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Essay Name       : 1040.txt 
Uploader         : 
Email Address    : 
Language         : English
Subject          : History
Title            : Persian Wars
Grade            : A
School System    : High School
Country          : USA
Author Comments  : Very factual, could easily be expanded
Teacher Comments : Very good, however cdon't sell your self short on the conclusion
Date             : 11/14/96
Site found at    : Link
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                        The Persian Wars


     In 519 BC Darius I ascended the throne of the expanding empire of
Persia. A group of people called the Ionians, lived along the  coast of Asia
Minor.  They were under Persian rule, having been conquered by Emperor
Cyrus (ruled  550-530 BC), and at this time were unhappy about their
conditions.
     In 499 BC Aristagoras, the leader Miletus, one of the city-states,
organized a revolt of all the rest of the city-states along the coast.  Darius
managed however, to subdue things in a five-year campaign.  After this
long sought victory, Darius became bent on revenge against Athens, one of
the few states outside the area that had helped the rebles. He appealed to
Sparta to attack Athens from behind, but the  Spartans saw straight
through his planned conquest of Greece and threw his envoy in a well.  
The Persian army then landed at Marathon in 490 BC. The 10,000
Athenian infantry were supported  only by a small group of soldiers from
Plataea (Sparta procrastinated because it was in the middle of a festival),
but nevertheless the Athenians  defeated the Persian archers and cavalry
through a series of  ingenious maneuvers.   
     Darius died in 485 BC before his plans for another attempt reached
fruition, so it was left to his son Xerxes to fulfill his father's ambition of
conquering Greece. In 480 BC Xerxes gathered men from every nation of
his far-flung empire and launched a coordinated invasion by army and
navy, the size of which the world had never seen. The historian Herodotus
gave five million as the number of Persian soldiers. No doubt this was a
gross exaggeration, but it was obvious Xerxes intended to give the Greeks
more than a bloody nose.   
     The Persians dug a canal near present-day Ierissos so that their
navy could bypass the rough seas  around the base of the Mt. Athos
peninsula (where they had been caught before).  They also spanned the 
Hellespont with pontoon bridges for their army to march over.   Some 30
city-states of central and southern Greece met in Corinth to devise a
common defense  (others, including the oracle at Delphi, sided with the
Persians). They agreed on a combined army  and navy under Spartan
command, with the Athenian leader Themistokles providing the strategy. 
The Spartan king Leonidas led the army to the pass at Thermopylae, near
present-day Lamia, the  main passage from northern into central Greece.
This bottleneck was easy to defend, and although  the Greeks were greatly
outnumbered they held the pass until a traitor showed the Persians a way 
over the mountains. The Greeks were forced to retreat, but Leonidas, along
with 300 of his Spartan elite troops, fought to the death. The fleet, which
held off the Persian navy north of Euboea (Evia), had no choice but to
retreat as well.   
     The Spartans and their Peloponnesian allies fell back on their second
line of defense (an earthen wall across the Isthmus of Corinth), while the
Persians advanced upon Athens. Themistokles ordered his people to flee the
city: the women and children to Salamis, the men to sea on the Athenian
fleet. The Persians razed Attica and burned Athens to the ground.   
     By skillful maneuvering, however,  the Greek then ensnared the large
Persian Ships in the narrow  waters off Salamis, where they became easy
pickings for the agile Greek vessels. Xerxes, who  watched the defeat of his
mighty fleet from the shore, returned to Persia in disgust, leaving his
general Mardonius to subdue Greece with the army. A year later, the
Greeks under the Spartan general Pausanias obliterated the Persian army
at the Battle of Plataea. The Athenian navy sailed to Asia Minor and
destroyed what was left of the Persian fleet at Mykale, freeing the Ionian
city-states there from Persian rule.            
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