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The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) was an Ancient Greek military conflict, fought by Athens and its empire against 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 period of the war was concluded in 421 BC, with the signing of the Peace of Nicias. That treaty, however, was

soon undermined by renewed fighting in the Peloponnese. In 415 BC, Athens dispatched a massive expeditionary force to attack Syracuse in Sicily; the attack failed disastrously, with the destruction of the entire force, in 413 BC.

This ushered in the final phase of the war, generally referred to either as the Decelean War, or the Ionian War. In this 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.

The Peloponnesian War reshaped the Ancient Greek world. On the level of international relations, Athens, the strongest city-state in Greece prior to the war's beginning, was reduced to a state of near-complete subjection, while Sparta was established as the leading power of Greece.

The economic costs of the war were felt all across Greece; poverty became widespread in the Peloponnese, while Athens found itself completely devastated, and never regained its pre-war prosperity. The war also wrought subtler changes to Greek society; the conflict between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta, each of which supported friendly political factions within other states, made civil war a common occurrence in the Greek world.

Greek warfare, meanwhile, originally a limited and formalized form of conflict, transformed into an all-out struggle between city-states, complete with atrocities on a scale never before seen in Greece. Shattering religious and cultural taboos, devastating vast swathes of countryside, and destroying whole cities, the Peloponnesian War marked the dramatic end to the fifth century golden age of Greece.

Sources

The Peloponnesian War was the first military conflict from which a significant volume of contemporary accounts have survived. The most famous such account is that of the Athenian, Thucydides, whose History of the Peloponnesian War covered the years from the beginning of the war until 411 BC.

His work, accepted as definitive by a number of historians since his time, has to a large extent shaped modern perspectives on the Peloponnesian War and the world in which it took place. At the beginning of the war, Thucydides was an Athenian general and statesman, a political ally of Pericles; in 424 BC, however, he was exiled for failing to protect a key city under his command, and his history was written at least in part during the twenty years he spent outside his native city.

A number of historians wrote works continuing where Thucydides' account left off; only one of these survives intact, that being Xenophon's Hellenica, which covers the period from 411 BC to 362 BC. That work, although valuable as the only contemporary account of that period, has been criticized and called into question on a number of accounts by modern historians.

Xenophon's work is not a history in the tradition of Thucydides, but rather a memoir, written for an audience already familiar with the events described; furthermore, Xenophon exhibits numerous biases in his work, and frequently omits information he finds distasteful; historians treat his work with caution.

Other sources for the war are either written long after the war or survive only in fragmentary form. Diodorus Siculus covered the entire war in his "Historical Library," written in the 1st century BC, his work is of variable quality and reliability, but historians have found it useful as a continuous account, and one that offers a different perspective from Xenophon.

Several of Plutarch's lives deal extensively with the war; although Plutarch was primarily a biographer and moralist, modern historians have drawn useful information from these works. Modern researchers have also made use of a number of speeches, artistic works, and philosophical writings of the period, many of which touch on the events of the war at one or more points.

Prelude

Pentecontaetia

Thucydides famously claimed that the Spartans went to war in 431 BC "because they were afraid of the further growth of Athenian power, seeing, as they did, that the greater part of Hellas was under the control of Athens" Indeed, the fifty years of Greek history that preceded the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War had been marked by the development of Athens as a major power in the Mediterranean world.

After the defeat of the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, Athens soon assumed the leadership of the coalition of Greek states that continued the Greco-Persian Wars with attacks on Persian-held territories in the Aegean and Ionia. What ensued was a period, referred to as the Pentecontaetia (the name given it by Thucydides), in which Athens,

first as leader of the Delian League, then later as ruler of what increasingly came to be recognized as an Athenian Empire, carried out an aggressive war against Persia, which had, by the middle of the century, driven the Persians from the Aegean and forced them to cede control of a vast range of territories to Athens.

At the same time, Athens greatly increased its own power; a number of its formerly independent allies were reduced, over the course of the century, to the status of tribute-paying subject states; this tribute was used to support a powerful fleet and, after the middle of the century, to fund massive public works programs in Athens.

Friction between Athens and Peloponnesian states, including Sparta, began early in the Pentecontaetia; in the wake of the departure of the Persians from Greece, Sparta attempted to prevent the reconstruction of the walls of Athens (without the walls, Athens would have been defenseless against a land attack and subject to Spartan control), but was rebuffed. According to Thucydides, although the Spartans took no action at this time, they "secretly felt aggrieved."

Conflict between the states flared up again in 465 BC, when a helot revolt broke out in Sparta. The Spartans summoned forces from all their allies, including Athens, to help them suppress the revolt. Athens sent out a sizable contingent, but upon its arrival, this force was dismissed by the Spartans, while those of all the other allies were permitted to remain.

According to Thucydides, the Spartans acted in this way out of fear that the Athenians would switch side and support the helots; the offended Athenians repudiated their alliance with Sparta. When the rebellious helots were finally forced to surrender and permitted to evacuate the country, the Athenians settled them at the strategic city of Naupactus on the Corinthian Gulf.

In 459 BC, Athens took advantage of a war between its neighbor Megara and Corinth, both Spartan allies, to conclude an alliance with Megara, giving the Athenians a critical foothold on the isthmus of Corinth. A fifteen year conflict, commonly known as the First Peloponnesian War, ensued, in which Athens fought intermittently against Sparta, Corinth, Aegina, and a number of other states.

For a time during this conflict, Athens controlled not only Megara but also Boeotia; at its end, however, in the face of a massive Spartan invasion of Attica, the Athenians ceded the lands they had won on the Greek mainland, and Athens and Sparta recognized each other's right to control their respective alliance systems. The war was officially ended by the Thirty Years' Peace, signed in the winter of 446/5 BC.

Breakdown of the peace

The Thirty Year's Peace was first tested in 440 BC, when Athens' powerful ally Samos rebelled from its alliance. The rebels quickly secured the support of a Persian satrap, and Athens found itself facing the prospect of revolts throughout the empire.

The Spartans, whose intervention would have been the trigger for a massive war to determine the fate of the empire, called a congress of their allies to discuss the possibility of war with Athens. At that congress, however, the decision was made not to intervene; the Athenians crushed the revolt, and peace was maintained.

The second test of the peace, and the immediate cause of the war, came in the form of several specific Athenian actions that affected Sparta's allies, notably Corinth. Athens was persuaded to intervene in a dispute between Corinth and Corcyra, and, at the Battle of Sybota, a small contingent of Athenian ships played a critical role in preventing a Corinthian fleet from capturing Corcyra.

It is worth noting, however, that the Athenians were instructed not to intervene in the battle. The presence of Athenian warships standing off from the engagement was enough to dissuade the Corinthians from exploiting their victory, thus sparing much of the routed Corcyraean fleet. Following this, Athens placed Potidaea, a tributary ally of Athens but an old colony of Corinth, under siege.

The Corinthians, outraged by these actions, began to lobby Sparta to take action against Athens. Meanwhile, the Corinthians were unofficially aiding Potidaea by sneaking contingents of men into the besieged city to help defend it. This was a direct violation of the Thirty Year's Peace which (among other things) outlined that the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League respect the autonomy and internal affairs of one another.

A further source of provocation was an Athenian decree, issued in 433/2 BC, imposing stringent trade sanctions on Megara (once more a Spartan ally after the conclusion of the First Peloponnesian War). These sanctions, known as the Megarian decree, were largely ignored by Thucydides, but modern economic historians have noted that forbidding Megara to trade with the prosperous Athenian empire would have been disastrous for the Megarans, and have accordingly considered the decree to be a contributing factor in bringing about the war.

In the context of these events, the Spartans called a conference of the Peloponnesian League at Sparta in 432 BC. This conference was attended by Athenian representatives as well as those from the members of the league, and became the scene of a debate between the Athenians and the Corinthians.

Thucydides reports that the Corinthians condemned Sparta's inactivity up to that point, warning the Spartans that if they continued to remain passive while the Athenians were energetically active, they would soon find themselves outflanked and without allies.

The Athenians, in response, reminded the Spartans of their record of military success and opposition to Persia, and warned them of the dangers of confronting such a powerful state. Undeterred, a majority of the Spartan assembly voted to declare that the Athenians had broken the peace, essentially declaring war.

The "Archidamian War"

Sparta and its allies, with the exception of Corinth, were almost exclusively land based powers, able to summon large land armies which were very nearly unbeatable (thanks to the legendary Spartan forces). The Athenian Empire, although based in the peninsula of Attica, spread out across the islands of the Aegean Sea; Athens drew its immense wealth from tribute paid from these islands. Athens maintained its empire through naval power. Thus, the two powers were relatively unable to fight decisive battles.

The Spartan strategy during the first war, known as the Archidamian War after Sparta's king Archidamus II, was to invade the land surrounding Athens. While this invasion deprived Athens of the productive land around their city, Athens itself was able to maintain access to the sea, and did not suffer much.

Many of the citizens of Attica abandoned their farms and moved inside the long walls, which connected Athens to its port of Piraeus. The Spartans also occupied Attica for periods of only three weeks at a time; in the tradition of earlier hoplite warfare the soldiers expected to go home to participate in the harvest.

Moreover, Spartan slaves, known as helots, needed to be kept under control, and could not be left unsupervised for long periods of time. The longest Spartan invasion, in 430 BC, lasted just forty days.

The Athenian strategy was initially guided by the strategos, or general, Pericles, who advised the Athenians to avoid open battle with the far more numerous and better trained Spartan hoplites, relying instead on the fleet.

The Athenian fleet, the most dominant in Greece, went on the offensive, winning victories at Naupactus (now known as "Návpaktos"). In 430, however, an outbreak of a plague hit Athens. The plague ravaged the densely packed city, and in the long run, was a significant cause of its final defeat.

The plague wiped out over 30,000 citizens, sailors and soldiers and even Pericles and his sons. Roughly one quarter of the Athenian population died. Athenian manpower was correspondingly drastically reduced and even foreign mercenaries refused to hire themselves out to a city riddled with plague.

The fear of plague was so widespread that the Spartan invasion of Attica was abandoned, their troops being unwilling to risk contact with the diseased enemy.

After the death of Pericles, the Athenians turned somewhat against his conservative, defensive strategy and to the more aggressive strategy of bringing the war to Sparta and its allies. Rising to particular importance in Athenian democracy at this time was Cleon, a leader of the hawkish elements of the Athenian democracy.

Led militarily by a clever new general Demosthenes (not to be confused with the later Athenian orator Demosthenes), the Athenians managed some successes as they continued their naval raids on the Peloponnese. Athens stretched their military activities into Boeotia and Aetolia, and began fortifying posts around the Peloponnese. One of these posts was near Pylos on a tiny island called Sphacteria, where the course of the first war turned in Athens's favour.

The post off Pylos struck Sparta where it was weakest: its dependence on the helots. Sparta was dependent on a class of slaves, known as helots, to tend the fields while its citizens trained to become soldiers. The helots made the Spartan system possible, but now the post off Pylos began attracting helot runaways. In addition, the fear of a general revolt of helots emboldened by the nearby Athenian presence drove the Spartans to action.

Demosthenes, however, outmanoeuvred the Spartans and trapped a group of Spartan soldiers on Sphacteria as he waited for them to surrender. Weeks later, though, Demosthenes proved unable to finish off the Spartans.

After boasting that he could put an end to the affair in the Assembly, the inexperienced Cleon won a great victory at the Battle of Pylos and the related Battle of Sphacteria in 425 BC. The Athenians captured between 300 and 400 Spartan hoplites. The hostages gave the Athenians a valuable bargaining chip.

After the battle, Brasidas, a Spartan general, raised an army of allies and helots and went for one of the sources of Athenian power, capturing the Athenian colony of Amphipolis, which happened to control several nearby silver mines which the Athenians were using to finance the war.

It is worth noting here that Thucydides the historian was a general at this time for Athens, and it was due to his failure to stop Brasidas capturing Amphipolis that he was ostracised. Thucydides arrived too late to reinforce the troops already defending Amphipolis, and as such was blamed for its fall. In subsequent battles, both Brasidas and Cleon were killed (see Battle of Amphipolis). The Spartans and Athenians agreed to exchange the hostages for the towns captured by Brasidas, and signed a truce.

Peace of Nicias

With the death of Cleon and Brasidas, zealous war hawks for both nations, the Peace of Nicias was able to last for some six years. However, it was a time of constant skirmishing in and around the Peloponnese. While the Spartans refrained from action themselves, some of their allies began to talk of revolt. They were supported in this by Argos, a powerful state within the Peloponnese that had remained independent of Lacedaemon.

With the support of the Athenians, the Argives succeeded in forging a coalition of democratic states within the Peloponnese, including the powerful states of Mantinea and Elis. Early Spartan attempts to break up the coalition failed, and the leadership of the Spartan king Agis was called into question. Emboldened, the Argives and their allies, with the support of a small Athenian force under Alcibiades, moved to seize the city of Tegea, near Sparta.

The Battle of Mantinea was the largest land battle fought within Greece during the Peloponnesian War. The Lacedaemonians, with their neighbors the Tegeans, faced the combined armies of Argos, Athens, Mantinea, and Arcadia. In the battle, the allied coalition scored early successes, but failed to capitalize on them, which allowed the Spartan elite forces to defeat the forces opposite them.

The result was a complete victory for the Spartans, which rescued their city from the brink of strategic defeat. The democratic alliance was broken up, and most of its members were reincorporated into the Peloponnesian League. With its victory at Mantinea, Sparta pulled itself back from the brink of utter defeat, and re-established its hegemony throughout the Peloponnese.

Sicilian Expedition

In the 17th year of the war, word came to Athens that one of their distant allies in Sicily was under attack from Syracuse. The people of Syracuse were ethnically Dorian (as were the Spartans), while the Athenians, and their ally in Sicilia, were Ionian. The Athenians felt obliged to assist their ally.

The Athenians did not act solely from altruism: rallied on by Alcibiades, the leader of the expedition, they held visions of conquering all of Sicily. Syracuse, the principal city of Sicily, was not much smaller than Athens, and conquering all of Sicily would have brought Athens an immense amount of resources.

In the final stages of the preparations for departure, the hermai (religious statues) of Athens were mutilated by unknown persons, and Alcibiades was charged with religious crimes.

Alcibiades demanded that he be put on trial at once, so that he may defend himself before the expedition. The Athenians however allowed Alcibiades to go on the expedition without being tried (many believed in order to better plot against him). After arriving in Sicily, Alcibiades was recalled back to Athens for trial.

Fearing that he would be unjustly condemned, Alcibiades defected to Sparta and Nicias was placed in charge of the mission. After his defection, Alcibiades informed the Spartans that the Athenians planned to use Sicily as a springboard for the conquest of all of Italy, and to use the resources and soldiers from these new conquests to conquer all of the Peloponnese.

The Athenian force consisted of over 100 ships and some 5,000 infantry and light-armored troops. Cavalry was limited to about 30 horses, which proved to be no match for the large and highly trained Syracusan cavalry. Upon landing in Sicily, several cities immediately joined the Athenian cause. Instead of attacking at once, Nicias procrastinated and the campaigning season of 415 BC ended with Syracuse scarcely damaged.

With winter approaching, the Athenians were then forced to withdraw into their quarters, and they spent the winter gathering allies and preparing to destroy Syracuse. The delay allowed the Syracusans to send for help from Sparta, who sent their general Gylippus to Sicily with reinforcements.

Upon arriving, he raised up a force from several Sicilian cities, and went to the relief of Syracuse. He took command of the Syracusan troops, and in a series of battles defeated the Athenian forces, and prevented them from invading the city.

Nicias then sent word to Athens asking for reinforcements. Demosthenes was chosen and led another fleet to Sicily, joining his forces with those of Nicias. More battles ensued and again, the Syracusans and their allies defeated the Athenians. Demosthenes argued for a retreat to Athens, but Nicias at first refused. After additional setbacks, Nicias seemed to agree to a retreat until a bad omen, in the form of a lunar eclipse, delayed any withdrawal.

The delay was costly and forced the Athenians into a major sea battle in the Great Harbor of Syracuse. The Athenians were thoroughly defeated. Nicias and Demosthenes marched their remaining forces inland in search of friendly allies. The Syracusan cavalry rode them down mercilessly, eventually killing or enslaving all who were left of the mighty Athenian fleet.

The Second War

The Lacedaemonians were not content with simply sending aid to Sicily; they also resolved to take the war to the Athenians. On the advice of Alcibiades, they fortified Decelea, near Athens, and prevented the Athenians from making use of their land year round. The fortification of Decelea prevented the shipment of supplies overland to Athens, and forced all supplies to be brought in by sea at increased expense.

Perhaps worst of all, the nearby silver mines were totally disrupted, with as many as 20,000 Athenian slaves freed by the Spartan hoplites at Decelea. With the treasury and emergency reserve fund of 1,000 talents dwindling away, the Athenians were forced to demand even more tribute from her subject allies, further increasing tensions and the threat of further rebellion within the Empire.

The Corinthians, the Spartans, and others in the Peloponnesian League sent more reinforcements to Syracuse, in the hopes of driving off the Athenians; but instead of withdrawing, the Athenians sent another hundred ships and another 5,000 troops to Sicily.

Under Gylippus, the Syracusans and their allies were able to decisively defeat the Athenians on land; and Gylippus encouraged the Syracusans to build a navy, which was able to defeat the Athenian fleet when they attempted to withdraw. The Athenian army, attempting to withdraw overland to other, more friendly Sicilian cities, was divided and defeated; the entire Athenian fleet was destroyed, and virtually the entire Athenian army was sold off into slavery.

Following the defeat of the Athenians in Sicily, it was widely believed that the end of the Athenian Empire was at hand. Her treasury was nearly empty, her docks were depleted, and the flower of her youth was dead or imprisoned in a foreign land. They underestimated the strength of the Athenian Empire, but the beginning of the end was indeed at hand.

Athens recovers

Following the destruction of the Sicilian Expedition, Lacedaemon encouraged the revolt of Athens's tributary allies, and indeed, much of Ionia rose in revolt against Athens. The Syracusans sent their fleet to the Peloponnesians, and the Persians decided to support the Spartans with money and ships. Revolt and faction threatened in Athens itself.

The Athenians managed to survive for several reasons. First, their foes were severely lacking in vigor. Corinth and Syracuse were slow to bring their fleets into the Aegean, and Sparta's other allies were also slow to furnish troops or ships.

The Ionian states that rebelled expected protection, and many rejoined the Athenian side. The Persians were slow to furnish promised funds and ships, frustrating battle plans. Perhaps most importantly, Spartan officers were not trained to be diplomats, and were insensitive and politically inept.

At the start of the war, the Athenians had prudently put aside some money and 100 ships that were to be used only as a last resort.

These ships were now released, and served as the core of the Athenians' fleet throughout the rest of the war. An oligarchical revolution occurred in Athens, in which a group of 400 seized power.

