Had the Athenians lost, Greece would have eventually come under the control of the Persians and all the subsequent culture and accomplishmenst of the Greeks would probably not have taken the form they did. At the head of the Greek troops were ten strategists. This factor was MOST important in making Athens the most powerful Greek city-state after the Persian Wars. As the Persian army advanced towards the Northern Greek Poleis (quite a number of whom would eventually Medize rather than face the immense Persian horde in battle) a decision had been made by the Greeks to attempt a delay of the Persian army before it entered Greece proper. Shortly afterward the Persian fleet was crushed in the straits off the island of Salamis by a Greek force. After the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans set up an oligarchy in Athens, which was called the Thirty. However, the more immediate reason for the war was Athenian control of the Delian League, the vast naval alliance that allowed it to dominate the Mediterranean Sea. The Persian army had a few initial successes. The Thirty sent an army, but failed to achieve anything. For example, Naxos was the first member of the League to attempt to secede, in approximately 471 BCE. Sparta. © AskingLot.com LTD 2021 All Rights Reserved. Historians also speculate that Sparta decided to leave the League for pragmatic reasons, remaining unconvinced that it was possible to secure long-term security for Greeks residing in Asia Minor, and as a result of their unease with Athenian efforts to increase their power. Additionally, Athens and its ambitions caused increasing instability in Greece. Darius had died in 485 B.C. Army phalanx lined up. Greek and Persian cultures clashed in the Persian Wars. Persian battle tactics that previously had served them well entailed stationing their archers at the front to fire volley after volley of arrows into the enemy ranks, wreaking havoc and instilling fear. Why did Athens lose the Peloponnesian War? Like the Trojan War, the Persian Wars were a defining moment in Greek history. And due to an ill-conceived Spartan foreign policy, Athens was able to recover. The Persian wars against Greece were caused because the Darius, the Persian king, wanted to expand their empire. Athens, and other Greek cities, sent aid, but were quickly forced to back down after defeat in 494 BCE. The Greeks were, ultimately, victorious and their civilization preserved. The defeat at Thermopylae, though glorious, allowed the Persians to make in-roads into Greece. The Persian Empire adopted a divide-and-rule strategy in relation to the Greek city-states in the wake of the Persian Wars, stoking already simmering conflicts, including the rivalry between Athens and Sparta, to protect the Persian Empire against further Greek attacks. 480 BCE. It was later defeated and forced to tear down its defensive city walls, surrender its fleet, and lost voting privileges in the League. After the second Persian invasion of Greece was halted, Sparta withdrew from the Delian League and reformed the Peloponnesian League with its original allies. Responding, an alliance of Greek city-states, led by Athens and Sparta, assembled a fleet and an army to oppose the invaders. What is internal and external criticism of historical sources? The Persian Wars Eric D. Blanco Persia, known as Iran, was the largest empire the world had ever seen by the 5th century B.C.E. It was fought between the Athenians and the Persians.Athens was supported by a small force from the city of Plataea. The powerful Delian League formed by the Greek states to fight Persia had a vast treasury and other resources. Xerxes returned to Persia but left a military force in Greece under his general, Mardonius. The Greeks had built towns on the Turkish coast that were under Persian rule. What were the major events of the Persian Wars? The second is that the Persians were completely unprepared for and unable to adapt to the Greeks tactics. The Greek city-states of Athens and Eretria had aided the unsuccessful Ionian Revolt against the Persian Empire of Darius I in 499–494 BC. As a result of the allied Greek success, a large contingent of the Persian fleet was destroyed and all Persian garrisons were expelled from Europe, marking an end of Persia’s advance westward into the continent. Answer and Explanation: For Greece, the end of the Persian Wars led to the emergence of Athens as a powerful force in the Aegean and to an eventual military confrontation with Sparta. Their strategy was to keep the Greeks distracted with in-fighting, so as to stop the tide of counterattacks reaching the Persian Empire. From the Greek historian Polybius list the differences between Carthage and Tome at … Thasos, another League member, also defected when, in 465 BCE, Athens founded the colony of Amphipolis on the Strymon River, which threatened Thasos’ interests in the mines of Mt Pangaion. War elephants temporarily stopped the Arab army, but when Arab veterans returned from the Syrian fronts where they