Persian Wars (515–333 BCE): Key Battles, Timeline, and Impact of Greece vs Persia

The Persian Wars, waged between the Greece city-states and the Persian Empire, encompassed a period from about 515 until 333 bookended by the advancement of Persia into Thrace and the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great. The wars showed the ebb and flow of power and influence in the eastern Mediterranean. The general division of the wars can be seen with the Persian invasion of Thrace, the Ionian Rebellion, Darius’s invasion of Attica, Xerxes’s invasion of Greece, the Athenian Empire and Persia’s reconquest of Ionia after the Peloponnesian War, and Alexander’s conquest. The various phases created divergent and uneven periods of control and influence. The major wars concern the first few phases until the establishment of the Athenian Empire.

The first phase was the Persian invasion of Thrace and Darius’s Scythian campaign. In May 513, Darius, the king of Persia, left its capital, Susa, to the Hellespont. He crossed the straits with an army and took over the region of Thrace near the Aegean Sea, Thracian Chersonese, the modern Gallipoli peninsula, including the city of Sestos. When Darius arrived with his army, the tyrant of Thracian Chersonese, the Athenian Miltiades, submitted to the Persians and joined Darius on his campaign north against the Scythians. Miltiades and the other Greek rulers of the Asia Minor city-states remained with their forces to guard the bridge across the Hellespont. Darius now moved north and attacked the Scythians, a nomadic tribe from the steppes of Russia.

The historian Herodotus presented the story of Scythian invasion as an act of hubris by Darius for trying to control a group that was outside civilization, with no type of cities or homeland. The Scythians were known for being great mounted warriors, and Darius’s attempt to conquer them would be like trying to conquer the wind. The evidence from Herodotus shows that Darius did in fact ravage the Scythian countryside, even without the Scythians’ participation, and went to battle. Since Darius could not get the Scythians to help them in the battle, and since continuing would result in a potential destruction of his army, Darius decided to return. Herodotus reported that Darius erected eight forts on the Oarus River (Volga).

The Scythians’ scorched-earth tactics resulted in the destruction and loss of their prime lands. The campaign resulted in the Scythians being disrupted, but Darius did not achieve his control of the Scythians. Within a short time, the situation returned to the preinvasion period. When Darius returned to the Hellespont, he found that the Greek leaders had plotted against him and forced Miltiades to flee to Athens. Miltiades would return during the next phase and retake his territory in the name of Athens until after the Ionians were defeated by the Persians.

After Miltiades’s return, the Athenians in 508 sent representatives to the Persian governor of Ionia to seek help against possible Spartan attacks. The Persians asked for earth and water, traditional forms of submission, which the Athenians accepted. They requested that the Athenians take back Hippias, the former tyrant of Athens, which was refused. This interaction laid the groundwork for the Persian demand years later that Athens submit to Persia—in fact, in the Persians’ minds, the Athenians had already submitted.

A few years after Darius returned from his Scythian invasion, the Greek cities of Asia Minor began a war against Persian rule. The basis for the rebellion was the treatment of the Greek cities by Greek tyrants that the Persians had imposed upon them. In 499, the Ionian cities rebelled after the tyrant of Miletus, Aristagoras, and the Persian satrap Artaphernes, the brother of the Persian king Darius, unsuccessfully attacked the island of Naxos. Fearing that he would be blamed for this and removed, Aristagoras raised a rebellion of the Greek cities in Ionia. Asking Athens for help, an Athenian force in 498 arrived and raided Sardis before departing.

This attack raised the wrath of Darius against the Athenians. In 494, the Ionians were defeated by the Persians at the Battle of Lade after the Samians defected. The Persians then besieged and captured Miletus, enslaving its population. Darius now turned his attention to Athens, which had supported the Ionians.

Darius’s plan clearly was to conquer Greece, not just to punish Athens. Darius in his earlier Scythian expedition had taken over the Thracian region and forced the nearby Macedon to submit. In 492, he ordered his son-in-law, Mardonius, to retake Thrace and ensure Macedon was fully submissive. Mardonius’s plan was to bring his fleet down the coast and work in conjunction with the army to subjugate Thessaly and move on toward Eretria, and then Athens. His fleet, however, was wrecked in a storm as it made its way around Mount Athos. An attack by the Thracians wounded Mardonius and forced him to return to Asia Minor without achieving his major goal. In 491, Darius sent ambassadors to the Greek city-states to demand earth and water, representing the surrender of everything, land and liquids needed for life, showing the Persian king’s control over the livelihood of his subjects. Most of the cities acceded to their demands except Sparta and Athens, which executed the ambassadors. Darius now planned another invasion to take over Athens and Sparta.