A peace with Sparta might have been possible, but the Athenian fleet, now based on the island of Samos, refused to accept the change. In 411 BC this fleet engaged the Spartans at the Battle of Syme. The fleet appointed Alcibiades their leader, and continued the war in Athens's name. Their opposition led to the reinstitution of a democratic government in Athens within two years.

Alcibiades, while condemned as a traitor, still carried weight in Athens. He prevented the Athenian fleet from attacking Athens; instead, he helped restore democracy by more subtle pressure. He also persuaded the Athenian fleet to attack the Spartans at the battle of Cyzicus in 410. In the battle, the Athenians obliterated the Spartan fleet, and succeeded in re-establishing the financial basis of the Athenian Empire.

Between 410 and 406, Athens won a continuous string of victories, and eventually recovered large portions of its empire. All of this was due, in no small part, to Alcibiades.

Lysander triumphs, Athens surrenders

Faction triumphed in Athens: following a minor Spartan victory by their skillful general Lysander at the naval battle of Notium in 406 BC. Alcibiades was not re-elected general by the Atheneans and he exiled himself from the city. He would never again lead Atheneans in battle.

Athens was then victorious at the naval battle of Arginusae. The Spartan fleet under Callicratidas lost 70 ships and the Athenians lost 25 ships. But, due to bad weather, the Athenians were unable to rescue their stranded crews or to finish off the Spartan fleet.

Despite their victory, these failures caused outrage in Athens and led to a controversial trial. The trial resulted in the execution of six of Athen’s top naval commanders. Athen’s naval supremacy would now be challenged without several of its most able military leaders and a demoralized navy.

Unlike some of his predecessors the new Spartan general, Lysander, was not a member of the Spartan royal families and was also formidable in naval strategy; he was an artful diplomat, who had even cultivated good personal relationships with the Persian prince Cyrus, the son of Darius II. Seizing its opportunity, the Spartan fleet sailed at once to the Hellespont, the source of Athens' grain.

Threatened with starvation, the Athenian fleet had no choice but to follow. Through cunning strategy, Lysander totally defeated the Athenian fleet, in 405 BC, at the battle of Aegospotami, destroying 168 ships and capturing some three or four thousand Athenian sailors. Only 12 Athenian ships escaped, and several of these sailed to Cyprus, carrying the "strategos" (General) Conon, who was anxious not to face the judgment of the Assembly.

Facing starvation and disease from the prolonged siege, Athens surrendered in 404 BC, and her allies soon surrendered as well. The democrats at Samos, loyal to the bitter last, held on slightly longer, and were allowed to flee with their lives. The surrender stripped Athens of her walls, her fleet, and all of her overseas possessions.

Corinth and Thebes demanded that Athens should be destroyed and all its citizens should be enslaved. However the Spartans announced their refusal to destroy a city that had done a good service at a time of greatest danger to Greece, and took Athens into their own system. Athens was "to have the same friends and enemies" as Sparta.

By doing so the victorious Spartans proved to be the most clement state that fought Athens and at the same time they turned to be her saviour, as neither Corinth nor Thebes at the time could challenge their decision.

Aftermath

For a short period of time, Athens was ruled by the 'Thirty Tyrants' and democracy was suspended. This was a reactionary regime set up by Sparta. The oligarchs were overthrown and democracy was restored by Thrasybulus in 403 BC.

Although the power of Athens was broken, it made something of a recovery as a result of the Corinthian War and continued to play an active role in Greek politics. Sparta was in turn humbled by Thebes at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC, but it was all brought to an end a few years later when Philip II of Macedon conquered all of Greece.

The war continues to fascinate later generations, both because of the way it engulfed the Greek world, and because the democracy of Athens lost to the far more militant Sparta. Also, the insight Thucydides provides into the motivations of its participants is deeper than what is known about any other war in ancient times.

Warfare in ancient Greece appears to have consisted of set-piece battles between independent city-states. The hoplite was an effective

solution to this situation. A city-state could not afford a professional and/or standing army, so battles had to be fought by the citizens themselves. The tactics and techniques used in battle therefore had to be simple enough to be quickly mastered. Since the equipment was provided by the individual hoplite, it had to be affordable by an average citizen.

The hoplite probably first appeared in the late seventh century BC. In the early Classical Period most battles appear to have primarily involved clashes of opposing phalanxes; tactics were simple and casualties relatively low. Towards the end of the classical period more sophistication seems to have occurred, culminating in the 'new model' army of the Ancient Macedonian Kingdom.

Almost all the famous men of ancient Greece, including philosophers and playwrights, fought as hoplites. The most well-known hoplites were the Spartans, who were trained from childhood in combat and warfare to become an exceptionally disciplined and superior fighting force.

The Spartans

A notable exception to the general pattern of hoplite warfare was the system used by the Spartans. As a result of a social revolution occurring in the 8th-7th centuries BC, the whole Spartan state became militarised. This was made possible by the conquest of neighbouring lands, and the enserfment of the people.

Known as Helots, they farmed the lands owned by the Spartans, thus removing the burden of supporting Sparta from the Spartans themselves. This left the Spartans free to dedicate themselves to the art of war.

From the age of seven onwards, Spartan males were trained for a life of warfare. They were taught iron discipline, and almost programmed to forget about their individuality for the sake of Sparta. The strenuous training and comradeship engendered between Spartans made them ideally suited to hoplite warfare, which required high levels of discipline and selflessness.

Spartans did not fear death; only the shame of defeat in battle. In Spartan military culture, throwing away a soldier's aspis was not acceptable. The saying went: "Come home with this shield or upon it".

It is not quite accurate to describe Spartans as professional soldiers - this was not a trade which they chose to do, but a requirement of their birth. Spartans were not employed as soldiers; instead, they were provided with serfs to support them. This can be compared to feudal Europe; knights were not professional soldiers, but a militaristic caste, supported by the local population.

Nevertheless, despite their obvious differences to other Greek city-states, the Spartans fought in much the same way as other Greeks, only perhaps more effectively. The Spartans did, unusually, have a standard-issue equipment, including a shield called the aspis, featuring the Greek letter lambda (?), in reference to their homeland Lacedaemonia and the bronzed cuirass that was bestowed upon all of the Spartans with their helmet.

Every Spartan wore a scarlet robe to represent them as Spartans, though the cape was never worn in combat. The Helots would usually accompany the Spartans in battles and provide ranged support, for the Spartans thought of archers as a job unfit for a true warrior. The Helots also set camps and performed labour for the Spartans whilst on campaign.

History

The rise and fall of hoplite warfare was intimately connected to the rise and fall of the city-state. As discussed above, hoplites were a solution to the armed clashes between independent city-states. As Greek civilization found itself confronted by the world at large, particularly by the Persians, the emphasis in warfare shifted.

Confronted by huge numbers of enemy troops, individual city-states could not realistically fight alone. During the Greco-Persian Wars (499-448 BCE), alliances between groups of cities (whose composition varied over time) fought against the Persians. This drastically altered the scale of warfare and the numbers of troops involved. The hoplite phalanx proved itself far superior to the Persian infantry at such battles as Marathon and Plataea, as long as it was protected from cavalry.

During this period Athens and Sparta rose to a position of political eminence in Greece, and their rivalry in the aftermath of the Persian wars brought Greece into renewed internal conflict. However, the Peloponnesian War was on a scale unlike conflicts before. Fought between leagues of cities, dominated by Athens and Sparta respectively, the pooled manpower and financial resources allowed a diversification of warfare.

Hoplite warfare was in decline; there were three major battles in the Peloponnesian War, and none proved decisive. Instead there was increased reliance on navies, skirmishers, mercenaries, city walls, siege engines, and non-set piece tactics. These reforms made wars of attrition possible and greatly increased the number of casualties.

In the Persian war, hoplites faced large numbers of skirmishers and missile armed troops, and such troops (e.g. Peltasts) became much more commonly used by the Greeks during the Pelopennesian War. As a result, hoplites began wearing less armour, carrying shorter swords, and in general adapting for greater mobility; this led to the development of the ekdromoi light hoplite.

Late on in the hoplite era, more sophisticated tactics were developed, in particular by the Theban general Epaminondas. These tactics inspired the future king Philip II of Macedon, at the time a hostage in Thebes, in the development of new kind of infantry - the Macedonian Phalanx.

Although clearly a development of the hoplite, the Macedonian phalanx was tactically more versatile, especially used in the combined arms tactics favoured by the Macedonians. These forces defeated the last major hoplite army, at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC), after which Athens and its allies joined the Macedonian empire.

Status

In Greek society

Since hoplites supplied their 'panoply' (in this context meaning his armour and weapons) from their own personal equipment, they needed to be sufficiently wealthy to afford this. This would mean procuring a helmet, cuirass and greaves as well as a spear, sword and shield. As a result, hoplites were usually recruited from the middle-classes.

An illustration of this can be found in the Athenian class system of the Solon constitution. The four classes (in ascending order) were thetes, zeugites, hippeis and pentacosiomedimnoi (measured in produce per year of land).

The three lower classes were drafted into the military according to what they could provide. The thetes rowed the vast Athenian fleet of ships; the hippeis, who could afford horses (an aristocratic animal, never used agriculturally) formed cavalry; and the zeugites fought as hoplites.

This can be compared to the military system used in the early-to-mid Roman Republic, wherein the Roman citizenry was divided into distinct social classes. These classes (excepting the landless proletarii) were used as different troop types; the lowest formed skirmishers (velites), the highest fought as cavalry (equites), and the middle classes, forming the bulk of the army, fought as heavy infantry.

In this system, troops were expected to provide their own equipment, so only those rich enough to afford the armour and weapons could fight as heavy infantry. Indeed, the success of both the Greek hoplite armies, and the early Roman army can be ascribed to their middle class makeup.

These were landed, relatively wealthy citizens with a vested interest in the defense of their state; they had much more to lose than the landless classes, and fought with proportional valour.

The Hellenistic armies is the term applied to the armies of the successor kingdoms which emerged after the death of the Alexander the Great.

After his death, Alexander's huge empire was torn between his succesors, the Diadochi. During the Wars of the Diadochi

the Macedonian army, developed by Alexander and his father Philip II gradually changed while adopting new units and tactics and further developing Macedonian warfare. The armies of the Diadochi already differ from that of Alexander's but the change was epitomized in the main Hellenistic kingdoms of the Seleucid Empire, the Ptolemaic Egypt , the Antigonid kingdom and in the fraction states of the Attalid Pergamum, Pontus, Epirus and other Hellenistic principalities.

Numerical strength

Would be impossible to ascertain and nail down definitely since every campaign, and ruler would require a differing strength. The Diadochi were capable of bringing to the field some of the largest armies of their day, and could have easily outmatched the numerical strength of either Phillip II or Alexander's Macedonian full strength contingents.

Typical units and formations

Hellenistic infantry

Heavily armed for the period in question. Hellenistic armies were, by and large, quite similar to that of Philip and Alexander's Macedonian armies. The Hellenistic Infantry were just one of many components that worked together to form a combined, multi-faceted army. The backbone of these forces was the heavy phalanx infantry formation, characterized by its dense ranks, and long, forward projecting spears.

The soldiers of these phalanxes were professional soldiers (known as phalangites), drilled in tactics, weapon use (their spear and short sword) and formation. This made them incredibly efficient when it came to manuevering on the battlefield, and could therefore execute complex movements with relative ease.

It is crucial to note that the role of the phalanx on the battlefield was to act as an anchor for the entire army, holding the enemy in place, while the cavalry struck the enemy flanks and delivered the fatal blow to cripple their opponents. The phalanx was more or less pathetic when employed as a purely offensive weapon (it was slow and could not give chase to the enemy, nor could it offer any tactical advantage from maneuverability because it had none).

Equipment varied over the years, and was also dependent on the geographical region, and preference of the ruler, but it basically boiled down to the following. For armour: a simple, open-faced helm (sometimes with cheek protectors), a leather, or padded cuirass to cover the torso, and a large shield, secured by a shoulder harness, or, more often than not, a buckler (a more abrupt, smaller shield), fastened to the offhand (left) of the phalangite. Greaves were also worn to cover the shins of the soldier as he stood his ground.

The primary weapon of the phalangite was the sarissa, a massive 18 foot spear, pioneered by Philip of Macedon to outrange existed spear formations during his time. In one-one-one combat this spear was utterly useless, but in a compact forward facing infantry formation this spear was unsurpassed in its effectiveness.

The first 5 ranks of the phalanx would have their spears projecting horizontally to face the enemy, and the subsequent back ranks would each angle back their spears in a serried fashion. As the front ranks were killed off and depleted in combat, the rear ranks would lower their spears and step forward to maintain cohesion in the line.

In the event of close-combat melee, or in circumstances where the sarissa was impractical, a short sword was also worn to help protect the phalangite. It could be used in an underhand stabbing motion, intended to disembowel the front line of the enemy without blocking the lines of the spears, which were coming over their shoulders.

The primary drawback of these infantry formations is no doubt their vulnerability to attack from the rear and flanks, since all their spears are pointing forwards, creating an inpenetrable wall. This formation also had a tendency to fracture when led across broken terrain for extended periods of time in battle formation. The Romans would later be able to use this weakness against the phalanx as their more agile legionnaires could sift into the broken ranks and create mayhem amonst the phalangites.

As the reign of the Diadochi persisted (late 4th century, to technically the fall of Ptolemy XII of Egypt at the hands of Julius Caesar- mid 1st Century), they grew to rely more and more upon the phalanx to ensure victory. The cavalry and light infantry wings of the holistic combat formation were neglected and fell into disrepair as the phalanx was deepened and given longer spears.

The belief that these phalanx walls were unbreakable in combat proved to be a false hope, and were quickly dispelled when confronted by the vigourous and flexible formations of the Roman legions at Pydna and Cynosephalae (2nd Century BC).

It is worth noting the ongoing comparison of which formation was truly better: the legion or the phalanx. Many detractors to the phalanx, which favour the legion, state that in many engagements between the two (such as the afrementioned Pydna and Cynosephalae), the legion was the clear victor, and hence was a superior formation.

However proponents of the phalanx suggest that, had the other arms of the Diadochi army been properly maintained (i.e. the companion cavalry and light infantry), than the weaknesses of the phalanx would have been offset and it could have successfully held the field against the legions. Remember, Pyrrhus of Epirus gained several (if costly) victories over the Romans (275 BC at Heraclea), and he properly coordinated between the phalanx and other arms available in his forces.

Hellenistic cavalry

Heavy Hellenistic cavalry

The first version of heavy cavalry developed and employed by the Hellenic Kingdoms were the Companion Cavalry, the landed aristocracy which Philip II and his son Alexander relied so heavily upon for their killing strokes. Stirrups were unknown during this time, so impact charges were limited in their effectiveness.

They were armoured thoroughly enough, with a plated cuirass (chest and backplate), greaves, and a helmet. Their weapons consisted of a long spear (xyston), and a sword in the event that their spear was broken.

It appears that no shield was worn by the Companion Cavalry, perhaps because it decreased manaeuverability or balance. In any event, it didn't seem to hamper their effectiveness which relied on a bold charge into the weak link in the enemy lines which were held in place by the phalanx, followed by savage hand to hand combat.

Cataphracts

The cataphracts are the heavily armed and armoured cavalrymen. The Hellenic Kingdoms inherited this style of cavalry from the eastern regions it came to dominate since Alexander trounced the Persian Empire during his reign (336 - 323 B.C.). Both man and horse were entirely encased in armour, either as scale or banded segments sewn onto a fabric.

Even the riders face was covered in seamless metal helm. As you can well imagine, the weight carried by the horse was quite cumbersome, and swift, prolonged charges were out of the question. Instead cataphracts strolled to within a reasonable distance before a charge and only exerted energy for s single shot at the enemy. Once in combat the cataphract could wade through the enemy ranks at his own discretion, both himself and his horse being impervious to much damage.

The staying power of these units, due to their armour was immense, but the armour was stifling and tiresome if worn for extended periods of time, and a great amount of endurance was necessary to wear them, let alone fight a pitched battle in them.

The standard weapon of the cataphract was the spear, something common among most cavalry. For close-quarter combat, a mace or sword was made available as a secondary weapon. The mace and cataphract ideas were combined into the Sassanid-introduced and Roman named Cibinarii who were armoured man and beast in chainmail and armed with a mace.

Light Hellenistic cavalry

Light horse archers

Probably recruited from the Scythians, famous horse archers

Special units

Chariots

More novel than effective. The shock value of these weapons in Hellenistic armies was undeniable, but they were impractical, and only ideal under narrow circumstances. Against a massed formation of pikemen (i.e. phalanx) scythed chariots were useless, but against broken or loose formations of infantry they were more valuable. More often than not, chariots were a rarity amongst Hellenistic armies, and their impact on the battlefield was insignificant.

Elephants

The war elephant took a tremendous amount of time and money to train. Depending on the kingdom, two different breeds of elephant could be exploited for war: the African elephant (used by the Ptolemies of Egypt), or the Indian elephant (used by the Seleucid Empire). The Indian elephant was much smaller than the African elephant, but still a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield.

War elephants were typically fitted with a tower on their back which housed several soldiers armed with spears and projectiles (arrows, javelins, darts, sling-stones) to unload on the enemy. The rider(mahaout) sat across the neck and guided the elephant into battle.

Armour too, was sometimes wrapped around the elephant to protect them and increase their natural defence offered by their hides. The charge of an elephant column was nearly impossible to withstand, due to the interia and weight that would be bearing down on their opponents. A charge, if successfully executed, could be the deciding factor in the outcome of a battle.

The difficulty with elephants, and every commander that had the luxury (and anxiety) of dealing with them was their tendency to trample their friendly units, as well as the enemy once they were panicked.

Hannibal of Carthage was the victim of his own elephants at the Battle of Zama in 202 B.C. when Scipio Africanus had his legionaries clash their weapons against their shields during an elephant rush and it scared them into a panicked rout. This, coupled with the betrayel of the Numidians to Scipio's side allowed him to narrowly defeat Hannibal in what would have otherwise been a Carthaginian victory.

The Greco-Persian Wars were a series of conflicts between several Greek city-states and the Persian Empire that started in 499 BC and lasted until 448 BC.

The expression "Persian Wars" usually refers to both Persian invasions of the Greek mainland in 490 BC and in 480-479 BC; in both cases, the allied Greeks successfully repelled the invasions. Not all Greeks fought against the

Persians; some were neutral and others allied with Persia, especially as its massive armies approached.

What is known today is derived primarily from Greek sources (mainly Herodotus), and to a lesser extent some Roman writings. The Persians enter Greek history after they conquered the Lydians and the Greek city-states of Ionia that were previously controlled by the Lydians.