had been fighting against Byzantine armies, they taught the Arab army how to deal with these beasts. At its peak, Sparta overpowered many key Greek states, including the elite Athenian navy. Key Points. After initial Persianvictories, the Persianswere eventually defeated, both at sea and on land. Darius, moreover, was a usurper and had spent considerable time extinguishing revolts against his rule. During this time, Greek was tiny and only covered the southern tip of the Greek peninsula. Spartans were defeated by Persians, but the city of Sparta was not. Subsequently, the Persians suffered many defeats at the hands of the Greeks, led by the Athenians. Athens, and other Greek cities, sent aid, but were quickly forced to back down after defeat in 494 BCE. The Athenian Acropolis was destroyed by the Persians, but the Athenian response was to build the beautiful buildings whose ruins we can still see today. The development of a navy and democracy (The Delian League); lead to the growth of an Athenian Empire in the Age of Pericle. 490 BCE. The warswith the Persianshad a great effecton ancient Greeks. The Greek victory was aided by the strategy of Themistocles. The defeat by Thebes in the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC ended Sparta's prominent role, though it maintained its political independence until the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 BC. Just so, which was a result of the Persian wars for Athens? The Spartans, although they had taken part in the war, withdrew from the Delian League early on, believing that the war’s initial purpose had been met with the liberation of mainland Greece and the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Which statement best describes the outcome of the Persian wars? These settlers were from thre… Once that objective was achieved, Persian infantry would move in to slaughter the confused opposition, with cavalry used only to complet… The political, economic, or military predominance or control of one state over others. Why did Sparta want to weaken Athens power in ancient Greece. Focused on their petty wars, the Greek states remained oblivious to the growing power of Macedonia to their north. What happened after the Peloponnesian War? The Persian Empire was still relatively young and prone to revolts amongst its subject peoples. The Spartans led the army and Athens led the navy. According to Thucydides, the siege of Thasos marked the transformation of the League from an alliance into a hegemony. The Battle of Salamis. How did the Persian wars and their aftermath affect the politics and culture of ancient Greece and Iran? Athens became a major naval power in preparation for the Persian invasion. The Spartan withdrawal from the League had the effect, however, of allowing Athens to establish unchallenged naval and commercial power, unrivaled throughout the Hellenic world. The violent actions of Spartan leader Pausanias at the siege of Byzantium, for instance, alienated many of the Greek states from Sparta, and led to a shift in the military command of the Delian League from Sparta to Athens. Athens and Sparta led resistance to Persian invasions, and … The statement that best describes the outcome of the Persian Wars is "The Greeks were able to stop a Persian invasion, and the Persian Empire stopped trying to conquer Greece." The revenge of the Persians was postponed 10 years by internal conflicts in the Persian Empire, until Darius's son Xerxes returned to Greece in 480 BC with a staggeringly large army (modern estimates suggest between 150,000–250,000 men). Greek civilization in the 5th century Intellectual achievements The effect of the Persian Wars on philosophy. Xerxes’ army, aided by northern Greeks who had joined it, marched south. An army including a contingent of Spartans (who were greatly outnumbered by other Greeks, but you never hear about them) was defeated at Thermopylae in 480 BC. but the Persians lost. As a result of its role in the Persian Wars, Athens emerged as the leader of Greece. Thasos allied with Persia and petitioned Sparta for assistance, but Sparta was unable to help because it was facing the largest helot revolution in its history. After a three-year long siege, Thasos was recaptured and forced back into the Delian League, though it also lost its defensive walls and fleet, its mines were turned over to Athens, and the city-state was forced to pay yearly tribute and fines. Corinth and Thebes demanded that Athens should be destroyed and all its citizens should be enslaved, but Sparta refused. What effect did the Persian wars have on the role of Athens in the Greek world? What were the 4 major battles of the Persian War? In September the Persians burned Athens, which, however, by that time had been evacuated. An association of Greek city-states under the leadership of Athens, the purpose of which was to continue fighting the Persian Empire after the Greek victories at the end of the Second Persian invasion of Greece. 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