Persian Wars and Invasions - Essay Example

? Persian Wars (499-479 BC) Two main factors led to the Persian Wars. First, in Persia’s pursuit for gold, Persia expanded their territory into Western Asia Minor and into Thrace on the European side of the Aegean causing the Ionian Greeks to be under their control, as documented by a web article entitled FC23A: the Persian Wars. Second, Solon's reforms and Peisistratus’ seizing control of Sigeum had made Athens especially sensitive to any threats to its grain route from the Black Sea. Further complicating this was the fact that several Athenian nobles held lands in the North Aegean. However, the spark igniting this into war with the Persians was a revolt of the Ionian Greeks. The Ionian Greeks had peacefully submitted to Persian rule and lived under Persian appointed Greek tyrants since the time of Cyrus the Great. Then in 5l0 B.C.E., the Ionian Greeks raised the standard of revolt and drove their tyrants out. Realizing they needed help against the mighty Great King, Darius, they appealed to their cousins across the Aegean for aid. Sparta, ever wary of a Helot revolt, refused to help. However, Athens and another city-state, Eretria, did send ships and troops who joined the Ionians, marched inland, and burned the provincial capital, Sardis, to the ground. After a Persian force defeated the Greeks as they were returning from Sardis, the Ionian Greeks decided to stake everything on a naval battle at Lade (494 B.C.E.). Therefore, it is the Ionian revolt that has sparked the Persian Wars. (Cited from FC23A: Persian Wars) The first Persian invasion of Greece, during the Persian Wars, began in 492 BC, and ended with the decisive Athenian victory at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. The invasion, consisting of two distinct campaigns, was ordered by the Persian king Darius I primarily in order to punish the city-states of Athens and Eretria. These cities had supported the cities of Iona during their revolt against Persian rule, thus incurring the wrath of Darius. Darius also saw the opportunity to extend his empire into Europe, and to secure its western frontier. The first campaign in 492 BC, led by Mardonius, re-subjugated Thrace and forced Macedon to become a client kingdom of Persia. However, further progress was prevented when Mardonius’ fleet was wrecked in a storm off the coast of Mount Athos. The following year, having demonstrated his intentions, Darius sent ambassadors to all parts of Greece, demanding their submission. He received it from almost all of them, excepting Athens and Sparta, both of whom executed the ambassadors. With Athens still defiant, and Sparta now effectively at war with him, Darius ordered a further military campaign for the following year. The second campaign, in 490 BC, was under the command of Datis and Artaphernes. The expedition headed first to the island Naxos, which it captured and burnt. It then island-hopped between the rest of the Cycladic Islands, annexing each into the Persian Empire. Reaching Greece, the expedition landed at Eretria, which it besieged, and after a brief time, captured. Eretria was razed and its citizens enslaved. Finally, the task force headed to Attica, landing at Marathon, en route for Athens. There, it was met by a smaller Athenian army, which nevertheless proceeded to win a remarkable victory at the Battle of Marathon This defeat prevented the successful conclusion of the campaign, and the task force returned to Asia. Nevertheless, the expedition had fulfilled most of its aims, punishing Naxos and Eretria, and bringing much of the Aegean under Persian rule. The unfinished business from this campaign led Darius to prepare for a much larger invasion of Greece, to firmly subjugate it, and to punish Athens and Sparta. However, internal strife within the empire delayed this expedition, and Darius then died of old age. It was thus left to his son Xerxes I to lead the second Persian invasion of Greece, beginning in 480 BC. The second Persian invasion of Greece (480-479 BC) occurred during the Greco-Persian Wars, as King Xerxes I of Persia sought to conquer all of Greece. The invasion was a direct, if delayed, response to the defeat of the first Persian Invasion of Greece (492-490 BC) at the Battle of Marathon which ended Darius I’s attempts to subjugate Greece. After Darius's death, his son Xerxes spent several years planning for the second invasion, mustering an enormous army and navy. The Athenians and Spartans led the Greek resistance, with some 70 city-states joining the 'Allied' effort. However, most of the Greek cities remained neutral or submitted to Xerxes. The invasion began in spring 480 BC, when the Persian army crossed the Hellespont and marched through Thrace and Macedon to Thessaly. The Persian advance was blocked at the pass of Thermopylae by a small Allied force under King Leonidas I of Sparta; simultaneously, the Persian fleet was blocked by an Allied fleet at the straits of Artemisium. At the famous Battle of Thermopylae, the Allied army held back the Persian army for seven days, before they were outflanked by a mountain path and the Allied rearguard was trapped in the pass and annihilated. The Allied fleet had also withstood two days of Persian attacks at the Battle of Artemisium, but when news reached them of the disaster at Thermopylae, they withdrew to Salamis. After Thermopylae, all of Boeotia and Attica fell to the Persian army, who captured and burnt Athens. However, a larger Allied army fortified the narrow Isthmus of Corinth, protecting the Peloponnesus from Persian conquest. Both sides thus sought out a naval victory which might decisively alter the course of the war. The Athenian general Themistocles succeeded in luring the Persian navy into the narrow Straits of Salamis, where the huge number of Persian ships became disorganized, and were soundly beaten by the Allied fleet. The Allied victory at Salamis prevented a quick conclusion to the invasion, and fearing to become trapped in Europe, Xerxes retreated to Asia leaving his general Mardonius to finish the conquest with the elite of the army. The following spring, the Allies assembled the largest ever hoplite army, and marched north from the isthmus to confront Mardonius. At the ensuing Battle of Plataea, the Greek infantry again proved its superiority, inflicting a severe defeat