When in 499 BC an attempt to help restore the aristocrats in Naxos failed, the Ionians rebelled against the Persians. Token aid was sent from the Greek mainland, especially Athens, but this failed to prevent a Persian victory. Persian General Mardonius set off in a punitive expedition in 492 BC in Thrace to consolidate Persian power but was stopped by a storm. An amphibious force under Datis and Artaphernes captured Naxos and razed Eretria but was defeated in Marathon a few days later by General Miltiades of Athens.

Ten years later, in 480 BC, after massive preparation King Xerxes led a very large force to conquer Greece. At the Battle of Thermopylae, a small force of about 7,000 Greeks, most of which surrendered, led by King Leonidas of Sparta held off a large Persian army that numbered around 200,000.

For three days, the Greeks fought a desperate action to delay the entry of the Persians into the Greek heartland. They caused very large Persian casualties, but all the Greeks were eventually killed in the battle. Now in Greece proper, the Persians sacked and razed the city of Athens under the orders of Xerxes, probably in vengeance of the Ionian Revolt and burning down Sardis led by the Athenians.

The Persian fleet was ultimately defeated at the battle of Salamis. Xerxes left Mardonius with part of the original force to finish the job and returned to Asia Minor. The next year Mardonius was defeated and killed in the battle of Plataea; the remaining Persian fleet was destroyed in the battle of Mycale. The Greek fleet sailed to the Hellespont where the Athenians and the freshly-liberated Ionians besieged Sestus.

In the next year the Spartans under Pausanias campaigned for the last time in Byzantium which fell after a siege. Pausanias was recalled and the Athenians continued alone. They set up the Delian League to continue the fight. The Persians were first driven from Thrace and then, after the battle of Eurymedon from Ionia. The war moved to Cyprus and then Egypt, after it revolted against the Persians.

Sparta became alarmed over the power of Athens, which controlled the Delian League, and declared war. Athens was eventually defeated in Egypt by a Persian force commanded by Megabyzus and Artabazus, came to peace with Sparta and signed the Peace of Callias with Persia.

With that peace Cyprus returned to Persia which was forced out of the Aegean. The war ended, but the Greeks and the Persians continued to meddle in each other's affairs until Persia was invaded and conquered by Alexander the Great, son of Philip II of Macedon, a Hellenic nation descended from the Dorians that had conquered most of the Greek city-states.

Historical sources

What is known of this conflict today comes almost exclusively from the Greek sources. Herodotus of Halicarnassus after his exile from his home town, in the middle of the 5th century BC travelled all over the Mediterranean and beyond, from Scythia to Egypt collecting information over the Persian Wars and other events that he complied in his book ?st????? ?p?de??? (known in English as The Histories).

He begins with Croesus's conquest of Ionia and ends with the fall of Sestus in 479 BC. He is believed to repeat what was told to him by his hosts and sponsors without subjecting it to critical control, thus giving us at times the truth, at times exaggerations and at times political propaganda. However ancient writers consider his work much better in quality than that of any of his predecessors which is why Cicero called him father of history.

Thucydides the Athenian intended to compile a work from where Herodotus ends until the end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC. His collection of books is entitled ?????af? (known in English as The Peloponnesian War). It is believed that he died before completing his work, as he gives a full account only of the first twenty years of the Peloponnesian War. There is little information on what happened before. The events that interest us here are recounted in Book I paragraphs 89 to 118.

Among later writers Ephorus wrote in the 4th century BC a universal history book which includes the events of these wars. Diodorus Siculus wrote in the 1st century AD a book of history since the beginning of time that also includes the history of this war. The closest thing to a Persian source in Greek literature is Ctesias of Cnedus who was Artaxerxes Mnemon's personal physician wrote a history of Persia according to Persian sources in the 4th century BC.

In his work he also mocks Herodotus and claims that his information is accurate since he heard from the Persians. Unfortunately the works of these last writers have not survived complete.

Since fragments of them are given in the Myriobiblon which was compiled by Photius that later became Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in the 9th century AD, in the book Eklogai by the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos (913-919 AD) and the Suda dictionary 10th century AD it is believed that they were lost with the destruction of the imperial library of the Holy Palace of Constantinople by the crusaders of the Fourth Crusade in 1204.

Thus historians are forced to supplement Herodotus' and Thucydides' information with works of later writers intended for other uses like 2nd century AD Plutarch's biographies and the tour guide of southern Greece compiled at the same time by the geographer and traveller Pausanias, who is not to be confused with the Spartan general of the same name mentioned later. Some Roman historians in their works give account of this conflict. Justinus who information, as are in Cornelius Nepos's Biographies.

Origins

The Greeks, the Lydians and the Persians

The Lydians of Western Asia Minor were the first nations to conquer the Asiatic Greeks. Alyattes II first made war on Miletus which ended with a treaty of alliance between Miletus and Lydia, which meant that Miletus would have internal autonomy but follow Lydia in foreign affairs.

Thus they sent an army to aid him in his war against the Medes. During a battle between the Lydians and the Medes a total solar eclipse took place, believed to be that of May 28, 585 BC, which had been predicted by Thales the Milesian.

The battle was suspended out of alarm, peace was signed that was strengthened by a royal marriage, and the river Halys was set up as the frontier between the Lydians and the Medes. Croesus succeeded his father in 560 BC and made war on the other Greek city states of Asia Minor. He conquered them and forced them to pay tribute but did not extend his realm to the islands of the Aegean.

Cyrus the Great rebelled against the Medes in 554 BC/553 BC and after four years conquered the Medes and founded the Persian Empire. Croesus saw this as an opportunity to extend his realm and asked the oracle of Delphi whether he should make war.

The Oracle replied with one of its more famous answers, that if Croesus was to cross the river Halys he would destroy a great empire. Croesus did not realise the ambiguity of the statement and marched to war but was defeated and his capital fell to Cyrus.

The Greek city-states then sent messenger to Cyrus asking to have the same terms as under Croesus but, with the exception of Miletus, Cyrus refused, saying they should have asked while the outcome of the war was undecided, as had Miletus. Cyrus then conquered Assyria before he died. His successor Cambyses II

regarded the Ionians and Aiolians as slaves inherited from his father; and he proceeded to march an army against Egypt, taking with him as helpers not only the other nations of which he was the ruler, but also those of the Hellenes over whom he had power besides (Herodotus II,1 translated by G. C. Macaulay)

Persian satraps of Asia Minor installed tyrants in most of Ionian cities and forced Greeks to pay taxes for the "King of Kings." The campaign against Egypt in 525 BC was successful when the Cypriot cities, Polycrates of Samos (both of whom had a fleet) and the leader of the Greek mercenaries of Egypt Phanes of Halicarnassus came to his side.

This conquest increased discontent with the Persians due to a reduction in trade because Phoenicians, who had willingly joined the Persian empire earlier took part of the market. Furthermore the fall of the Greek colony Sybaris in Southern Italy in 510 BC closed the western markets for the Ionian city states. In the mean time Darius the Great, Cambyses' successor conquered Libya and part of India, thus creating a massive empire.

Ionian Revolt

In 513 BC Darius the Great ordered a campaign into the Balkans. He conquered Thrace and Macedon. Macedonian king Amyntas I became a tributary ally. However at that time his state was very small, composed of Pieria and Bottaia (see map below). Darius forces also crossed the Danube into Scythia as a show of force.

In this campaign Miltiades, commander of the Athenian forces in the Thracian peninsula was forced to follow the Persians. While Darius was across the Danube suggested to the other Greeks to burn the bridges and trap Darius across, thus earning Persian ire. This plan was not followed.

In 499 BC, instigated by Aristagoras in Miletus, the Ionian Revolt broke out when a force of 200 triremes manned by Ionian crew that Artaphernes, satrap of Sardis, had sent to Naxos under Aristagoras' command failed to overturn the democrats and restore the oligarchs.

The Ionian cities threw out the "tyrants" that the Persians had set over them, formed a league, and applied for help from the other Greeks. Athens sent twenty ships because the Persian had asked them earlier to restore Hippias, former tyrant of Athens who had been recently been removed from power.

Eretria sent five because Miletus had helped her in the Lelantine War (8th century BC).These ships joined the Ionian fleet and helped spread rebellion all along the coast and to Cyprus. They managed to defeat the Phoenician fleet in Pamphylia. The revolt did not have greater political aims, lacked unified leadership and, save for the Carians, non-Greeks did not rebel. In 498 BC the Greeks captured and burnt Sardis with ease, thereby provoking the Persian response.

The Persians raised three armies and mobilized their fleet. One army was sent to Cyprus. The fleet supporting it was defeated by the Ionian fleet but the army succeeded in subjugating Cyprus. The other army was sent to the Propontis and forced the revolted cities into submission. The third army first went to Caria, and after a series of battles negotiated Caria's submission.

After that Ionia was isolated. All three armies converged in Ionia and so did the new fleet. Initially unable to defeat the Ionian fleet at sea, the Persian land forces worked towards denying the Ionian fleet any safe harbours, leaving the fleet unable to repair, refit, or restock its supplies. The Greek fleet was finally crushed at the Battle of Lade in 494 BC, and the Ionian cities were sacked.

Darius' invasions

By 493 BC, the last holdouts of the rebellion were subjugated by the Persian fleet, containing ships from Egypt and Phoenicia.The revolt was used as an opportunity to extend the empire's border to the islands of the East Aegean, many of which had not been under the Persians before, and the Propontis. While the Ionian city of Miletus was sacked, its temples stripped and population enslaved or resettled, the other Ionian city-states found the Persians surprisingly conciliatory in the wake of the rebellion.

Darius took direct control of the resettlement of the region through his son-in-law Mardonius. The flat-tribute system was replaced with a progressive tax based on the land-holdings of each city, democracies were established in some, if not all, of the Ionian city-states, prisoners were reintegrated into their home cities, and Darius actively encouraged the Persian nobility of the area to participate in Greek religious practices, especially those dealing with Apollo.

Records from the period indicate that the Persian and Greek nobility began to intermarry, and the children of Persian nobles were given Greek instead of Persian names. Darius' conciliatory policies were used as a type of propaganda campaign against the mainland Greeks, so that in 491 BC, when Darius sent heralds throughout Greece demanding submission (earth and water), initially most city-states accepted the offer, Athens and Sparta being the most prominent exceptions.

Mardonius's campaign

In the spring of 492 BC, an expeditionary force commanded by Darius' son-in-law Mardonius was assembled in Cilicia. The fleet travelled up the Aegean coast, removed the tyrants,[43] conquered Thassos and reached Acanthus (in the isthmus of the Athos peninsula). The army crossed the Hellespont, crossed Thrace and Macedon subjugating all the people on his path.

Thrace was reorganized as a satrapy, and Macedonia was reduced from an ally to a client state. The fleet however fell in a storm off Mt. Athos, losing 300 ships and 20,000 men (according to Herodotus). Mardonius thus ordered the remnants of his troop to return home. The Vrygians, a local Thracian tribe, offered the strongest resistance, even managing in a daring night raid to wound Mardonius, but were eventually subjugated by the retreating troops.

Whether or not this campaign should be included as an attempted invasion of Greece is a matter of debate. Some modern historians have argued that Mardonius' original intention of the campaign was to subdue Athens, and this was Herodotus' opinion as well. However, as both Thrace and Macedonia had been completely cut off by the Ionian rebellion, a reconquest of the area was necessary with or without a further campaign into Greece.

Whatever the true intention of the campaign will most likely never be known for certain, however the end result of the campaign was the reassertion of Persian power within the Balkan region. In any case, because in this campaign the borders of the modern-day Hellenic Republic were crossed it is included in all Greek history books.

Datis and Artaphernes's campaign

In 490 BC Datis and Artaphernes gathered another Persian expeditionary force in Cilicia with the intention to go to Attica and Eretria to punish them for their assistance to the Ionians. Herodotus gives only their fleet numbered 600 triremes but gives no numbers for transports.

He also does not give numbers for the Persian or the Greek land forces. Among other ancient sources the poet Simonides who, like Herodotus, was a near-contemporary says the campaign force numbered 200,000. Later writers gave different values, Cornelius Nepos estimating 200,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry, and Plutarch and Pausanias independently giving a total of 300,000. Plato and Lysias claims 500,000, while Justinus, 600,000.

The Persian force sailed from Cilicia to Rhodes, where a Lindian Temple Chronicle records that Datis besieged the city of Lindos, but was unsuccessful. The fleet then moved north along the Ionian coast to Samos and thence to Naxos, where the inhabitants fled to the mountains, spread across the Cyclades, and submitted to the Great King, and then to Eretria.

Eretria was besieged and surrendered after only six days; the city was razed, and temples and shrines were looted. While Herodotus claims that most of the population taken prisoner and held in Euboea off the coast of Attica, Eretria sent seven ships in the battle of Salamis a decade later, thus a significant part of the population must have survived and rebuilt the city.

The Persian fleet had brought Hippias, son of the former tyrant of Athens Peisistratus, perhaps in the hope of establishing a pro-Persian tyranny within Athens. Most ancient authors agree that it was upon the advice of Hippias that the army landed in Attica near Marathon.

Pheidippides, a professional messenger was sent to Sparta for aid, but a religious festival (the Karneia) prevented the Spartans from leaving the city, or alternatively due to the helot revolt mentioned by Plato. In the end, the only ally the Athenians had in the Battle of Marathon were the Plataeans, with whom Athens had formed an alliance since the late sixth century BC.

Pausanias claims the Athenian force did not surpass 9,000 while Cornelius Nepos and Justinus claim that the Athenians numbered 10,000 hoplites and the Plateans 1,000, and most modern historians accept numbers in that range. Two of the 10 Athenian tribes were in the centre in four ranks (thus showing a front of 2 x 250 = 500 people) and the rest on the flanks in 8 ranks (9 x 125 = 1,125), meaning the total front had about 1,625 men.

They were probably facing takabara light archers. If the Persians had a 2,000 men front and fought in 30 ranks as mentioned by Xenophon in the Cyropaedia (though they fought even on 110 men ranks) they numbered 60,000 troops. Most modern Greek historians accept numbers in the 50-60,000 range while some Western historians, like Bengtson prefer numbers in the 20,000 range.

After a period of waiting the Greeks attacked the Persian army at dawn, running towards the enemy who in their minds they charged the Athenians with madness which must be fatal, seeing that they were few and yet were pressing forwards at a run, having neither cavalry nor archers. Yet due to their run the few Persian archers had time to take position and kill them from afar. Miltiades knew that in hand to hand combat the hoplite was superior.

While the centre of the Greek formation retreated in order, the Greek wings defeated their opposites and then joined behind the Persian centre thus encircling it. The Persians broke ranks and a great slaughter followed. 6,400 dead Persian bodies were counted on the battlefield and buried (though Pausanias in the 2nd century AD could not find their graves) against 192 Athenian and 11 Plataean dead. Legend has it that a runner, after the battle, was sent as a messenger back to the city to tell them the Athenians had been victorious and to resist the Persians.

He probably ran the 32 km from the northern route rather than the 40.8 kilometres of the southern, from Marathon the Athens, cried "?e?????aµe?!" (We have been victorious!), and collapsed and died on the spot. Herodotus records no such event, and the story itself does not appear until the writings of Plutarch (46-127 AD) who gives him the name Thersipus or Eucles.

Lucian gives his the name of Philippides (not Pheidippides). It should be noted that in some medieval codices of Herodotus the name of the runner between Athens and Sparta before the battle is given as Philippides and in a few modern editions this name is preferred. Regardless, his legend was the inspiration for the modern day Olympic event, the marathon.

After the battle the Persian commanders had been given a signal of a raised shield and, hoping to catch Athens undefended, sailed with their fleet around Cape Sounion and tried to land at Phaleron. Athenian leaders had also seen the signal and, after leaving two tribes to guard the battlefield quickly moved the remaining forces into Athens. When the Persian came to Phaleron they found the Athenian army waiting for them. After this, the Persian fleet picked up the Eretrian prisoners and sailed back to Asia in defeat.

The significance of Marathon

The effects of the battle of Marathon were dramatic for both sides of the conflict. The Athenians had proven their ability to fight and win against the Persian forces, which was indeed no small feat if Herodotus's words are to be accepted. As Cornelius Nepos said:

Than this battle there has hitherto been none more glorious; for never did so small a band overthrow so numerous a host (Miltiades chapter IV, Translated by the Rev. John Selby Watson, MA)

The Greeks saw that they had the option to stand and fight, and soon after Marathon a number of city-states renounced their submission to Persia and joined with the Athenians and Spartans.

Perhaps more important was the impact Marathon had upon the Persians. Marathon was the first defeat of regular (Iranian) Persian infantry forces since before the reign of Cyrus, over two generations before. While the Ionian rebellion, the Persian inadequacy at sea, and the burning of Sardis all constituted a threat to Persian holdings in the region, Marathon signaled a threat to the whole of the Western part of the empire.

While the Persians had been unable to beat the Ionians at sea, the conflict had been settled by the superior Persian ground forces. Now, with the defeat of the regular Persian infantry, the Persians had found themselves bested on land and sea by the relatively small city-state of Athens.

The next ten years in Greece

In the ten years that followed the political situation in Greece did not change significantly. Alexander I of Macedon, son of Amyntas, is believed to have declared independence from Persia and participated in the Olympic games. There he ran the stadion, the main event of the games.

When his fellow runners questioned that he was Greek (the ancient Olympics then were open only to pure blooded Greeks) he proved it and in the race he was tied for first place. With this very public declaration he showed what his later loyalty was to be. Leonidas I took one of the two thrones of Sparta.

In Athens Miltiades convinced the Athenians to campaign in the Cyclades Islands in order to secure their frontier. He failed and was brought back wounded. He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death that was commuted to a fine, but died of his wound before his sentence was carried out and buried with honor. Ostracism was first exercised in 488 BC leading to the exile of politicians who advocated submission to Persia and some of their enemies.

Thus a new political leadership formed in Athens with Themistocles leading the democratic party and Aristides the aristocratic party. In that time Athens went to war with Aegina. The ability of the Aeginian fleet to land unopposed at will anywhere in Attica and raid led to public frustration.

Themistocles used this frustration to convince his fellow citizens to use the profits from the Lavrion silver mines to build a fleet, which he intended to use against the Persians. Alarm came to Greece after the Persian preparations (see below) had seriously advanced, with the construction of the bridges at Hellespontus and the channel at Athos.

The Persians had the sympathy of a number of Greek city-states, including Argos, which had pledged to defect when the Persians reached their borders. The Alevades family that ruled Larissa in Thessaly saw the invasion as an opportunity to extend their power. Thebes was willing to pass to the Persian side when Xerxes' army reached their borders, and did so immediately following Thermopylae, though Herodotus hints that at Thermopylae it was already well known that Thebes had capitulated.

In autumn of 481 BC Sparta, in co-operation with Athens, called a congress in the temple of Poseidon on the isthmus of Corinth. Every Greek city-state that had not then fallen to the Persians was called except Massalia and her colonies, and Cyrene. General reconciliation was preached. Athens and Aegina were publicly reconciled. Messengers were sent to the cities that had not sent emissaries.

