The Greco-Persian Wars: Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis

The Persian Wars — more fully the Greco-Persian Wars — were a series of conflicts between Greek city-states and the Achaemenid Persian Empire that Wikipedia dates from 499 BC to 449 BC. They are remembered for three battles, Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis, but they began with a revolt in Asia Minor and ended with no clear treaty at all. This guide follows the wars in order and then looks at the hardest problem in telling the story: every surviving narrative was written by one side.

How a revolt in Ionia became a war with Athens

Wikipedia traces the collision to 547 BC, when Cyrus the Great conquered Ionia, the Greek-inhabited coast of Asia Minor, and Persia began ruling its cities through Greek tyrants. In 499 BC Aristagoras, tyrant of Miletus, led a failed Persian-backed expedition against Naxos. Expecting to be dismissed, he incited the Ionian cities to depose their rulers. Athens and Eretria sent help, and in 498 BC the rebels captured and burned Sardis, a regional Persian capital. Darius I, Wikipedia says, vowed revenge on both cities. The revolt collapsed after the Ionian defeat at the Battle of Lade in 494 BC. Even these anchor dates vary slightly: the EBSCO Research Starter on the wars, by James A. Arieti, places Lade in 495 BCE and dates the whole conflict 499–448 BCE.

What the Persian state looked like from the inside — rationed, sealed, audited — is a different story from the one Greek writers tell, and is covered in how Achaemenid Persia was governed.

Darius's expeditions and Marathon, 492–490 BC

A first invasion under Mardonius in 492 BC re-subjugated Thrace and Macedon before mishaps, including the loss of a fleet off Mount Athos, ended the campaign. In 490 BC Datis and Artaphernes crossed the Aegean, took the Cyclades and razed Eretria, then landed at Marathon.

Accounts of the battle differ in detail. Wikipedia describes 10,000 Athenian soldiers descending on the Persian infantry after the Persian cavalry had been loaded back onto the ships. The EBSCO Research Starter on Marathon gives eight or nine thousand Athenian hoplites reinforced by about a thousand Plataeans, against a Persian landing force of "perhaps 24,000", and says it is not certain the cavalry had already embarked. Both give the same casualty figures, which Wikipedia attributes to Herodotus: 6,400 Persian dead against 192 Athenians.

A worked example puts those figures in proportion: 6,400 ÷ 192 ≈ 33, so on Herodotus's count about 33 Persians died for every Athenian. That is a body count reported by the winning side, which is a reason to treat it as Herodotus's figure rather than a measured fact.

Xerxes's invasion: Thermopylae, Artemisium and Salamis, 480 BC

Darius died in 486 BC, and his son Xerxes I took up the project. Wikipedia describes a bridged Hellespont and a canal dug across the isthmus of Mount Athos.

Thermopylae, August 480 BC. The Spartan king Leonidas held the pass with his 300-strong bodyguard and allied contingents. The Greeks withstood two full days of attacks before, according to Herodotus, a local man named Ephialtes showed Xerxes a mountain path behind their lines. Wikipedia cautions that this may be folklore. Leonidas dismissed most of the army and stayed with perhaps 2,000 men, who were killed or captured. At the same time an allied fleet of 271 triremes held the straits of Artemisium for three days.

Salamis, September 480 BC. Athens had been evacuated, and the Persian army razed it. The allied fleet stayed off Salamis and, partly through deception by Themistocles, drew the Persians into the cramped straits, where their numbers became a hindrance. Wikipedia says the allies sank or captured at least 200 Persian ships. Xerxes withdrew to Asia with most of the army and left Mardonius in Greece. The EBSCO Marathon entry draws a social contrast: Marathon was won by the hoplite middle class, Salamis by the lower-class oarsmen — the citizens whose political weight is discussed in Athenian democracy.

Plataea and Mycale, 479 BC. The combined Greek forces routed Mardonius's army at Plataea and destroyed the remaining Persian fleet at Mycale.