In 490, Darius commanded his admiral, Datis, and Artaphernes, Darius’s nephew and the son of the former satrap, to take a fleet and army across the Aegean and subdue the islands and conquer Greece. They sailed first to Rhodes and attempted to take the city of Lindus. They failed in this endeavor, but then they sailed to Naxos, where they captured many of the inhabitants and burned the city. They then proceeded to sail across the Aegean, taking islands along the way, including the sacred island of Delos. They then arrived at Euboea, where they landed unopposed and besieged the city of Eretria, which had aided Athens in the attack on Sardis in 498. After attacking the city for a week and suffering heavy casualties, Eretria was betrayed by two leading citizens Euphorbus and Philagrus and the Persians destroyed it and enslaved the population. At this point, the Persian fleet sailed across to Attica and landed on the coast at Marathon, north of Athens.

In Athens at this time was Miltiades the Younger, who had once been the tyrant of Thracian Chersonese. He had achieved power in Thrace after his uncle, the tyrant Miltiades the Elder, died childless. He had risen through the magistrates in Athens under the tyrant Hippias, who sent him to Thrace in 516 to take over for his uncle. He consolidated his rule there by attacking opposing leaders and marrying Hegesipyle, the daughter of the Thracian king Olorus. When Darius attacked Scythia, Miltiades became his vassal. He fled the area in 511 after arousing the suspicion of Darius. He helped the Ionians in their rebellion and returned in 496 to retake the Chersonese.

Then he seized and handed over the islands of Lemnos and Imbros, which had been claimed by Athens. With the end of the war, Miltiades fled to Athens in 492. He was put on trial for being a tyrant and being from the Philaid clan, traditional rivals of the Alcmaeonid of Cleisthenes who had established the democracy after ousting the tyrant Hippias, Miltiades feared he would not be treated fairly; but he was acquitted after showing himself to not only be a defender of the Greeks at Ionia, but also an enemy of Darius. When the heralds arrived in 491, it was Miltiades who convinced the Athenians to put them to death. Then, in 490, he was elected one of the generals to defend Athens against the Persian fleet and army.

The Athenians were split over whether to fight at Marathon or withstand a siege. Miltiades urged the Athenians to fight since if the Persians were allowed to besiege the city, it would probably fall. The Athenians sent envoys to other Greek cities, especially Sparta, for help. The city of Plataea sent troops, but Sparta indicated that they were celebrating a festival and would send troops when it was over. For five days, the two sides faced off, and finally the Athenians decided to attack when the Persians were beginning to load their ships to sail to Athens.

Miltiades feared that the Persian cavalry would envelop the Athenian force, so he decided to alter the form of the hoplite force by increasing the size of his wings while weakening the center. When they had reached the edge of the Persian archer range, the Athenians broke into a run to cover the field quickly before the archers could fire enough arrows. The Greeks crashed into the Persian wings and then moved toward the center, while the Persians fled to their ships. In the end, the Athenians lost 192 men to the Persians 6,400. The Persians then planned to sail around Cape Sounion and land at Athens.

The Greek army, led by Miltiades, marched the twenty-five miles back to Athens and were waiting for the Persians when their ships arrived. Artaphernes could not land, so he sailed back to Asia. The Spartans arrived after the battle and examined the battlefield at Marathon to evaluate what the Persians were like. Miltiades in 489 launched an attack on Paros, but he was wounded and failed to capture the island; upon his return, he was imprisoned and died of his wounds, while his sentence of death was commuted to a fine, paid by his son, Cimon. The Battle of Marathon showed the superiority of the Greek hoplite against Persian fighting.

After the Battle of Marathon, Darius decided to send a large invasion force to retaliate for his loss; he spent three years preparing to put together a force. Before he could finish raising his army, though, Egypt revolted. When Darius died in 486, his son, Xerxes, acceded to the throne and crushed the Egyptian rebellion. After four years of planning, Xerxes moved his army toward Europe. Many of the Greek city-states either professed their support for Persia or were not directly opposed to them. Chief among them was Argos, Sparta’s enemy, and Thebes, which may not have been actively supporting them but at least would use them. The Persian army came from all over the empire, arriving at Sardis and spending the winter before moving north. The size of the army has been greatly debated since Herodotus, the major historian writing of the events, stated that it was two-and-a-half million strong. Clearly, that number is not realistic, it is much more probable that the army numbered about 200,000. In addition, the Persian fleet numbered 1,207 according to Herodotus, although it too may have been merely allegorical because that was the number of Greek ships in the Iliad and since it was the greatest war to the Greeks, no other fleet could be more. The fleet may have actually numbered only about 600.

When Miltiades was removed from power, Athens had a new leader in Themistocles, who was supported by the working class. Themistocles, who had fought at Marathon, realized that the Persians would return and advocated for continual growth in the Athenian fleet. Opposed to him was Aristides, representing the upper class, who disagreed with the expansion of the fleet. In 483, the Athenians discovered a rich silver vein in the Laurium mines. Themistocles proposed that the silver be used to construct a fleet, ostensibly against Aegina, but he really planned to use it against Persia. Over Aristides’ opposition, the Athenians approved it, and a fleet was constructed along the new model of triremes.