The colonies of Sicily and Southern Italy were called, but reportedly refused unless the Syracusan king, Gelon, was given command, a right the Spartans refused to part with. Additionally, Diodorus reports that the Persians and Carthaginians had signed a treaty to co-ordinate invasions, keeping the sizeable Sicilian and Italian reinforcements in check. The only help received one ship from Crotone, which fought in the battle of Salamis.

Argos and Crete refused to send emissaries, and the oracle of Delphi did not take part. It continued, as it had since the beginning of the century, to issue oracles that the flood of the Persian Army would drown Greece. Corcyra promised assistance, but then rescinded the offer. They sent a fleet off the Peloponnese that simply monitored the situation. For the most part, the alliance was made up of the Peloponnesian city-states, Euboea island and Attica.

Xerxes' invasion

Preparation and size of the Persian forces

Immediately following the return of Datis' expedition, Darius began preparations for a second, full-scale invasion of Greece. On the fourth year after the battle Babylonia and Egypt both revolted against Persian rule, delaying the preparations.

In 486 BC, Darius passed away, leaving the empire and the war against the Greeks to his son and successor, Xerxes I. In 480 BC, after roughly four years of preparation, Xerxes I mounted a massive expedition against Greece. Herodotus gives the names of 46 nations from which troops were drafted.

The campaign was delayed one year because of another revolt in Egypt and Babylonia. The Persian army was gathered in Asia Minor in the summer and autumn of 481 BC. The army of the Eastern satrapies was gathered in Kritala of Cappadocia and was led by Xerxes to Sardis where it passed the winter.

Early on spring it moved to Abydos where it was joined with the army of the western satrapies. The numbers regarding the force he mustered for the invasion against Greece, given by Herodotus, have been a subject of endless dispute. Herodotus gives the following numbers for the invasionary forces:

Fleet crew: 517,610

Infantry: 1,700,000

Cavalry: 80,000

Arabs and Libyans: 20,000

Greek allies 324,000

Total 2,641,610

Herodotus doubles this number to account for support troops and thus he reports that the whole troop numbered 5,283,220 men in Greece, an estimate that has been rejected by modern historians. Other ancient sources give other numbers. The poet Simonides, who was a near-contemporary, talks of four million.

Ctesias of Cnedus who, as mentioned earlier, was Artaxerxes Mnemon's personal physician wrote a history of Persia according to Persian sources that unfortunately has not survived, and gives 800,000 as the total number of the original army that met in Doriskos. Modern scholars have proposed different numbers for the invasion force, estimations based on knowledge of the Persian military systems, their logistical capabilities, the Greek countryside, and supplies available along the army's route, especially water.

Modern scholars tend to reject the figures given in ancient texts as a result of miscalculations or exaggerations on the part of the victors. The topic has been hotly debated but the general consensus revolves around the figure of 200,000. Some place the upper limit at 250,000 total land forces. The main reason most often given for these values is a lack of water; Sir Frederick Maurice, a British general in World War I, was among the first to argue that the army could not have surpassed 175,000 due to lack of water.

Many other modern scholars estimate that the land forces participating in the battle cannot have exceeded 100,000 soldiers, due to the logistics of fielding and supporting more than 100,000 soldiers in battle being close to impossible in ancient times. In comparison, they have pointed out that the largest Roman army ever fielded in ancient times was less than 90,000 at the Battle of Cannae.

Since the 20th century, there has been a substantial agreement among many scholars that the fighting force that King Xerxes brought across the Hellespont for the invasion of Greece numbered between 50,000 and 100,000 combatants.

Scholars who estimate numbers no larger than 100,000 include Hans Delbrueck, who estimated that the army of Xerxes included 55,000 fighting men at most, which Eduard Meyer and Beloch agreed with. Delbrueck later reduced his maximum estimate to 25,000, claiming that the Persian fighting forces may have been as small as 15,000 to 20,000 soldiers. Robert von Fischer estimated a maximum fighting force of 40,000 in the Persian army.

Robert Cohen, estimated the fighting force of the Persian army at over 40,000. John A. Scott estimates the fighting force of the Persian army to be between 50,000 and 100,000 combatants. Beloch estimated the Persian fighting forces to be 60,000, which W. W. Tarn agreed with. De Sanctis set the maximum size of the Persian fighting forces at 100,000 men at most.

Ernst Obst agreed but set the maximum size of the combatants at 90,000. Eduard Meyer estimated the maximum figure for the Persian forces at Doriskos to be 100,000 combatants. Ulrich Wilcken and Helmut Berve estimate Xerxes' fighting force at 100,000. Jerry Bentley, Herbert Ziegler and Heather Streets also estimate Xerxes' land troops at 100,000.

Another school contends that ancient sources do give realistic numbers. According to the texts the Greeks at the end of the battle of Plataea mustered 110,000 (Herodotus) or 100,000 (Pompeius) troops: 38,700 hoplites and 71,300 or 61,300 peltasts respectively, the difference probably being 10,000 helots. In that battle, according to Herodotus, they faced 300,000 Persians and 50,000 Greek allies. This gives a 3-to-1 ratio for the two armies, which proponents of the school consider a realistic proportion.

Furthermore, Munro and Macan argue for realism based on Herodotus giving the names of 6 major commanders and 29 µ???a???? (muriarxoi)—leaders of the baivabaram, the basic unit of the Persian infantry, which numbered about 10,000 strong. As troops were lost through attrition, the Persians preferred to dissolve crippled baivabarams to replenish the ranks of others. It is therefore likely that the units were at full strength. Adding casualties of the battles and attrition due to the need to guard cities and strategic obtains a force of 400,000 minimum.

According to that view lack of water is not the determining force. The available surface water in Greece today satisfies the needs of a much larger population than the number Xerxes' troops, though the majority of that water is used for irrigation.

Nicholas Hammond accepts 300,000 Persians at the battle of Plataea, though he claims that the numbers at Doriskos were smaller, without explaining how the change in numbers happened. The metrologist Livio Catullo Stecchini (who was a controversial figure) argues that the size of the Persian fighting forces were 700,000 infantry and cavalry.

Dr. Manousos Kampouris argues that Herodotus' 1,700,000 for the infantry plus 80,000 cavalry (including support) is very realistic for various reasons including the size of the area from which the army was drafted (from modern-day Libya to Pakistan), the lack of security against spies, the ratios of land troops to fleet troops, of infantry to cavalry and Persian troops to Greek troops. On the other hand Christos Romas believes that the Persian troops accompanying Xerxes were a little over 400,000.

Persian movements until Therme

Xerxes had ordered the construction of two bridges made of boats in the Hellespont made of Egyptian and Phoenician ships, but they were destroyed by storm. Thus two new bridges were constructed, one made of 314 triremes, the other of 360. The army took seven days and seven nights to cross them. One of the bridges was used by foot soldiers and the other by cavalry.

Five major food depots had been set up along the path: at Lefki Akti on the Thracian side of the Hellespont, at Tyrozis on lake Bistonis, at Doriskos at the Evros river estuary where the Asian army was linked up with the Balkan allies, at Eion on the Strymon river and at Therme, modern-day Thessaloniki. There, food had been sent from Asia for several years in preparation for the campaign. Animals had been bought and fattened, while the local populations had been ordered for several months to grind the grains into flour.

The Persian army took 3 1/2 months to travel unopposed from the Hellespont to Therme, a journey of about 600 kilometres or 360 miles. The largest delay was due to the reorganisation of the troops at Doriskos, when tactical units replaced the national formations used earlier for the march.

Size of the Persian fleet and movements until Artemisium

The size of the Persian fleet is also disputed. According to Herodotus, the Persian fleet numbered 1,207 triremes and 3,000 pentekontoroi, ships with 50 rowers. He gives a detailed description of numbers and origins:

Phoenicians and Syrians from Palestine: 300

Egyptians: 200

Cypriots: 150

Cilicians: 100

Pamphylians: 30

Lycians: 50

Dorians of Asia Minor: 30

Carians: 70

Ionians: 100

Cycladian Islanders: 17

Aeolians: 60

Hellespontians (except Abydos): 30

From Pontus: 100

Total 1,237

Herodotus also claims that this was the number at Salamis, despite the losses earlier in storms off Sepias and Euboea, and at the battle off Artemisium. Herodotus claims that the losses where replenished with reinforcements, though he only records 120 triremes from the Greeks of Thrace and an unspecified number of ships from the Greek islands. Aeschylus who fought at Salamis also claims that he faced there 1,207 warships, of which 1,000 were triremes and 207 fast ships.

Lysias, also claims there were 1,200 at Doriskos. The 1,207 trireme number (for the outset only) is also given by Ephorus while his teacher Isocrates claims there were 1300 at Doriskos and 1,200 at Salamis. Ctesias gives another number, 1,000 ships, (in a fragment given in Photius's book) while Plato, speaking in general terms refers of 1,000 ships and more.

Ephorus claims there were also 800 cavalry-carrying ships and 3,000 triantakontorous, ships rowed by thirty rowers. Diodorus concurs there were 1,200 ships at Doriskos but gives fleet numbers as such:

Phoenicians: 300

Egyptians: 200

Cypriots: 150

Cilicians: 80

Pamphylians: 40

Lycians: 40

Dorians of Asia Minor: 40

Carians: 80

Ionians: 100

Cycladian Islanders: 50

Aeolians: 40

Hellespontians and Pontians: 80

Total 1,200

These numbers are close but not exactly what Herodotus claims and this have been interpreted as a confirmation of the 1,200 number. Among modern scholars Köster Olmstead, and Green have accepted this number. Commodore Simpsas interprets the 207 fast ship comment as that only these 207 were fully manned and the rest were not.

Christos Romas believes that there were 1,200 ships gathered in Doriskos but the reinforcements that later came did not cover the losses from the storms and battles. Other recent works on the Persian Wars (Peter Green's recent revision, works by A.R. Burn, and Pierre Briant's recent work) reject this accounting, 1,207 being seen as more of a reference to the combined Greek fleet in the Iliad than an actual accounting, and generally claim that the Persians could have launched no more than around 600 warships into the Aegean.

At Doriskos the fleet first met the army, and Xerxes set up the chain of command. A channel had been dug over the isthmus of the Athos peninsula, large enough to fit through two ships at a time with which the fleet avoided the perilous journey across Cape Athos. The fleet then rejoined the army again at Therme.

From there, the Persian fleet traveled down the coast, capturing a few Greek ships that were sent to monitor its movements. It fell into a storm off Mt. Pelion, between Casthanaia and Cape Sepias, which caused the loss of one third of the fleet. This was seen as divine retribution by the Greeks, reportedly lifting the morale of the allied force. Battered from the storm, the Persian fleet rested at Aphetes.

In later Greek literature the raising of a massive army and fleet, the construction of the bridges over the Hellespont and the digging of the channel in Athos was seen as a sign of hubris, of great arrogance that was to be punished by the gods.

From Therme to Megara

A force of 10,000 Athenians and Spartans led by Euenetus and Themistocles was dispatched to the vale of Tempe between Thessaly and Macedon after a call by Thessalian cities that disliked the Alevades. It arrived there traveling by ship to Phthiotis and from there by land.

There they blocked the pass, but were joined by few Thessalian horsemen. Alexander I of Macedon warned the allied force that Xerxes intended to pass through another pass, so they left the way they came. This happened at the time Xerxes was still at Abydos. All of Thessaly then defected to the Persians, as did many cities north of Thermopylae when they saw that help was not to come. It took Xerxes 13 days to travel from Therme to Thermopylae.

At Thermopylae, a force was assembled led by King Leonidas of Sparta who was only accompanied by the 300 Spartans , literally horsemen though they fought on foot and served as the royal bodyguard. The Greek army included according to Herodotus the following forces:

Spartans: 300

Mantineans: 500

Tegeans: 500

Arcadian Orchomenos: 120

Other Arcadians: 1,000

Corinthians: 400

Floians: 200

Mycenaeans: 80

Thespians: 700

Thebans: 400

Phocians and Opuntan Locrians: 1,000

Total forces: 5,200

Diodorus Siculus mentions 1,000 other Lacedemonian troops sent along with the royal bodyguard, while more auxiliary troops were probably sent from other Greek cities. Diodorus gives 4,000 as the total Greek troops, and Pausanias 11,200. Modern historians, which usually consider Herodotus more reliable, prefer between 4,000 and 7,000. According to Ctesias:

His general Artapanus, with 10,000 men, fought an engagement with Leonidas, the Spartan general, at Thermopylae; the Persian host was cut to pieces, while only two or three of the Spartans were slain. The king then ordered an attack with 20,000, but these were defeated, and although flogged to the battle, were routed again. The next day he ordered an attack with 50,000, but without success, and accordingly ceased operations (Persica 27,Edited by Roger Pearse)

On the third day, a local man named Ephialtes betrayed the existence of a mountain path that led behind Greek positions. Leonidas and the 300 Spartans, as well as Demophilus and his contingent of 700 Thespians, proved their bravery by staying back to allow the rest of the army to escape.

In the mean time a Greek naval force of 271 triremes attacked the Persian fleet off Artemisium, with a fleet of 75 triremes guarding against a Persian encirclement at Chalkis. The Persians had indeed sent out a strong contingent to encircle the Greek fleet, but it fell in a storm off Euboea and was damaged. Herodotus makes a direct parallel between the battles of Thermopylae and Artemisium, even placing them on the same day.

While not a "fight to the death" as Thermopylae had become, Herodotus records that roughly half of the Athenian fleet had been destroyed or damaged beyond repair, in addition to other losses to the allied fleet overall, while at the same time the small Greek fleet had done immense damage to the larger, bulkier Persian fleet, which, as would be seen again at Salamis, became trapped in the narrow strait and unable to manoeuvre. Furthermore fifteen Persian ships had been captured when they sailed in error to the Greek lines earlier. When news of the withdrawal from Thermopylae arrived, the Greek fleet secretly abandoned its position.

Soon afterwards Athens was evacuated, and the Greek fleet withdrew to Salamis to aid in the transfer of the population of Attica to the island. The Peloponnesians proposed a defensive line at the Isthmus of Corinth, relying on the ground forces and using the fleet to keep the Isthmus supplied. Themistocles instead forced a confrontation with the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis and routed the Persian fleet, forcing it to withdraw to the Ionian coast.

According to a story related by Herodotus, before the battle, Xerxes had set up a throne on Mt. Aegaleo, so he could watch his great victory over the smaller Greek fleet. However, once again the narrow gulf provided little room for his heavy triremes to maneuver, allowing the lighter Greek ships to flank and destroy them. Herodotus claims there were 378 ships on the Greek fleet and gives the following numbers:

Athens: 180

Corinth: 40

Aegina: 30

Chalcis: 20

Megara: 20

Sparta: 16

Sicyon: 15

Epidaurus: 10

Eretria: 7

Ambracia: 7

Troizen: 5

Naxos: 4

Leucas: 3

Hermione: 3

Styra: 2

Cythnus: 2

Ceos: 2

Melos: 2

Siphnus: 1

Seriphus: 1

Croton: 1

Total 366

As can be seen his numbers add only to 366. It has been argued that the 12 missing ships were from Aegina guarding there against invasion. To those forces two more have to be added that defected from the Persians to the Greeks, one before Artemisium and one before Salamis. According to Aeschylus the Greek fleet numbered 310 triremes, while Ctesias claims there the Athenian fleet numbered only 110 triremes and not 180 as Herodotus claims.

After Salamis Xerxes, according to Herodotus, at first attempted to build a causeway across the channel to attack the Athenian evacuees on Salamis. Strabo, who had access to works by other authors disagrees. Describing the coast between Eleusis and Piraeus notes:

and to the passage to Salamis, about two stadia wide, across which Xerxes attempted to build a mole but was forestalled by the naval battle and the flight of the Persians (Geography,9.1.13, translated by H.L. Jones)

Ctesias also places this attempt before the battle. In any case this project was soon abandoned. The Greek cities of Halkidiki rebelled against the Persians. Xerxes, fearing being trapped in Greece, halted his armies advance, withdrew with his family, retainers, the remaining fleet, and a large part of his army to Sardis. Artabazus who was following Xerxes besieged Potidaia and Olynthus. The siege lasted five months, at the end of which he rejoined Mardonius. Mardonius with a handful of junior officers and the rest of the army had accompanied Xerxes until Thessaly. Then he returned south, wintering in Attica and Boeotia.

End of the campaign

The following spring (479), Mardonius twice offered Athens through Alexander I of Macedon a separate peace, but was rebuffed. The Peloponnesians decided to send their army out in Boeotia to take advantage of the situation, before Athenians could change their mind. Cavalry harassment of the Greek forces eventually led to the Battle of Plataea.

The Greeks were warned on eve of the attack by Alexander of Macedon. The Spartans and the Tegeans attacked the main body of the Persians while most of their Greek allies feigned cowardice and abandoned the battle, the notable exception being the Thebans who were attacking Athenians. Mardonius was killed, and his army routed. The remnants of the Persian army left Greece, but the largest part of them did not make it to Asia, being ambushed by the forces of Alexander of Macedon in the estuary of the Strymon river. According to Herodotus, the Greek city-states at Plataea fielded an army of hoplites amountable to the figures listed directly below:

Sparta: 10,000

Athens: 8,000

Plataea: 600

Megara: 3,000

Corinth: 5,000

Tegea: 1,500

Potidaea: 300

Arcadian Orchomenus: 600

Sicyon: 3,000

Epidaurus: 800

Troezen: 1,000

Leprea: 200

Mycene and Tiryns: 400

Floia: 1,000

Hermion: 300

Eretria and Styra: 600

Chalkis: 400

Ambrakia: 500

Lefkas and Anactorium: 800

Cephalonia: 200

Aegina: 500

Total 38,700

Also 71,300 light troops were sent. Of these 35,000 were helots of Sparta, 1,800 were Thespians and the other 34,500 are simply said to be from the other cities, about one per hoplite. This is a very large number for a Greek army. The Byzantine Empire rarely fielded armies larger than 100,000 while the modern Greek state raised an army of this size in the Greek-Turkish War of 1897 and the First Balkan War in 1912. Unlike the last two mentioned conflicts when only soldiers from 7 or 8 years were drafted what was fielded in Plataea was probably every able bodied man between the ages of 20 and 50 that owned weapons.

Among modern scholars others have accepted these numbers and have used them as a population census of Greece at the time, others have claimed the light troop numbers bloated especially since they imply 7 helots for every Spartiat and others have claimed there were no light troops in Plataea, only hoplites, the light troops being nothing more than support troops.

Reportedly, on the same day as the battle of Plataea a 110 ship Greek fleet commanded by the Spartan king Leotychides routed a repaired and refitted 300 ship Persian fleet guarded by 60,000 troops in the Battle of Mycale. Then they advanced towards the Hellespont intending to break the bridges. They found the bridges destroyed. The Spartans left after that.