on the Persians, killing Mardonius in the process. On the same day, across the Aegean Sea an Allied navy destroyed the remnants of the Persian navy at the Battle of Mycale. With this double defeat, the invasion was ended, and Persian power in the Aegean severely dented. The Greeks would now move over to the offensive, eventually expelling the Persians from Europe, the Aegean islands and Ionia before the war finally came to an end in 449 BC Xerxes, Darius' son and successor, launched a third expedition on a massive scale on land and sea. To avoid the risk of losing the fleet in a storm Xerxes ordered a canal to be dug through the Athos peninsula, a notoriously stormy area. As the army advanced along the Thracian coast Persian diplomats attempted to persuade the Greeks to submit. Many cities and the Greek oracle at Delphi decided to accept Persian terms, but some twenty cities, under the leadership of Sparta, refused to yield. On August, 480 B.C., 300 Spartans and 5 600 other warriors died at Thermopylae in a vain attempt to stop the Persian advance. Then, as Xerxes' army marched south, the Athenians were compelled to evacuate the city, which was burnt by the Persians. Yet the Persians had difficulty in supplying their army and Xerxes decided to attack the Greek fleet, which had taken refuge in the Strait of Salamis near Athens. In the narrow Strait, the superior Persian fleet became disorganized and the Greeks, by skillful maneuvering, were able to win a decisive victory. Xerxes ordered an immediate retreat to prevent his army from being trapped. A token army was left in Greece but this force was destroyed the following year at the Battle of Plataea. After this defeat the Persians abandoned their expansionist aims and the independence of Greek civilization was secured. The eventual triumph of the Greeks was achieved by alliances of many city-states (the exact composition changing over time), allowing the pooling of resources and division of labor. Although alliances between city states occurred before this time, nothing on this scale had been seen before. The rise of Athens and Sparta as pre-eminent powers during this conflict led directly to the Peloponnesian War, which saw further development of the nature of warfare, strategy and tactics. Following King of Persia’s Darius I account of the Thracian conquest, he concentrated on building up to the story’s climax, Xerxes’ invasion. The first fatal step on the path leading to direct confrontation between European Greece, particularly Athens and Persia was , Herodotus’ vision, the Ionian revolt- a doomed un-heroic episode, yet fuelling the Persian King’s desire for exacting vengeance from Athens. This is in Herodotean perspective, henceforth determine the Persian Strategy. (Cited from the Persian Empire: A corpus of sources of Achaemenid Period, 2007) The Peloponnesian War (431 BC-404 BC) was a devastating military conflict in Ancient Greece fought between Athens and its empire and the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases. In the first, the Archidamian War, Sparta launched repeated invasions of Attica, while Athens took advantage of its naval supremacy to raid the coast of the Peloponnese while attempting to suppress signs of unrest in its empire. This attack failed disastrously with the destruction of the entire force. Then, throughout the final phase, Sparta, now receiving support from Persia, supported rebellions in Athens' subject states in the Aegean Sea and Ionia, undermining Athens' empire and eventually depriving the city of naval supremacy. The destruction of Athens' fleet at Aegospotami effectively ended the war, and Athens surrendered in the following year. (Peloponnesian War, Squidoo.com) Panhellenism during classical ages was a political ideology supporting the belief that the Greek cities could solve their political, social, and economic problems by uniting in common cause and conquering all or part of the mighty Persian Empire. Although the origins of panhellenism should be found in 5th century, it was during the 4th century it reached its peak. Beginning with the Olympic Oration of Gorgias and a little later with Lysias (probably 388 BC), it was finally culminated later with Isocrates. (Macedonian Panhellenism, n.d) King Philip II ruled Macedonia from 359 to 336 BC. He was born in Pella, the capital of the ancient Macedonian kingdom, as the youngest son of king Amyntas III.  After his father’s death, Macedonia slowly disintegrated as his elder brothers and future kings Alexander II and Perdiccas III, unsuccessfully fought against the continuous attacks of the neighboring Thracians, Illyrians, and Greeks. The Thracians were already in possession of eastern Macedonia, the strongest Greek military power of Thebes continuously intervened in the internal Macedonian politics, the Greeks colonies on the edge of Macedonia, particularly Olynthus, were obstacle to Macedonia's economy and presented a military danger, and the invasions of the Illyrians put north-western Macedonia under their occupation. Victory of the destruction of the Persian Empire was achieved by Alexander the Great, son of King Phillip II, who utilized warfare and planning strategies to conquer the Empire. To add success to victory, he had 10 000 of the soldiers marry Persian women and he himself took a Persian wife. (Alexander the Great, Macedonian Conqueror, November 2010) Works Cited Page Butler, Chris, FC23A: Persian Wars (2007), retrieved from: http://www.flowofhistory.com/units/birth/3/FC23A History of Macedonia.com, Macedonian Panhellenism, (n.d), retrieved from: http://historyofmacedonia.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/macedonian-pan-hellenism-alexander-asian-expedition Kuhrt, The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources of the Achaemenid Period, (2007), retrieved from: http://books.google.com.jm/books?id=XWbhmebyhxAC&dq=persian+strategy+in+hegemony&source=gbs_navlinks_s Persian Wars: the third invasion, (n.d.), retrieved from http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/maptext_n2/perswar.html Squidoo.com, Peloponnesian War, (n.d.), retrieved from: http://www.squidoo.com/peloponnesianwar Alexander the Great, Macedonian Conqueror, (Nov 2010), retrieved from: http://www.carpenoctem.tv/military/alex.html Read More

 

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