Aristides was ostracized in 482, and Themistocles was in supreme control. When news reached Greece that Xerxes was outfitting a large army and fleet, the Athenians constructed even more ships. At Sparta, a change in kings resulted in the ousted king Demaratus being exiled to Persia, where he acted as an advisor to Darius, and then his son, Xerxes. The Greek states that were opposed to Persia now looked to Athens and Sparta to lead them. In late 481, the Greek states met at Corinth to plan their resistance.

Xerxes in 480 moved across the Hellespont toward Macedon. The Greeks decided to move north and block the Persians at the Valley of Tempe. When they arrived, they soon learned that there were other passes that the Persians could move through. The Greeks then retreated south, deciding to take their stand at the Pass of Thermopylae, which separated northern and southern Greece. The Greeks decided to prevent the Persians from bypassing Thermopylae by moving their fleet to Artemisium. The Peloponnese then undertook a second strategy by building a wall across the Isthmus of Corinth. The Persian army moved toward Thermopylae, and their arrival was estimated to occur during the time of the Olympic Games and the feast of Carneia, which the latter prevented the main Spartan army from moving north since it was the most important religious festival for the Spartans when no army could fight. The Spartans sent a small force, 300 troops, under their king, Leonidas. His army probably consisted of about 4,000 men.

When he arrived, Leonidas learned that there was another route around the mountain, so he sent troops to guard it. The Persians arrived at Thermopylae in late summer 480 and camped for three days, hoping the Greeks would flee. The Persians then attacked, but the pass was easily defended by the Greek hoplites. After two days of direct attacks, the Persians discovered the alternative route around the pass and moved toward the top. Leonidas was soon advised of the situation and released the other Greeks from his service, while 2,000 remained with him. Realizing that their position was compromised and that they would be surrounded they knew that the battle would be lost, the Greeks sallied out and attacked the Persians headlong. During the fight, Leonidas was killed. At the time of the attack, the Greek fleet continued to safeguard the army, but when it learned that the army was defeated, the fleet sailed to Salamis, near Athens.

With the defeat at Thermopylae, the road opened up to Athens. The city was destroyed, and everyone waited for the outcome at Salamis. The Athenians remained at Salamis during September, hoping to draw the Persians into battle. Themistocles deceived the Persians by suggesting that the Greek fleet would sail away and denying the Persians a chance for a complete victory since the Greek fleet would have been intact and could attack the Persians later. Xerxes fell for Themistocles’ deception and ordered his fleet to attack the Greeks who were laying in waiting to ambush them. Although the Persians outnumbered the Greeks, their ships were less agile and were crammed in the straits between Salamis and the mainland Attica could not maneuver to match the Greek fleet. The Persians lost nearly 200 warships and retreated. Themistocles then announced that the fleet should sail to the Hellespont and destroy the bridge—that was not really his plan, but it convinced Xerxes to flee. Xerxes left an army at Thebes, under Mardonius, to continue the war.

In 479, the Athens was again attacked, and its citizens fled to Salamis. Mardo- nius made overtures to Athens for peace. When Athens sent emissaries to Sparta reporting Mardonius’s offer and their plan to accept it if Sparta did not act, the Peloponnese sent an army north to deal with Persians. Near the town of Plataea, the Persians assembled their force, hoping to draw the allies into battle on the plains. The Spartan general and regent, Pausanius, kept to the high ground, but after a few days, he ordered the army to move to another spot. During the action at night, the army became disorganized and the various Greek forces were separated and disunited. Mardonius realized that this was his best chance to attack and gave the order to advance. As at Marathon, the heavy Greek infantry smashed through the Persian lines, killing Mardonius and defeating the Persians. Most of the Persian force was defeated, with only about 40,000 men retreating. Supposedly on the same day, the Sparta-led Greek fleet landed at Mycale in Asia Minor, destroying the remnant of Xerxes’s fleet and freeing the Aegean Sea from the Persian navy.

With these twin victories in 479, the Greeks went on the offensive against the Persians. They would defeat the Persians in the north at Sestos and take control of the Hellespont. The Greeks established the Delian League and began the deliverance of Asia Minor from the Persians.

Further Reading:Butera, C. Jacob, and Matthew A. Sears. 2019. Battles and Battlefields of Ancient Greece: A Guide to Their History, Topography and Archaeology. Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Military.

Carey, Chris. 2019. Thermopylae. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fine, John V. A. 1983. The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Green, Peter, and Peter Green. 1996. The Greco-Persian Wars. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Strauss, Barry S. 2004. The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece— and Western Civilization. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Stoneman, Richard. 2015. Xerxes: A Persian Life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. For an examination of the Persian Wars, see Selkirk, Andrew, “The Persian Wars,” The Secret of Civilization, http://www.civilization.org.uk/greece/the-persian-wars (accessed May 18, 2021).

For a history of Persian Wars, see Stecchini, Livio C. “The Persian Wars,” History of Iran, http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/persian_wars1.php (accessed May 18, 2021).