When Ionians had asked for more assistance, the Spartans suggested that they migrate to the cities in the Greek peninsula that supported the Persians. The Athenians under Xanthippus continued the campaign and besieged Sestus. The Athenians continued the siege alone until the city fell a few months later. This is where Herodotus ends his book.

The Greek counterattack

The unification of Macedonia

Alexander of Macedon, encouraged by the Greek success at Plataea and his victory over the Persians in the Strymon river, expanded his realm to include the other Greek tribes living east of Mount Pindus. He also conquered the land east until the banks of the Strymon river, conquering several non-Greek tribes living there. He founded three cities to expand Greek influence into his newly conquered land, and managed to expand his realm east of the Strymon river, gaining part of Mount Paggaion and its famous gold mines.

Thus he created the largest individual Greek state in terms of area, population, and income. However, despite its potential, the kingdom of Macedon retained a splintered and feudal style of government, with the king holding little central authority and subservient to the combined force of the aristocracy. Only in the 4th century BC, when the city-states in its south were in general decline, would Phillip II of Macedon, a king with great political genius, firmly unite the Macedonian aristocracy into a strong, centralized monarchy and expand the kingdom beyond these borders and raise it to prominence.

The last joint operation in Byzantium

Encouraged by Xerxes' failures, the Greeks of Asia Minor and the Cyclades revolted again. In 478 BC, a fleet composed of 20 Peloponnesian ships, 30 Athenian ships under Aristides, and other allied forces, with the general command given to Pausanias, sailed to Cyprus. There they succeeded in liberating the Greek cities, but did not succeed in their sieges against the Phoenician cities. Thus Cyprus remained a base of the Persian fleet. The Greek fleet then sailed to Byzantium. Control of the Hellespont and Bosporus was of vital importance to Athens, since throughout the classical age Athens produced only 40% of the food required to feed her population, the rest being imported from the Greek colonies of the Black Sea.

The city of Byzantium fell after a siege. Many Persians including nobility fell prisoner to the Greek forces. Pausanias, who was of the royal house of Agis, was greatly impressed by the new way of life he witnessed it and adopted it. He started wearing Persian dress and offering Persian-style banquets. He also mistreated the Ionian delegates. His Persian-style behaviour scandalised both the Ionians and the Peloponnesians and Pausanias was recalled to Sparta.

There he faced charges that he was plotting with the Persian king to become tyrant of Greece, that he was in secret communication with him and that he had asked his daughter as his wife. He was acquitted of those charges, found guilty only of mistreating individuals in their private affairs and sentenced not to lead another campaign outside Sparta. Being impatient he took a warship from Hermion and travelled back to Byzantium. No longer welcome there, he crossed the Propontis to the Troas region where he stayed for some time.

What he did there is completely unknown. He was recalled to Sparta by special envoy where he was to be brought against charges that he was again plotting with the King of Kings and that he was planning a helot revolution.

On his way back, while he was inside the Spartan state limits, he saw the ephoroi, the elected council of five that ruled Sparta, approaching and one of them signalled to him that he was doomed. He took refuge in a nearby temple, where he died of starvation several days later. Some modern historians, based on that he was never condemned and that had he been in league with the Persians he would have sought refuge there and not return, claim this was all a fabrication by his political enemies in Sparta.

In the mean time, in 477 BC the Spartans had sent Dorkis as general in Byzantium with a small force. The Ionians, with the memories of Pausanias' mistreatment of them fresh, asked them to leave. Relieved, the Spartans who no longer wished to continue fighting the Persians withdrew. Athens gladly filled the vacuum, forming the First Athenian Alliance, better known as the Delian League.

Formation of the Delian League

Aristides, as leader of the Athenians, had made a very good impression on the Ionians with his character. Also, since Athenians were also Ionians, they were more trusted than the Dorian Spartans. A congress was called in the holy island of Delos where the alliance was formed. The members were given a choice of either offering armed forces or paying a tax on the joint treasury. Most cities chose the tax. Aristides spent the rest of his life occupied in the affairs of the alliance, dying (according to Plutarch) a few years later in Pontus determining what the tax of new members was to be.

Themistocles was marginalised politically when the leadership of the aristocratic party passed from Aristides to Kimon, son of Miltiades. Themistocles was later exiled and eventually charged of conspiring with Pausanias against Greece. After a long journey he eventually presented himself to the Persians and, following an old Persian tradition of giving sanctuary to prominent Greek politicians, he was given three cities in Asia Minor to rule. He died there a few years later.

Campaigns in the Aegean and Pamphylia

Kimon, in 476 BC, began a campaign against Eion, which still had a Persian guard. The city fell after he diverted the flow of the Strymon river and the walls collapsed. The campaign continued towards Doriskos, however the city refused to capitulate. With Persians out of Heion, many Greek colonies of the Thracian coast joined the Delian League.

Doriskos apparently fell at a later date, though precisely when is not recorded. Finally, in 465 BC, with four triremes Kimon removed the last Persians from the Thracian peninsula; thus ended Persian presence in Europe. In the intervening years, Kimon had forced Karystos in Euboea to join the league, conquered Skyros and sent Athenian colonists there, and suppressed Naxos's desertion in 468 BC.

In 468 BC Kimon had gathered a force of 200 improved Athenian triremes in Knidos and 100 allied triremes with 5,000 Athenian hoplites and campaigned in Phaselis in Pamphylia. With mediation from Chios (a League member), Phasilis joined the league. The Persian forces that had been gathered at the mouth of the Eurymedon river were defeated and the cities of Ionia officially joined the alliance.

In 465 BC Athens founded the colony of Amphipolis in the Strymon river. Thassos, a member of the League, saw her interests in the mines of Mt. Paggaion threatened and defected from the League. She called to Sparta for assistance but was denied, as Sparta was facing the largest helot revolution in its history (see the Messenian Wars). An aftermath of the war was that Kimon was ostracised and the relations between Athens and Sparta turned into hostility.

After a three year siege, Thassos was recaptured and forced back into the League. The siege of Thassos marks the transformation of the Delian league from an alliance into, in the words of Thucydides, a hegemony.

Athens fights in the Eastern Mediterranean and Greece

Ever since the battle of Eurymedon in 466 BC Athens was engaged in operations against the Persian forces in Cyprus. In 462 BC Egypt rose again against Persia. Their king Inaros asked in 460 BC Athens for assistance which was gladly rendered because Athens wished to colonise Egypt.

The Persians had gathered a force of 400,000 (according to Ctesias and Diodorus) to suppress the revolution. A force of 200 Athenian triremes that was campaigning in Cyprus was immediately ordered for assistance. A battle took place, according to Herodotus, on Papremis in the west bank of the Nile river.

According to Diodorus who is our only source about Athenian engagement in this battle, the Athenian phalanx again defeated the numerically superior but individually inferior Persian archer. The Egyptians and Libyans that were previously retreating on the rest of the front followed the breach in the Persian ranks the Athenians caused and won the battle. The Persian army retreated to Memphis.

A sea battle took place near there, where 40 Athenian under Charitimedes and 15 Samian ships (of the 200 that had arrived) sunk 30 and captured 20 Persian ships, according to Ctesias.

In the mean time Athens was engaged in war in the Greek peninsula. While the helot revolution was in its final stages and Kimon in Athens, Argos rose against Sparta. The small force that was sent to quell this was defeated by a joint Athenian and Argos force in Oenoe in 460 BC. The war was generalised, and the allies of Plataea found themselves 19 years later at each other's throat.

Several battles followed, the most important of which was in Tanagra. Using the insecurity of the Aegean as a pretext Athens moved the joint Treasury and the seat of the alliance to Athens in 454 BC/453 BC. The war in Greece was halted in 453 BC when Kimon was recalled from exile and negotiated a five year peace with the Spartans.

Athens defeated in Egypt but victorious in Cyprus

Between 459 BC and 456 BC the Egyptians and their Athenian allies were still engaged in the siege of the Persian force in Memphis. A large part of the Athenian fleet had been recalled to the Aegean to help with operations there. The Persians organised another force that, according to Ctesias, numbered 200,000 soldiers and 300 ships, though according to Diodorus had over 300,000 infantry and cavalry. It was led by Megabyzus. A new battle took place near Memphis.

Charitimedes was killed, king Inaros escaped to the naval base that had been set up in Prosoptis island on the Nile Delta. There, assisted by 6,000 Athenians and their fleet he was besieged for 18 months. The Persian generals did not dare land. They drained the land between the river bank and the island and surprised the Egyptians. The Egyptians quickly surrendered except king Inaros.

The Athenians were left alone Megabyzus negotiated with the Athenians their surrender and were allowed through Cyrene to return to their home. A number of them though was kept prisoner according to Ctesias. A fleet that was being sent to relieve the force at Prosoptis unaware they had surrendered was defeated by the Persians near Cape Mendesium.

The result of this loss was that Cyprus fell again to the Persians. Athenians and their allies lost some 20,000 men in this campaign if Isocrates' numbers are accepted. However these dead were very well remembered and Plato puts them along the dead of Euremedon and Cyprus.

Kimon after his recall and the five year peace was sent in Cyprus and Cilicia to fight the Persians. The Persians had helped several cities in Ionia that had tried to defect from the league. With Kimon in Cyprus was sent a force of 200 triremes. They were facing a force of 300 Persian ships in Cyprus led by Artabazus and 300,000 soldiers in Cilicia led by Megabyzus. Kimon conquered Marion, but was unsuccessful in his siege of a Persian stronghold at Kition in Cyprus.

He sent 60 ships to Egypt. During that siege of Kition he died of a wound or disease. On his deathbed he ordered his army to lift the siege and retreat towards Salamis. His death was kept a secret from the Athenian army and their allies, until 30 days later the Athenians defeated both at land and sea the Persians. According to Thucydides both battles took place in Salamis. According to Diodorus though the land battle took place in Cilicia where the defeated fleet had fled. Thus Kimon, even after his death, defeated the Persians.

The peace of Callias

After this battle both enemies were exhausted. None of the sides were in full control of the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean. The king of Persia sent emissaries to Athens. Pericles responded favourably and, in the autumn of 449 BC according to Diodorus, sent Callias son of Ipponicus in Susa to negotiate. The exact nature of the agreement that became known as the peace of Callias remains unclear (formal treaty or non-aggression pact). According to Diodorus it was an "important treaty", Thucydides doesn't even mention it. The terms, according to Diodorus were:

All Greek cities of Asia were to be autonomous

Persian satraps were not to reach closer than three days walk from the sea

No Persian warship was to be in the area between Phaselis in Pamphylia and the Bosporus

If the Great king and his generals were to comply the Athenians were not to campaign against Artaxerxes

After the peace was agreed Athenians recalled the 60 triremes from Egypt and their forces from Cyprus (apparently this was part of the agreement though it is not mentioned) and ceased operations in this front. The situation in Greece though had flared up and war continued there until the Thirty Year Peace of 445 BC.

Later conflicts

The Persians and Greeks continued to meddle in each others' affairs. The Persians entered the Peloponnesian War in 411 BC forming a mutual-defence pact with Sparta and combining their naval resources against Athens (see Tissaphernes) in exchange for sole Persian control of Ionia. In 404 BC when Cyrus the Younger attempted to seize the Persian throne, he recruited 13,000 Greek mercenaries from all over the Greek world of which Sparta sent 700-800, believing they were following the terms of the treaty and unaware of the army's true purpose.

After the failure of Cyrus, Persia tried to regain control of the Ionian city-states. The Ionians refused to capitulate and called upon Sparta for assistance, which she provided. Athens sided with the Persians, setting off the Corinthian War (see Artaxerxes II). Sparta was eventually forced to abandon Ionia and Persian authority was restored with the peace of Antalcidas.

No other Greek force challenged Persia for nearly 60 years until Phillip II of Macedon, who, in 338 BC formed an alliance called ?? ?????e? (the Greeks), modelled after the alliance of 481 BC, and set in motion an invasion of the western part of Asia Minor. He was murdered before he could carry out his plan.

His son, Alexander III of Macedon, known as Alexander the Great, set out in 334 BC with 38,000 soldiers. Within three years his army had conquered the Persian Empire and brought the Achaemenid dynasty to an end, bringing Greek culture up to the banks of the Indus river.

Darius first sent Mardonius, in 492 BC, via a land route to Europe to strengthen Persia's hold of Thrace and Macedon,

which had been weakened by the Ionian Revolt. Although successful, most of this force perished in a storm off Mount Athos, and the remainder was forced to return to Asia, losing men along the way. In 490 BC, Datis and Artaphernes were sent in a maritime operation to subjugate the Cyclades islands in the central Aegean and punish Eretria and Athens for their assistance in the Ionian revolt.

Eretria was besieged and fell; then the fleet landed in Marathon bay. There they were defeated by a small force of Athenian and Plataean hoplites, despite their numerical advantage. The long run of the messenger who conveyed news of the victory to Athens became the inspiration for the marathon race, which was first staged at the 1896 Olympic Games.

Historical sources

The main historical source of the battle comes from Herodotus, who describes the events in Book VI, paragraphs 102–117.

However, he was born a few years after the battle, and it is believed he wrote his book after the Peace of Callias (449 BC/448 BC). In his characteristic style, he embellishes his account with the following wondrous events, which he took to be decisive in the battle: the god Pan appears to Pheidippides while en route to Sparta to ask for help, Hippias has a dream which foretells the disaster of the Persians and the Athenian Epizelus is blinded by a ghost during the battle.

All other extant important historical sources come from later times. Pausanias gives important information about the final phase of the battle (the chase); the 10th century AD Byzantine Suda dictionary preserves information from sources now lost, such as Ephorus, whose surviving fragments provide an important account.

Background

In 511 BC, with the aid of Cleomenes I, King of Sparta, the Athenian people expelled Hippias, the tyrant ruler of Athens. With Hippias' father Peisistratus, the family had ruled for 36 out of the previous 50 years and intended to continue Hippias' rule. Hippias fled to Sardis to the court of the nearest Persian satrap, Artaphernes, and promised control of Athens to the Persians if they were to restore him.

When the Athenians demanded he be expelled, the satrap suggested that they ought to restore him to power. This answer moved Athens to consider herself at war with the Persians, and they gave assistance, in the form of 20 boats, to the Ionian cities embroiled in the Ionian Revolt (499 BC–494 BC). Hippias had probably fled to the court of king Darius during the revolt.

The city of Eretria had also given assistance to the Ionians. Though the assistance sent by the two cities was not very effective, it alarmed Darius and he wished to punish the two cities. In 492 BC, he dispatched an army under the command of his son-in-law, Mardonius, to Greece. Mardonius conquered Thrace and thus compelled Alexander I of Macedon to relinquish his kingdom again to Persia.

However, while en route south to the Greek city-states, the Persian fleet was wrecked in a storm in Cape Athos, losing 300 ships and 20,000 men. Mardonius was forced to retreat to Asia. Attacks by Thracian tribes inflicted losses on the retreating army.

Darius learned, perhaps through Hippias, the Alcmaeonidae, a powerful Athenian family, were opposed to Miltiades, who at the time was the most prominent politician of Athens. While they were not ready to help reinstate Hippias (they had helped overthrow him), they probably believed a Persian victory was inevitable and wanted to secure a better position in the new political regime that was to follow the Persian conquest of Athens.

Darius wished to take advantage of this situation to conquer Athens, which would isolate Sparta and, by handing him the remainder of the Greeks in the Aegean, would consolidate his control over Ionia. In order for the Athenians to revolt, two things would need to happen: the populace would need to be encouraged to revolt, and the Athenian army would have to leave Athens so that they could not crush it.

Darius decided to send a purely maritime expedition led by Artaphernes, son of the satrap to whom Hippias had fled and Datis, a Median admiral—Mardonius had been injured in the prior campaign and had fallen out of favor—with the intention to punish Naxos (whose resistance to Persian attack in 499 BC led to the Ionian revolt) and force Eretria and Athens to submit to the Great King or be destroyed.

Size of opposing forces

According to Herodotus, the fleet sent by Darius consisted of 600 triremes, whereas, according to Cornelius Nepos, there were only 500.

The historical sources do not reveal how many transport ships accompanied them, if any. According to Herodotus, 3,000 transport ships accompanied 1,207 ships during Xerxes' invasion in 480 BC. Stecchini estimates the whole fleet comprised 600 ships altogether: 300 triremes and 300 transports; while Peter Green says there were 200 triremes and 400 transports. Ten years earlier, 200 triremes failed to subdue Naxos, so a 200 or 300 trireme fleet is perhaps inadequate for all three objectives.

Herodotus does not estimate the size of either army. Of the Persian army, he says they were a large infantry that was well packed. Among ancient sources, the poet Simonides, another near-contemporary, says the campaign force numbered 200,000; while a later writer, the Roman Cornelius Nepos estimates 200,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry, of which only 100,000 fought in the battle, while the rest were loaded into the fleet that was rounding Cape Sounion; Plutarch and Pausanias both independently give 300,000, as does the Suda dictionary; Plato and Lysias assert 500,000; and Justinus 600,000.

Modern historians have also made various estimates. As Kampouris has noted, if the 600 ships were warships and not transport ships, with 30 epibates soldiers in each ship—the ships' foot soldiers that formed and defended from boarding parties during the sea battles—(typical for Persian ships after the Battle of Lade; this was how many they had during Xerxes' invasion), the number 18,000 is attained for the troops.

But since the fleet did have transport ships, it must have at least carried the Persian cavalry. Whereas Herodotus claims the cavalry was carried in the triremes, the Persian fleet had dedicated ships for this undertaking, and according to Ephorus, 800 transports accompanied Xerxes' invasion fleet 10 years later. Estimates for the cavalry are usually in the 1,000–3,000 range, though as noted earlier Cornelius Nepos gives 10,000.

Other modern historians have proposed other numbers for the infantry. Bengtson estimates there were no more than 20,000 Persians; Paul K. Davis estimates there were 20,000 Persians; Martijn Moerbeek estimates there were 25,000 Persians;

How & Wells estimate 40,000 Persians landed in Marathon; general Dimitrios Gedeon believes there were 48,000 soldiers; Bussolt and Glotz talk of 50,000 battle troops; Stecchini estimates there to have been 60,000 Persian soldiers in Marathon; Kleanthis Sandayiosis talks of 60,000 to 100,000 Persian soldiers; while Peter Green talks of 80,000 including the rowers; and Christian Meier talks of 90,000 battle troops.

Scholars estimating relatively small numbers for Persian troops argue that the army could not be very big in order to fit in the ships. The counterargument of scholars who claim large numbers is that if the Persian army was small, then the Eretrians combined with the Athenians and Plateans could match it, and possibly have sought battle outside Eretria. Naxos alone could field "8,000 shields" in 500 BC and with this force successfully defended against the 200-ship Persian invasion 10 years earlier.

