000 men and women soldiers, Xerxes stormed into Greece and fought a combined Athenian and Spartan force. The Greeks chose a strategic place called Thermopylae to try and hold off the Persian army.
Unfortunately, a Greek traitor helped out the Persian army. In order to prevent a total loss, the Spartan leader Leonidas sent home most of his troops, leaving only about 300 to slow down the Persians. In the end, all 300 were killed. The score is now 2-1 in favor of the Persians. The Persians left Thermopylae and had their eyes set on Athens.
It took Xerxes only two weeks to burn Athens to the ground. Then Themistocles, an Athenian navy leader, had a lightbulb moment. He lured the Persians into the narrow water channels between the Greek islands and the mainland, convincing Xerxes that the Greeks would surrender. Xerxes totally fell for the trick.
The Greeks were masters of the sea and had big wooden rams on the front of their ships. They rammed the Persian boats and sunk 300 of their ships. The Greeks only lost 40 ships. The score is now 2-2. After the defeat at Salamis, Xerxes went back home to Persia, but left a majority of his army in Greece with orders to attack at the end of the spring.
In 479 BCE, the town of Plata was captured by the Greeks. Plataea was the scene for this final battle of the Persian Wars. 80,000 Greek troops suited up for the final showdown with the powerful Persians. In the end, the allied forces of the Greek city-states destroyed the Persian army. army, finally putting an end to the saga.
And for those keeping score, it is 3-2 in favor of the Greeks. The Greeks, after this war, held on to their independence from the Persians and kept the Persians from conquering the rest of Europe. After the victory against the Persians, thousands of Greeks were dead, and the city-state of Athens was in ruins. Don't worry, though. Athens rebuilt their city and went on to become even greater.
Well, that's it for this edition of History in 5 Minutes. or less. If you still have any questions, research them on the internets.
Here's some sources.