The size of the Athenian army is another subject of debate. Some recent historians have given around 7,000–8,000, while others favor 10,000. Pausanias asserts it did not surpass 9,000, while Justinus and Cornelius Nepos both give 10,000 as the number of the Athenians. Herodotus tells us that at the battle of Plataea eleven years later the Athenians sent 8,000 hoplites while others were at the same time engaged as epibates in the fleet that later fought at the battle of Mycale.

Pausanias noticed in the trophy of the battle the names of former slaves who were freed in exchange for military services. Also, it is possible that metics, non-Athenian Greeks residing in Athens, were drafted since they had military obligations to Athens in times of great emergency (for example in 460 BC). However, for Marathon, this is not mentioned by any surviving source, and their number in Athens was not as significant in 490 BC as it became later in the century when Athens became head of the Delian League.

Athens at that time could have fielded at least four times the force it did had it chosen to also send light troops consisting of the lower classes, for ten years later at the Battle of Salamis it had a 180 trireme fleet that was manned by 32,000 rowers, and had lost some 60 ships earlier in the Battle of Artemisium. Why this did not happen has been subject to speculation. Kampouris, among others, notes that the political leanings of the lower classes were unreliable.

After the Ionic revolt had shown the general unreliability of tyrants to the Persian empire, Artaphernes, in 494 BC, had changed the regime of the Ionian city-states from tyranny to democracy, thus setting an example that was later copied, among others, by the Second Athenian Alliance and Alexander the Great.

There the power rested on the poor with the Persian army in place to rein in any move that threatened Persia's position.

Some of the poor who remembered Peisistratus well, since he had given them jobs, probably hoped for a victory of the Persians and a change in regime to give them more power, which is one of the reasons Hippias ordered the landing in Marathon where the vast majority of local inhabitants were from these social classes. On the other hand, the Persian army hoped for an internal revolution in Athens so as to have an easy victory as in Eretria.

Datis and Artaphernes' campaign before Marathon

After one year of preparations, the expeditionary force first gathered on Cilicia in the spring of 490 BC. The army boarded the Persian transports, escorted by the fleet, sailed to Samos and from there to Naxos. After a fruitless campaign there (the Naxians fled to the mountains of their island and the Persians became masters of a deserted city), it sailed at first across the Cyclades islands and then for Carystus on the south coast of Euboea, which quickly surrendered. From there, they sailed up the Euboean channel to Eretria where their aims became clear to the Greeks.

The Eretrians sent an urgent message to Athens for help. The Athenians agreed, but realized they needed more help. They sent the courier Pheidippides to the Spartans and probably messengers to other cities. Pheidippides arrived in Sparta on the next day, the ninth of the month. According to Herodotus, the Spartans agreed to help, but being superstitious, said that they could not march to war until the Carneian festival ended on the full moon (September 9). Some modern historians hold that the Spartans set out late because of a helot revolution, and claim this was the time of a revolution mentioned by Plato.

The only ones to stand by the Athenians in the battle were the Plataeans. The small Boeotian city of Plataea had allied itself with Athens in the sixth century BC against Thebes and decided to repay the help by coming to assist the Athenians in their time of need, just as the Athenians had come to their need earlier. Their forces numbered, according to Cornelius Nepos, 1,000 hoplites and they were led by Arimnestus. The Athenian-Plataean alliance was to continue until the end of Greek independence to the Romans, in the second century BC.

As to what was the course of the Persian fleet after Carystos, there is disagreement among modern historians. Some claim that Artaphernes took part of the Persian army and laid siege to Eretria, while the remainder of the army crossed with Datis and landed in the Bay of Marathon.

Others claim that the events happened consecutively: at first Eretria was besieged and fell, and later the whole army landed at Schinias beach. According to Herodotus the location was chosen by Hippias because it was the most convenient location for the Persian cavalry. Modern historians agree that this is false since the location is described by a scholium as being:

rugged, unsuitable for horses, full of mud, swamps and lakes

Scholium to Plato Menexenus 240c

The location was probably chosen because Hippias had many sympathisers there, being a relatively poor region of Athens.

Herodotus reports that there was a council of the 10 tribal Strategoi, with five voting for moving to confront the enemy and five voting against it. Callimachus was the polemarch in that year, one of the nine archons or leaders of Athens. Until a few years earlier, power in Athens resided in the nine archons who at the time were elected.

There was a constitutional change though a few years earlier and the archons were chosen by lot, thus turning the polemarch's leadership into a symbolic power. Due to the deadlock, it was decided by the elected tribal generals to ask for his opinion. After a very dramatic appeal by Miltiades, he cast the deciding vote in favor of attack. Thus, an Athenian army made of hoplites (numbering probably 10,000) under the polemarch, marched to the north and east from Athens to meet the enemy near the landing site.

The army encamped near the shrine of Heracles, where they blocked the way to Athens in an easily defendable position. The position also permitted intervention in Athens, had any revolution taken place. The Plataeans joined them there. The army was composed of men from the aristocracy—the upper and upper-middle classes—since armament in ancient Greece was the responsibility of the individual and not of the state (even in Sparta), so men armed themselves for battle with whatever they could afford.

Before Ephialtes' constitutional reforms in 457 BC, most power rested on these social classes since many positions of significant political power in the regime were reserved for those who had significant property. Had the Athenian hoplites lost this particular conflict the survivors could expect to live in Athens having significantly lower political power and social status. Thus it is very understandable that they were strongly motivated to win the battle or die in the effort.

Before the battle

For five days, the armies peacefully confronted each other, hoping for developments, with the Athenian army slowly narrowing the distance between the two camps, with pikes cut from trees covering their sides against cavalry movements.

Since time worked in favor of the Athenians, it probably was the Persian army that decided to move. On the sixth day, when Miltiades was the prytanevon general, a rather bureaucratic rank consistent with the duty officer of modern armies—either 12 September or possibly 12 August 490 BC reckoned in the proleptic Julian calendar—Artaphernes decided to move and attack Athens.

The Athenians came to know from two Ionian defectors that the Persian cavalry was gone. Where and why, along with the Persian battle plan, has been a matter of debate. Several historians have supposed that this was either because the cavalry had boarded the ships, that it was inside the camp since it could not stay in the field during the night, or because it was moving along with the whole army among the northern route to reach the walls of Athens.

It should be noted that Herodotus does not mention that the army was boarding the ships. Some light is given by the "????? ?ppe??" (=without cavalry) entry of the Suda dictionary. It states: "The cavalry left. When Datis surrendered and was ready for retreat, the Ionians climbed the trees and gave the Athenians the signal that the cavalry had left. And when Miltiades realized that, he attacked and thus won. From there comes the above-mentioned quote, which is used when someone breaks ranks before battle".

According to Herodotus, by that point the generals had decided to give up their rotating leadership as prytanevon generals in favor of Miltiades. He chose the day his tribe was leading, for the attack, perhaps because he wanted to bear the full responsibility for the battle. He decided to move against the Persians very early in that morning.

He ordered two tribes that were forming the center of the Greek formation, the Leontis tribe led by Themistocles and the Antiochis tribe that was led by Aristides, to be arranged in the depth of 4 ranks while the rest of the tribes in the sides were in 8 men ranks.

The distance between the two armies had narrowed to a distance not less than 8 stadia or about 1,500 meters, which they covered running shouting their war cry, "??e?e?! ??e?e?!" (Eleleu,Eleleu), much to the surprise on the Persians who in their minds they charged the Athenians with madness which must be fatal, seeing that they were few and yet were pressing forwards at a run, having neither cavalry nor archers.

It is also a matter of debate whether the Greek army ran the whole distance or marched until they reached the limit of the archers' effectiveness, the "beaten zone", or roughly 200 meters, and then ran towards the ranks of their enemy. Proponents of the latter opinion note that it is very hard to run that large a distance carrying the heavy weight of the hoplitic armor, estimated at 32 kilograms.

Proponents of the former opinion note the following arguments: the ancient Greeks—as indicated by the surviving statues—were in very good physical condition (the hoplite run had recently become an Olympic sport), and if they had run the entire distance, it would have been covered in about 5 minutes, whereas if they had marched, it would have probably taken 10, enough time for the Persians to react, which they did not.

Composition and formation of Persian forces

The bulk of Persian infantry were probably Takabara lightly armed archers. Several lines of evidence support this. First of all, Herodotus does not mention a shield wall in Marathon, that was typical of the heavier Sparabara formation, as he specifically mentions in the Battle of Plataea and the Battle of Mycale.

Also, in the depiction of the Battle of Marathon in the Poikile Stoa that was dedicated a few years later in 460 BC when most veterans of the war were still alive, that is described by Pausanias, only Takabara infantry are depicted.

Finally, it seems more likely that the Persians would have sent the more multipurpose Takabara soldiers for a maritime operation than the specialized Sparabara heavy (by Persian standards) infantry. The Takabara troops carried a small woven shield, probably incapable of withstanding heavy blows from the long spears of the hoplites.

The usual tactic of the Persian army was for the archers to shoot volleys of arrows to weaken and disorganise their enemy, then their excellent cavalry moved in to deliver the coup de grace. On the other hand, the ?p??? (hoplon), the heavy shield of the hoplites (which gave them their name) was capable of protecting the man who was carrying it (or more usually the man on his left) from both the arrows and the spears of its enemies.

The Persians were also at a severe disadvantage due to the size of their weapons. Hoplites carried much longer spears than their Persian enemies, extending their reach as well as protecting them. Persian armies would usually have elite Iranian troops in the center and less reliable soldiers from subject peoples on the sides of the formation. It is confirmed by Herodotus that this is how the Persian army was arrayed in the battlefield.

During the Ionian revolt, the phalanx was seriously weakened by the arrows of the Persian archers before it reached hand to hand combat with them—where it excelled—because it moved slowly in order to maintain formation. This is why Miltiades, who had great experience with the Persian army since he was forced to follow it during its campaign in Scythia in 513 BC, ordered his army to run. This could have meant that they could end up fighting in disordered ranks.

Herodotus, however, mentions in the description of the battle that the retreat of the center happened in order, meaning that the formation was not broken during the initial rush. This is supported by the fact that there were few casualties in that phase of the battle. The Greek center was reduced to four ranks, from the normal eight. The wings maintained their eight ranks.

If Miltiades only wanted to extend the line and prevent the Persian line from overlapping the Greeks, he would have weakened, uniformly, the whole army so as not to leave weak points. But Herodotus categorically states that it was a conscious decision to strengthen the sides probably in order to have a strong force to defeat the weaker-in-quality Persian sides.

The front of the Greek army numbered 250 × 2 (for the center tribes) plus 125 × 9 (for the side tribes and the Plateans) = 1,625 men. If the Persians had the same density as the Greeks and were 10 ranks strong then the Persian army opposing the Greeks numbered 16,000. men

But if the front had a gap of 1.4 meters between soldiers compared to 1 meters for every Greek and had a density of 40 to 50 ranks as seems to be the maximum possible for the plain—the Persian army had even fought in 110 ranks—then the Persian army numbered 44,000 to 55,000. If the Persian front numbered 2,000 men and they fought in 30 ranks (as Xenophon in Cyropaedia claims) they numbered 60,000. Kampouris suggests it numbered 60,000 since that was the standard size of a major Persian formation.

The enemies engage in hand to hand combat

As the Greeks advanced, their strong wings drew ahead of the center, which retreated according to plan. The retreat must have been significant since Herodotus mentions that the center retreated towards Mesogeia, not several steps. However, ranks did not break since the overall casualties were low, and most were sustained during the last phase of the battle.

The Greek retreat in the center, besides pulling the Persians in, also brought the Greek wings inwards, shortening the Greek line. The result was a double envelopment, and the battle ended when the whole Persian army, crowded into confusion, broke back in panic towards their ships and were pursued by the Greeks. The sides were left open so that the Persian ranks would break, since even a desperate army that maintained numerical advantage after a battle could still defeat its enemy. Some, unaware of the local terrain, ran towards the swamps where they drowned.

Herodotus records that 6,400 Persian bodies were counted on the battlefield, and it is unknown how many perished in the swamps. Also, seven Persian ships are mentioned captured though none are mentioned sunk. The Athenians lost 192 men and the Plateans 11, most during the final chase when their heavy armor proved a disadvantage.

Among the dead was the polemarch Callimachus and the general Stesilaos. A story is given to us about Kynaigeirus, brother of the playwright Aeschylus who was also among the fighters. He charged into the sea, grabbed one Persian trireme, and started pulling it towards shore. A member of the crew saw him, cut off his hand, and Kynaigeirus died.

It seems that Aeschylus considered that his participation in Marathon was his greatest achievement in life (rather than his plays) since in his gravestone there was the following epigram:

??s????? ??f??????? ????a??? t?de ?e??e?

µ??µa ?ataf??µe??? p???f????? G??a?·

????? d’ e?d???µ?? ?a?a?????? ??s?? ?? e?p??

?a? ßa???a?t?e?? ??d?? ?p?st?µe???

This tomb the dust of Aeschylus doth hide,

Euphorion's son and fruitful Gela's pride

How tried his valor, Marathon may tell

And long-haired Medes, who knew it all too well.

According to Ctesias, Datis was slain at Marathon. Herodotus, however, has him alive after the battle returning a statue of Apollo to Delos that had earlier been removed by his army, though he does not mention him after the remnant of the army returned to Asia.

Aftermath

As soon as Datis had put to sea, the two center tribes stayed to guard the battlefield and the rest of the Athenians marched to Athens. A shield had been raised over the mountain near the battle plain, which was either the signal of a successful Alcmaeonid revolution or (according to Herodotus) a signal that the Persian fleet was moving towards Phaliro.

They arrived in time to prevent Artaphernes from securing a landing. Seeing his opportunity lost, Artaphernes turned about and returned to Asia. On the next day, the Spartan army arrived, having covered the 220 kilometers in only three days. Some modern historians doubt they traveled so fast. The Spartans toured the battlefield at Marathon, and agreed that the Athenians had won a great victory.

The Greek upset of the Persians, who had not been defeated on land for many decades (except by Samagaetes and Scythes, both nomad tribes), caused great problems for the Persians. The Persians were shown as vulnerable. Many subject peoples revolted following the defeat of their overlords at Marathon. Order was not restored for several years.

The dead of Marathon were awarded by the Athenians the special honor of being the only ones who were buried where they died instead of the main cemetery of Athens in Kerameikos. On the tomb of the Athenians this epigram composed by Simonides was written:

??????? p??µa????te? ????a??? ?a?a????

???s?f???? ??d?? est??esa? d??aµ??

which means

The Athenians, as defenders of the Hellenes, in Marathon

destroyed the might of the golden-dressed Medes

(translation by Major General Dimitris Gedeon, HEAR)

The tomb was excavated in the 1880s by German archeologists. The team, however, did not include any anthropologists, and were therefore unable to determine the number of bodies in the tomb. The same team also found a ditch containing large numbers of hastily buried human bones which was identified as the burial place of the Persians.

For the Athenians, the victory gave confidence to the people. Two years later ostracism was exercised for the first time, its first victim being a friend of Peisistratus.

Conclusion

Marathon was in no sense a decisive victory over the Persians. However, it was the first time the Greeks had bested the Persians on land, and "their victory endowed the Greeks with a faith in their destiny that was to endure for three centuries, during which western culture was born." (J.F.C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World). John Stuart Mill's famous opinion is that the Battle of Marathon was more important an event for British history than the Battle of Hastings. Kampouris sees the battle as a failure of purely maritime operations, due to their inherent weaknesses.

The longest-lasting legacy of Marathon was the double envelopment. Some historians have claimed it was random rather than a conscious decision by Miltiades. As they say, was it really Cannae before Cannae? In hoplitic battles, the two sides were usually stronger than the center because either they were the weakest point (right side) or the strongest point (left side).

However, before Miltiades (and after him until Epaminondas), this was only a matter of quality, not quantity. Miltiades had personal experience from the Persian army and knew its weaknesses.

As his course of action after the battle shows (invasions of the Cyclades islands), he had an integrated strategy upon defeating the Persians, hence there is no reason he could have not thought of a good tactic. The double envelopment has been used ever since, e.g. the German Army used a tactic at the battle of Tannenberg during World War I similar to that used by the Greeks at Marathon.

Date of the battle

Herodotus mentions for several events a date in the lunisolar calendar, of which each Greek city-state used a variant. Astronomical computation allows us to derive an absolute date in the proleptic Julian calendar which is much used by historians as the chronological frame.

August Böckh in 1855 concluded that the battle took place on 12 September 490 BC in the Julian calendar, and this is the conventionally accepted date. However, this depends on when the Spartans held their festival and it is possible that the Spartan calendar was one month ahead of that of Athens. In that case the battle took place on 12 August 490 BC.

If the battle really occurred in August, temperatures in the area typically reach over 30 degrees Celsius and thus make the marathon run event less plausible. See D.W. Olson et al., "The Moon and the Marathon", Sky & Telescope Sep. 2004, pp. 34—41.1

Legends associated with the battle

A victory that important against a superior enemy was bound to have consequences on religious life. Herodotus mentions that Pheidippides was visited by the god Pan on his way to Sparta for help. He asked why the Athenians did not honor him and Pheidippides promised that they would do so from then on. After the battle, a temple was built to him, and a sacrifice was annually offered.

The festival of "Agroteras Thusia", (Thusia means sacrifice) was held at Agrae near Athens, in honor of Artemis Agrotera, in fulfillment of a vow made by the city, before the battle, to offer in sacrifice a number of goats equal to that of the Persians slain in the conflict. The number being so great, it was decided to offer 500 goats yearly until the number was filled. Xenophon notes that at his time, 90 years after the battle, goats were still offered yearly.

Plutarch mentions that the Athenians saw Theseus, the mythical hero of Athens leading the army in full battle gear in the charge against the Persians and indeed he was depicted in the mural of the Poikele Stoa along with the gods fighting for the Athenians along with the twelve gods and other heroes, Pausanias tells us that those who fought at Marathon:

They say too that there chanced to be present in the battle a man of rustic appearance and dress. Having slaughtered many of the foreigners with a plough he was seen no more after the engagement. When the Athenians made enquiries at the oracle the god merely ordered them to honor Echetlaeus (He of the Plough-tail) as a hero. Pausanias 1.32.5

Furthermore Pausanias mentions that at times ghosts were seen and heard to engage in battle in Marathon. This phenomenon appears to have also been reported in the modern era: according to newspapers of the time in the year 1930, visitors to the region claimed to have heard a sound of metal clashes and screams coming from the battlefield.

This event is usually mentioned in books about paranormal events in Greece and is usually associated with the drosoulites phenomenon of Southern Crete, though the scientific explanation given for the latter (a mirage from North Africa) can not explain the former event.

Another tale from the conflict is of the dog of Marathon. Claudius Aelianus relates that one hoplite brought his dog to the Athenian encampment. The dog followed his master to battle and attacked the Persians at his master's side. Indeed a dog is depicted in the mural of the Poikile Stoa

Marathon run

According to Herodotus, an Athenian runner named Pheidippides ran from Athens to Sparta to ask for assistance before the battle. This event was later turned into the popular legend that Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens. The traditional story relates that Pheidippides, an Athenian herald, ran the distance between the battlefield by the town of Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory over Persia in the Battle of Marathon (490 BC) with the word "?e?????aµe?!" (Nenikékamen, We are victorious!) and died on the spot.

Most accounts incorrectly attribute this story to the historian Herodotus, who wrote the history of the Persian Wars in his Histories (composed about 440 BC). The story first appears in Plutarch's On the Glory of Athens in the 1st century AD, who quotes from Heracleides of Pontus' lost work, giving the runner's name as either Thersipus of Erchius or Eucles.

Lucian of Samosata (2nd century AD) also gives the story but names the runner Philippides (not Pheidippides). It should be noted that in some medieval codices of Herodotus the name of the runner between Athens and Sparta before the battle is given as Philippides and in a few modern editions this name is preferred.

Another point of debate is the path taken by the runner. There are two exits from the battlefields. One is towards the south that follows modern-day Marathonos avenue leading through Pikermi over the pass of Stavros Agias Paraskevis and down modern day Messogeion avenue to Athens, which is 40.8 kilometers (25.3 miles) long—following the ancient roads, the modern road has been lengthened somewhat to accommodate vehicular traffic to and from Mesogeia.

The other is towards the north, over the modern village of Vranas, up the relatively high mountain pass towards modern day Dionyssos and the northern suburbs of Athens, which is 34.5 kilometers (21.4 Miles) long.

It is more likely that the runner followed the safer, shorter but more tiring northern route than the longer but unsafe southern route. For the first modern marathon during the 1896 Olympics, the southern route was chosen probably because it was the main modern route between Marathon and Athens.

That event was won by the Greek Spyros Loues who, being a local, knew that he had to conserve energy to pass the Stavros Agias Paraskevis pass, unlike his foreign competitors who were unaware of the terrain and abandoned the race there. The race today is run over a distance of 42.195 km (26.2 miles). This length was set during the 1908 Olympics because the British royal family wanted to see the runners starting from the balcony of Windsor Castle, and to have the end of the race in front of the Royal Box at the Olympic Stadium.

A popular legend about the battle and the run was recorded by Andreas Karkavitsas in the 19th century and also Linos Politis[89] On the plain of Marathon there was once a big battle. Many Turks with many ships came to enslave the land and from there pass to Athens... The blood turned into a river, and reached from the roots of Vranas to Marathon on the other side.

It reached the sea and painted the waves red. Lots of lamentation and evil took place. In the end the Greeks won... Then two men ran to bring the news to Athens. One of them went on horseback and the other on foot and in full gear. The rider went towards Halandri and the one on foot towards Stamata. Swift-footed he went up Aforesmos and down towards the village. As women saw him, they ran towards him:

Stop, they shouted - stamata! (Greek for stop). They wanted to ask what happened in the battle. He stopped a moment to catch his breath and then took the road again. Finally he reaches Psychiko. There he was almost near death , his feet were shaking, he felt like falling down. But he composed himself, took a deep breath, continued and finally reached Athens.

We won he said, and immediately he fell down and died. The rider had yet to come. But there where the foot runner stopped and took a breath is named after his act. The first village is called Stamata and the second Psychiko.

Trireme (Greek ?????e?? pl. (??????? sing.)) refers to a class of warships used by the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Romans.

In English, no differentiation is made between the Greek trieres and the Latin triremes.

This is sometimes a source of confusion, as in other languages these terms refer to different styles of ships.

The early type had three rows of oars on each side, manned with one man per oar. They originated with the Phoenicians and are best known from the fleets of Ancient Greece. The early trireme was a development of the pentekonter, an ancient warship with a single row of 25 oars on each side, and of the bireme (Greek: d?????), a warship with two banks of oars.

The trireme's staggered seating permitted three benches per vertical section with an oarsman on each. The outrigger above the gunwale, projecting laterally beyond it, kept the third row of oars on deck out of the way of the first two under deck. Early triremes were the dominant warship in the Mediterranean from the 7th to the 4th century BC.

The Greek/Phoenician trireme was the mainstay of most navies until the arrival of the quinquiremes/penteres. Like these, all rowers were now protected under deck and battle was mainly fought by marines. A different system of classification was also used, referring to the men per vertical section, so that they did not necessarily have three rows of oars any more.

Light Roman triremes supplanted the liburnians in the late Roman navy. They were like the early triremes a light type of warship, but with 150 rowers under deck instead of 170, with little armor, but significantly more marines and less structural support for ramming. Later it developed into the heavier dromon.

History: Origin

According to Thucydides, the trireme was introduced by Ameinocles of Corinth in the late 8th century BC. However, we also know that triremes were not truly effectively used in naval combat until about 525 BC, when according to Herodotus, the tyrant Polycrates of Samos was able to contribute 40 triremes to a Persian invasion of Egypt.

A trireme usually had a ram at its mast to puncture enemy ships and cause them to sink.To suppose that no improvements were made to the design of the trireme — as the 40 ships contributed by Polycrates were still relatively primitive — when, in ten years in the early 5th century BC the Athenians were able to make sufficient improvements to the design to ensure their naval ascendancy for 60 years, is something of a stretch of the imagination.

Some historians argue, therefore, that the introduction of the trireme did not take place until during the reign of Polycrates of Samos, as he was known to have a fleet of pentekonters at the beginning of his rule, and yet had switched to triremes by 525 BC. This would make the revolution of the design by the Athenians, then, much more plausible.

Add to this the uncertainty over the terminology used in the ancient texts — essentially, there is no guarantee that when the ancient writers used the term "trieres" that they were, in fact, referring to the trireme, and not to just any "warship", and the introduction in the late 8th century BC becomes quite questionable.

However, there are some reinforcements for the suggestion of the earlier introduction. Herodotus mentions that the Egyptian pharaoh Necho (610–595 BC) built triremes on the Nile, for service in the Mediterranean, and in the Red Sea for service in the Indian Ocean. That Pharaoh had close ties with Greece, and especially with Corinth, where it is likely — if the Corinthians had indeed introduced the ship in the late 8th century BC — he acquired the design.

Additionally, there is a fragment of Attic pottery, dated to between 735 and 710 BC, which seems to show a ship with three levels of oarsmen, although the third level is unmanned in the illustration. It is thought that the image represents an early example, or even a stereotype, of a trireme, and the unmanned third level is explained, by proponents of the earlier introduction theory, as being quite natural, since the illustration is part of a relief depicting an evacuation, and oarsmen would surely have been in short supply.

It is still not certain which of the two theories is true, and much research is still being done into the questions which surround the introduction of this warship.

Persian and Peloponnesian Wars

The early 5th century BC saw a conflict between the cities of Greece and the expansionist Achaemenid Empire under Darius and Xerxes, who used ships from their Phoenician, Carian and Ionian subjects. Since these early craft were not heavily armored and did not carry a large compliment of marines the main tactic used by ancient navies was to quickly ram enemy ships with the prow of the vessel with the intention of either sinking the enemy ship, or to sail alongside it, breaking its oars, thus immobilizing it.

The Greeks defeated the first invasion force at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, but realized that pursuing land battles against the more numerous Persians could not hope to win in the long term. When news came that Xerxes was amassing an enormous invasion force in Asia Minor, the Greek cities expanded their navies: in 482 BC the Athenian statesman Themistocles realized that if Greece was to survive another Persian invasion then it must take control of the Aegean.

Themistocles used his political skills and influence, along with the income of the newly discovered silver mines at Lavrion, and persuaded the Athenian assembly to start the construction of 200 triremes. The project was successful, and 150 Athenian triremes are reported at the beginning of the Persian Wars. The first clash with the Persian navy was at the Battle of Artemisium, where both sides suffered great casualties. However, the decisive naval clash occurred at Salamis, where which Xerxes' second invasion fleet was defeated.

After the Persian defeat, their strong fleet, composed of over 200 triremes manned by the poorer social classes, enabled the Athenians to establish control over the Aegean and many Greek cities joined in the Athenian-led Delian League. Athenian maritime power is the first example of thalassocracy in world history. In the subsequent Peloponnesian War, naval actions fought by triremes featured prominently, including the Battle of Aegospotami, which sealed the defeat of the Athenian Empire by Sparta and its allies.

Construction and crew

The information we have concerning the trireme's construction comes from both the written sources and archaeological evidence. Most of it concerns the "classical" type of the 5th century, especially as used by Athens. Much further information was provided by the trireme reconstruction project (see below).

Excavations of the ship sheds (neosoikoi) at Piraeus have provided us a with general outline of the Athenian trireme. It was about 36 meters in length, and just 6 m at its widest. The ship sat low in the water, permitting easy beaching. The ship's primary propulsion came from the ca. 170 oars.

At tests conducted with the reconstructed Olympias, a steady speed of 4 knots per hour could be maintained, with half the crew resting at a time. The ship also had two masts, a main (istos megas) and a small foremast (istos akateios), with square sails, while steering was provided by two paddles at the bow.

The total crew (pleroma) of the ship was about 200. Of these 174 were rowers, divided into 62 thranites in the top row, 58 zeugites in the middle, and 54 thalamites in the lowest row. The ship's captain was the trierarchos, a wealthy Athenian citizen, responsible for manning and maintaining the ship.

Actual command however often rested with the helmsman, the kybernetes, who was always an experienced seaman. Other officers were the bow lookout (proreus or prorates), the boatswain (keleustes), the quartermaster (pentekontarchos), the shipwright (naupegos), the piper (auletes) who gave the rowers' rhythm and 2 toicharchoi, in charge of the rowers on each side of the ship. There were also about 17 sailors and a varying number of marines (epibatai).

In the ancient world, naval combat relied on two methods: ramming and boarding. Rams (embolon) were fitted to the prows of warships, and were used to rupture the enemy ship's hull. The preferred method of attack was from astern and behind, with the aim not of creating a single hole, bit of

rupturing as big a length of the enemy vessel as possible. The minimum speed necessary for a successful impact was at about 10 knots. Another method was to brush alongside the enemy ship, with oars drawn in, in order to break the enemy's oars and render the ship immobile, to be finished off at ease.

Unlike later eras, boarding actions were not very frequent with the triremes. Their small size allowed for a limited number of marines to be carried aboard, and during the 5th and 4th centuries, emphasis was laid on maneuverability and speed, not on armor and firing power, although fleets less confident of their ability in ramming were prone to load more marines onto their ships.

In any case, prior to engagement, the masts and railings of the ship were taken down, hindering any attempt at using grappling hooks. The Athenians especially became masters in the art of ramming, using light, un-decked (aphraktai) triremes.

Squadrons of triremes employed a variety of tactics. The periplous (Gk., "sailing around") involved outflanking or encircling the enemy so as to attack them in the vulnerable rear; the diekplous (Gk., "Sailing out through") involved a concentrated charge so as to break a hole in the enemy line, allowing galleys to break through and then wheel to attack the enemy line from behind; and the kyklos (Gk., "circle") and the menoeides kyklos (Gk. "half-circle"), were defensive tactics to be employed against these maneuvers. In all of these maneuvers, the ability to accelerate faster, row faster, and turn more sharply than one's enemy was very important.

Changes of engagement and construction

During the Hellenistic period, the light trireme was supplanted by larger warships in dominant navies, especially the pentere/quinquereme. The maximum practical number of oar banks a ship could have was three. So the numbers did not refer to the banks of oars anymore (for biremes, triremes and quinquiremes), but to the number of rowers per vertical section, with several men on each oar.

The reasons for this development was the increasing use of armor on the bows of warships against ramming attacks, which again required heavier ships for a successful attack. This increased the number of rowers per ship, and also made it possible to use less well-trained personnel for moving these new ships to the minimum impact speed of 10 knots. This change was accompanied by an increased reliance on tactics like boarding, missile skirmishes and using warships as platforms for artillery.

Triremes continued to be the mainstay of all smaller navies. While the Hellenistic kingdoms did develop the quinquireme, most navies of the Greek homeland and the smaller colonies could only afford triremes. It was used by the Diadochi Empires and sea powers like Syracuse, Carthage and later Rome.

The difference to the classical 5th century Athenian ships was that they were armored against ramming and carried significantly more marines. Lightened versions of the trireme and smaller vessels were often used as auxiliaries, and still performed quite effectively against the heavier ships, thanks to their greater maneuverability.

With the rise of Rome the biggest fleet of quinquiremes temporarily ruled the Mediterranean, but during the civil wars after Caesar's death the fleet was on the wrong side and a new warfare with light liburnians was developed.

By Imperial times the fleet was relatively small and had mostly political influence, controlling the grain supply and fighting pirates, who usually employed light biremes and liburnians. But instead of the successful liburnians of the civil war, it was again centered around light triremes, but still with many marines. Out of this type of ship the dromon developed.

In the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC, an alliance of Greek city-states fought the invading Persian Empire at the pass of Thermopylae in central Greece.

Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held back the Persians for three days in one of history's most famous last stands. A small force led by King Leonidas of Sparta blocked the only road through which the massive army of Xerxes I could pass. After three days of battle, a local resident named Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks by revealing a mountain path that led behind the Greek lines. Dismissing the rest of

the army, King Leonidas stayed behind with 300 Spartans and 700 Thespian volunteers. The Persians succeeded in taking the pass but sustained heavy losses, extremely disproportionate to those of the Greeks.

The fierce resistance of the Spartan-led army offered Athens the invaluable time to prepare for a decisive naval battle that would come to determine the outcome of the war. The subsequent Greek victory at the Battle of Salamis left much of the Persian Empire's navy destroyed and Xerxes I was forced to retreat back to Asia, leaving his army in Greece under Mardonius, who was to meet the Greeks in battle one last time.

The Spartans assembled at full strength and led a pan-Greek army that defeated the Persians decisively at the Battle of Plataea, ending the Greco-Persian War and with it the expansion of the Persian Empire into Europe.

The performance of the defenders at the battle of Thermopylae is often used as an example of the advantages of training, equipment, and good use of terrain to maximize an army's potential, and has become a symbol of courage against overwhelming odds. Even more, both ancient and modern writers used the Battle of Thermopylae as an example of the superior power of a well trained army defending native soil.

Greek preparations

The geopolitical origins of the battle actually predate Xerxes I, as it was his father, Darius the Great, who initially sent heralds to all Greek cities offering blandishments if they would submit to Persian authority. As was customary, this was signaled by asking for "earth and water", betokening their submission, which was duly kept by the assiduous bureaucrats of the Persian Empire. Many of the 700 Greek states submitted, including Argos.

The Athenians declined to adhere to their initial agreement, undertaken in 507 BC (as the command in 491 BC from the Great King Darius, through his brother the Satrap of Ionia Artaphernes, was to reinstate Hippias the tyrant,[6] which the newly democratic Athenians were loath to do).

Despite the turbulent nature of Greek politics, the Spartans found themselves on the same side as the newly formed Cleisthenes democracy of Athens; though they didn't just kill their heralds, as the Athenians did, but threw them into a well, answering their demand for 'earth and water' with the retort "Dig it out for yourselves".

Support gathered around these two leading states. A congress met at Corinth in late autumn of 481 BC, and a confederate alliance of Greek city-states was formed. It had the power to send envoys asking for assistance and to dispatch troops from the member states to defensive points after joint consultation.

Herodotus calls them simply "?? ?????e?" (the Greeks) or "the Greeks who had banded together." Sparta and Athens had a leading role in the congress but interests of all the states played a part in determining defensive strategy. Little is known about the internal workings of the congress or the discussion during its proceedings, though only 70 of the approximately 700 Greek cities sent representatives.

The Persian army first encountered a joint force of 10,000 Athenian and Spartan hoplites led by Euanetus and Themistocles in the vale of Tempe. Upon hearing this, Xerxes I sent the army through the Sarantaporo strait, which was unguarded, and sidestepped them. The hoplites, warned by Alexander I of Macedon, vacated the pass.

The allied Greeks judged that the next strategic choke point where the Persian force could be stopped was Thermopylae. They decided to defend it and send a fleet to Artemision, a naval choke point, as Xerxes' army was being supplied and supported by sea. Using the fleet, Xerxes' army might have crossed Maliacos bay and outflanked the Greek army again.

The Greek high strategy is confirmed by an oration later in the same century:

But while Greece showed these inclinations [to join the Persians], the Athenians, for their part, embarked in their ships and hastened to the defence of Artemisium; while the Spartans and some of their allies went off to make a stand at Thermopylae, judging that the narrowness of the ground would enable them to secure the passage.

Some modern historians, such as Bengtson, claim that the purpose of the land force was to slow down the Persian army whilst the Persian navy was defeated at sea. Another theory is that the land army was expected to hold back the Persian forces in the north and defeat it through attrition, epidemics, and food deprivation.

Some have argued that the Athenians were confident that a small Greek force led by Leonidas would be enough to hold back the Persians; otherwise, they would have already vacated their city and sent their whole army to Thermopylae. There is one known case in which a small force did stop a larger invading force from the north: in 353 BC/352 BC the Athenians managed to stop the forces of Philip II of Macedon by deploying 5,000 hoplites and 400 horsemen.

Herodotus writes:

The force with Leonidas was sent forward by the Spartans in advance of their main body, that the sight of them might encourage the allies to fight, and hinder them from going over to the Medes, as was likely they might have done had they seen that Sparta was backward. They intended presently, when they had celebrated the Carneian Festival, which was what now kept them at home, to leave a garrison in Sparta, and hasten in full force to join the army.

The rest of the allies intended to act similarly; for it happened that the Olympic Festival fell exactly at this same period. None of them looked to see the contest at Thermopylae decided so speedily; wherefore they were content to send forward a mere advance guard. Such accordingly were the intentions of the allies.

The legend of Thermopylae as told by Herodotus has it that Sparta consulted the Oracle at Delphi before setting out to meet the Persian army. The Oracle is said to have made the following prophecy in hexameter verse:

O ye men who dwell in the streets of broad Lacedaemon!

Either your glorious town shall be sacked by the children of Perseus,

Or, in exchange, must all through the whole Laconian country

Mourn for the loss of a king, descendant of great Heracles.

He cannot be withstood by the courage of bulls nor of lions,

Strive as they may; he is mighty as Jove; there is naught that shall stay him,

Till he have got for his prey your king, or your glorious city.

In essence, the Oracle's warning was that either Sparta would be conquered and left in ruins or one of her two hereditary kings, descendant of Heracles, must sacrifice his life to defend her.

Leonidas took charge of his personal fighting unit, the 300 Spartans (and the 900 servants of the 300 soldiers)70, and headed to Thermopylae. Herodotus writes that Leonidas was idolized by his men. He was convinced that he was going to certain death and his forces were not adequate for a victory, and so selected only men who had fathered sons who were old enough to take over the family responsibilities. Plutarch mentions in his Sayings of Spartan Women that, after encouraging him, Leonidas' wife Gorgo asked what she should do on his departure. He replied, "Marry a good man, and have good children."

Battle

Arrival of the Persians

Herodotus attests a conversation that took place early in the expedition between Xerxes and Demaratus, an exiled Spartan king in his employ. The King of Kings asked Demaratus whether he thought that the Greeks would put up a fight, for in his opinion neither the Greeks nor even all peoples of Europe together would be able to stop him because they were disunited.

Demaratus replied:"First then, no matter what, the Spartans will never accept your terms. This would reduce Greece to slavery. They are sure to join battle with you even if all the rest of the Greeks surrendered to you. As for Spartan numbers, do not ask how many or few they are, hoping for them to surrender. For if a thousand of them should take the field, they will meet you in battle, and so will any other number, whether it is less than this, or more."

Xerxes laughed at this answer, claiming that "free men" of any number would never be able to stand against his army which was unified by a single ruler, and that obedience to one single master would make his troops extremely courageous, or they would be led into battle "by the whip" even against an army of any size. He added that "even if the Greeks have larger numbers than our highest estimate, we still would outnumber them 100 to 1", claiming that his army too contained men as tough as the ones Demaratus had described.

On the Persian Empire army's arrival at Thermopylae, Greek troops instigated a council meeting. Some Peloponnesians suggested withdrawal to the Isthmus and blocking the passage to Peloponnesus. They were well aware that the Persians would have to go through Athens in order to reach them there. The Phocians and Locrians, whose states were located nearby, became indignant and advised defending Thermopylae and sending for more help. Leonidas and the Spartans agreed to defend Thermopylae.

Meanwhile, the Persians entered the pass and sent a mounted scout to reconnoiter. The Greeks allowed him to come up to the camp, observe them, and depart. When the scout reported to Xerxes the size of the Greek force and that the Spartans were indulging in calisthenics and combing their long hair, Xerxes I found the reports laughable.

Seeking again the counsel of Demaratus, Xerxes was told that the Spartans were preparing for battle and that it was their custom to adorn their hair when they were about to risk their lives.

Demaratus called them "the bravest men in Greece" and warned the Great King that they intended to dispute the pass. He emphasized that he had tried to warn Xerxes earlier in the campaign, but the King had refused to believe him. He added that if Xerxes ever managed to subdue the Spartans, no other nation in the world would dare to defend themselves against him.

Xerxes remained incredulous, finding it unbelievable for such a small army to contend with his own. Plutarch informs that he then sent emissaries to the Greek forces. At first, he asked Leonidas to join him by offering the kingship of all Greece. Leonidas answered: "If you knew what is good in life, you would abstain from wishing for foreign things. For me it is better to die for Greece than to be monarch over my compatriots."

Then Xerxes I asked him more forcefully to surrender their arms. To this Leonidas gave his noted answer:

????? ?aß? (pronounced in the Erasmus accent: /mo'l??n la'be/, Byzantine accent:mo'lon la've),

meaning "Come and get them". This quote has been repeated by many later generals and politicians in order to express an army's or nation's determination to not surrender without a battle. It also was taken by the Greek First Army Corps as their emblem.

Despite their extremely disproportionate numbers, Greek morale was high. Herodotus writes that when Dienekes, a Spartan soldier, was informed that Persian arrows would be so numerous as "to blot out the sun", he remarked with characteristically laconic prose, "So much the better, we shall fight in the shade." (Taken by the Greek 20th Armored Division as their motto).

Xerxes I waited four days for the Greek force to disperse. On the fifth day he sent Medes and Cissians, along with relatives of those who had died 10 years earlier in the battle of Marathon to take the Greeks prisoner and bring them before him. According to Ctesias, the first wave numbered 10,000 soldiers and were commanded by Artapanus. They were "cut to pieces" with only two or three Spartans dead.

Failure of the frontal assault

Xerxes I sent in the Medes who had been only recently conquered by the Persians, perhaps, as Diodorus Siculus suggested, because he wanted them to bear the brunt of the fighting. The Medes soon found themselves in a frontal assault. The Greeks had camped on either side of the rebuilt Phocian wall. That the wall was guarded shows that the Greeks were using it to establish a reference line for the battle, but they fought in front of it.

Details of the tactics are scant. The Greeks probably deployed in a phalanx, a wall of overlapping shields and layered spear points, spanning the width of the pass. Herodotus says that the units for each state were kept together.

The Persians, armed with arrows and short spears, could not break through the long spears of the Greek phalanx, nor were their lightly armored men a match for the superior armor, weaponry, and discipline of the Greek hoplites. Glotz has argued that three Persian Empire soldiers were necessary to put down one hoplite. In this way they killed so many Medes that Xerxes is said to have started up off the seat from which he was watching the battle three times.

According to Herodotus and Diodorus, the Persian emperor, having taken the measure of the enemy, threw his best troops into a second assault: the Immortals, an elite corps of 10,000 men. However, according to Ctesias, the Immortals did not attack until the second day. Ctesias tells that Xerxes sent another 20,000 troops against the Greeks, after the first 10,000 were defeated, who also failed to open the pass even though they were flogged by their leaders to keep on attacking.

On his side, Leonidas had arranged a system of relays between the hoplites of the various cities so as to constantly have fresh troops on the front line. In the heat of the battle, however, the units did not get a chance to rotate. Able to approach the Greek line only in such numbers as the space allowed, the Immortals fared no better than the Medes, and Xerxes had to withdraw them as well. The first day of battle probably ended there.

On the second day Xerxes sent, according to Ctesias, another 50,000 to assault the pass. Again they failed. The account of the slain gives some indication why: the wall of bodies must have broken up the Persian line and detracted from their morale. Climbing over the bodies, they could see that they had stepped into a killing machine but the officers behind prevented them from withdrawing. Xerxes at last stopped the assault and withdrew to his camp, totally perplexed. By now he concluded that a head-on confrontation against Spartan-led troops in a narrow place was the wrong approach.

Encirclement of the Greeks

Late on the second day of battle, as the Persian king was pondering what to do next, he received a windfall: a Malian Greek traitor named Ephialtes informed him of a path around Thermopylae and offered to guide the Persian army through the pass. Ephialtes was motivated by the desire of a reward. For this act, the name of Ephialtes received a lasting stigma, coming to mean "nightmare" and becoming the archetypal term for a "traitor" in Greek.

Xerxes I sent his commander Hydarnes through the pass with the Immortals and other troops (a force of about 40,000), according to Ctesias. The path led from east of the Persian camp along the ridge of Mt. Anopaea behind the cliffs that flanked the pass. It branched with one path leading to Phocis and the other down to the Gulf of Malis at Alpenus, first town of Locris. Leonidas had stationed 1,000 Phocian volunteers on the heights to guard that path.

Despite their indignation in not being on the front lines and their determination to defend Thermopylae, the Phocians were not expecting an attack on the rear guard: there were no advance positions, sentinels, or patrols. Their first warning of the approach of the Immortals under Hydarnes was the rustling of oak leaves at first light on the third day of the battle.

Herodotus says that they "jumped up" (suggesting that the Greek force was still asleep) and were "greatly amazed" (which no alert unit should have been). Hydarnes was perhaps as amazed to see them hastily arming themselves as they were to see him and the Persian forces.

He feared that they were Spartans, but was enlightened by Ephialtes and proceeded by firing "showers of arrows" at them. The Phocians retreated to the crest of the mountain to make their stand, not realizing that this strategy would allow the Persians to take the left branch of the pass to Alpenus and hence circle behind the main Greek force.

Last stand of the Spartans and Thespians

Before first light, Leonidas learned that the Phocians had not held and he called a council of war at dawn. During the council some Greeks argued for withdrawal in the face of the overwhelming Persian advance, while others pledged to stay. After the council, many of the Greek forces did choose to withdraw. Herodotus believed that Leonidas blessed their departure with an order, but he also offered the alternative point of view that those retreating forces departed without orders.

The Spartans had pledged themselves to fight to the death, while the Thebans were held as hostage against their will. However, a contingent of about 700 Thespians, led by general Demophilus, the son of Diadromes, refused to leave with the other Greeks, but cast their lot with the Spartans. Unknown and unremembered by most, 900 Helots (Spartan slaves) also died fighting alongside their masters in the last stand.

Ostensibly, the Spartans were obeying their oath and following the oracle of Delphi (see below). However, it might also have been a calculated strategy to delay the advance of the Persians and cover the retreat of the Greek army.

Once the pass was cleared the Persians could use their cavalry to pursue and stop the retreat of the Greek infantry in the more open terrain. The heavily armed Greek infantry could not have outrun Persia's cavalry; once halted in the open, the Greeks could be overwhelmed by superior numbers and a cavalry charge. In fact, with the Persians so close at hand, the decision to stand and fight was probably a tactical requirement only made more palatable by the oracle.

At dawn Xerxes I made libations. He paused to allow the Immortals sufficient time to descend the mountain, and then began his advance.

The Greeks this time sallied forth from the wall to meet the Persians in the wider part of the pass in an attempt to slaughter as many Persians as they could. They fought with spears until every spear was shattered and then switched to xiphoi (short swords). In this struggle, Herodotus tells us that two brothers of Xerxes I fell: Abrocomes and Hyperanthes. Leonidas also died in the assault.

Receiving intelligence that Ephialtes and the Immortals were advancing toward the rear, the Greeks withdrew and took a stand on a small hill behind the wall. The Thebans deserted to the Persians but a few were slain before their surrender was accepted. While some of the remaining Greeks fought with their xiphoi, some were left with only their hands and teeth. Tearing down part of the wall, Xerxes I ordered the hill surrounded and the Persians rained down arrows until the last Greek was dead. Modern archaeologists have found evidence of the final arrow shower.

Aftermath

When the body of Leonidas was recovered by the Persians, Xerxes I, in a rage at the loss of so many of his soldiers, ordered that the head be cut off and the body crucified. This was very uncommon for the Persians; they had the habit of treating enemies that fought bravely against them with great honor, as the example of Pytheas captured earlier off Skyros shows.However, Xerxes I was known for his rage, as when he had the Hellespont whipped because it would not obey him.

Xerxes I was curious as to why there was such a small Greek force guarding Thermopylae and interrogated some Arcadian prisoners. The answer was that all the other men were participating in the Olympic Games, a very important event for them. When Xerxes I asked what the prize for the winner was, "an olive-wreath" came the answer. Upon hearing this, Tritantaechmes, a Persian general, said to Mardonius: "Good heavens! Mardonius, what kind of men are these against whom you have brought us to fight? Men who do not compete for money, but for honor".

After the departure and defeat of the Persians, the Greeks collected their dead and buried them on the hill. A stone lion was erected to commemorate Leonidas. Forty years after the battle, Leonidas' body was returned to Sparta where he was buried again with full honors and funeral games were held every year in his memory.

The simultaneous naval Battle of Artemisium was a stalemate, whereupon the Athenian navy retreated. The Persians were now in control of the Aegean Sea and all of peninsular Greece as far south as Attica.

The Spartans prepared to defend the Isthmus of Corinth and the Peloponnese, while Xerxes I sacked an evacuated city of Athens, whose inhabitants had already fled to Salamis Island. In September, the Greeks defeated the Persians at the naval Battle of Salamis, which led to the rapid retreat of Xerxes I. The remaining Persian army, left under the charge of Mardonius, was defeated in the Battle of Plataea by a combined Greek army again led by the Spartans, under the regent Pausanias.

Topography of the battlefield

At the time, the pass of Thermopylae consisted of a track along the shore of the Gulf of Malis so narrow that only one chariot could pass through. On the southern side of the track stood the cliffs, while on the north side was the gulf. Along the path was a series of three constrictions, or "gates" (pylai), and at the center gate a short wall that had been erected by the Phocians in the previous century to aid in their defense against Thessalian invasions. The name "hot gates" comes from the hot springs that were located there.

Today, the pass is not near the sea but is inland due to infilling of the Gulf of Malis. The old track appears at the foot of hills around the plain, flanked by a modern road. It still is a natural defensive position to modern armies.

Pictures showing the terrain are to be found at these sites:

View from the east at livius.org. On the left are the cliffs to the south; on the right, the road and the edge of the agricultural region that once were the Gulf of Malis.

Modern monument at siu.edu

Spartan burial mound at coloradocollege.edu

Artemisium at prigsbee.com

Size of the Persian army

Primary sources

Xerxes I, King of Persia, had been preparing for years to continue the Greco-Persian Wars started by his father Darius. In 481 BC, after four years of preparation, the Persian army and navy arrived in Asia Minor. A bridge of ships had been made at Abydos. This allowed the land forces to cross the Hellespont. Herodotus of Halicarnassus, who wrote the first history of this war, gave the size of Xerxes' army as follows:

Units Numbers

Fleet crew 517,610

Infantry 1,700,000

Cavalry 80,000

Arabs and Libyans 20,000

Greek troops allied with Persians 324,000

Total 2,641,610

This is the account for the land armies present at Thermopylae. Regarding the total number of forces Xerxes I assembled to invade Greece (land army, fleet crew, etc.), this number is doubled in order to account for support troops and thus Herodotus reports that the total Persian force numbered 5,283,220 men, a figure which is regarded as erroneous by modern estimations.

The poet Simonides, who was a near-contemporary, talks of four million. Ctesias of Cnidus, Artaxerxes II of Persia's personal physician, wrote a history of Persia according to Persian sources one century later that unfortunately has not survived, and gives 800,000 as the total number of the original army that met in Doriskos, Thrace, after crossing the Hellespont.

Modern estimates

Modern scholars have given different estimates based on knowledge of the Persian military systems, their logistical capabilities, the Greek countryside, and supplies available along the army's route. Modern estimations tend to consider the figures given in ancient texts as miscalculations or exaggerations on the part of the victors.

It is assumed that if Herodotus' 300,000 estimate at Plataea were to be accepted, then the land army at Thermopylae may not have surpassed 500,000, which accounts for one fifth of Herodotus' record. Others give an upper limit of 250,000 total land forces and 500,000 for the expedition. One of the main reasons often given for these values is a lack of water. Sir Frederick Maurice, was among the first to estimate that the army could not have surpassed 175,000 due to this reason, at a time when hydrological data on Greek rivers was unavailable.

Another reason he suggested was that it may have been impossible for such a large army to camp in an area of a few square miles. A widely supported view holds that Herodotus may have confused the Persian terms for chiliarchy (1,000) and myriarchy (10,000), leading to an estimate of 210,000 soldiers on foot.

The topic has been controversial but modern estimates for the land force figures range from 60,000 to 300,000, though higher and lower estimates have been suggested by several scholars, but more popular views support ranges between 100,000-150,000 or 150,000-200,000. The topic has been hotly debated but the general consensus revolves around the range of 150,000-200,000. All these estimates concern the land forces alone, whereas the entire Persian presence in Greece, including support troops and fleet crew, would almost double the number.

The numbers given by Herodotus on the Persian fleet are considered largely realistic. It is generally maintained that Herodotus or his sources had access to official Persian Empire records of the forces involved in the expedition, and it is more likely the numbers on the fleet were given precisely, whereas the contingent of the army may have been listed in general terms rather than exact figures. Whatever the real numbers were, it is clear that Xerxes I was anxious to ensure a successful expedition by mustering an overwhelming numerical superiority by land and by sea.

Size of the Greek army

According to Herodotus, the Greek army included the following forces:

Units Numbers

Spartans 300

Mantineans 500

Tegeans 500

Arcadian Orchomenos 120

Other Arcadians 1,000

Corinthians 400

Phlians 200

Mycenaeans 80

Thespians 700

Thebans 400

Phocians 1,000

Opuntian Locrians 13

Total 5,200+

To this number must be added 1,000 other Lacedemonians mentioned by Diodorus Siculus[64] and perhaps 800 auxiliary troops from other Greek cities, bringing the total up to 7,000. A further 900 Helots (Spartan slaves) also fought at the battle. Diodorus gives 4,000 as the total of Greek troops, while Pausanias gives 11,200. Many modern historians, who usually consider Herodotus more reliable, prefer his claim of 7,000 men. The numbers changed later on in the battle as, under orders, the entire army retreated and only 2,000 Spartans, Helots, Thespians and Thebans remained.

Date of the battle

Based on information from Herodotus' The Histories Book VII, the date of Ephialtes' betrayal and use of the mountain path by the Immortals can be narrowed to a few days in September of 480 BC, as follows. Not knowing the terrain, they would have needed some form of light, but torches would have given away their intent. They therefore traversed the path when light from the moon would be the greatest - the full moon.

In Book VII Herodotus mentions the solar eclipse that occurred at the crossing of the Hellespont by the Persians. By estimating the distance the Persian army could move each day, it can be established that the battle took place around September of 480 BC. Tracing back via a lunar calendar, the date of the betrayal can be narrowed to September 18, 19, or 20, 480 BC.

Background

After the Battle of Salamis, Xerxes I returned to Persia,

leaving Mardonius in charge of the conquered Greek territories. Mardonius, through Alexander I of Macedon, asked for a truce with Athens, offering autonomous government and Persian aid in rebuilding their city. Athens rejected this and asked for Spartan help, though the Spartans were more interested in protecting the Peloponnese. Mardonius then recaptured Athens, but the Athenians once more rejected his offer of peace.

Athens, Megara and Plataea sent emissaries to Sparta demanding assistance. The Spartans hesitated, using the celebration of the Hyacinthia religious festival as an excuse. In the end, Chileos of Tegea convinced the Spartans of the grave danger they would face if Athens made peace.

The Spartans sent 45,000 men under the command of Pausanias, 5,000 Spartiates (full citizen soldiers), 5,000 Perioikoi and 35,000 helots; this was the largest single Spartan fighting force ever to appear in battle. When Mardonius learned of the Spartan force, he completed the destruction of Athens, tearing down whatever was standing and covering it with soil. He then retreated to Thebes, hoping to lure the Greek army there.

Battle

Mardonius fortified the Asopus river in Boeotia, hoping that the Greeks would be unable to unite against him. However, the Athenians sent 8,000 men and marched with the Spartan force to the pass over Mount Cithaeron, where they could successfully defend themselves from Persian raids. Mardonius sent cavalry charges led by Masistius to attack the Greeks, hoping to lure them onto the plain or to check whether his cavalry could successfully attack a phalanx on hilly terrain.

Masistius met resistance from the Megarans and Athenians under the command of Olympiodorus, in the centre of the Greek formation. Masistius was killed and his cavalry retreated. The Greeks began to move away from the pass towards the plain of Plataea where Mardonius had built a fortified camp, and where the Greek hoplites could fight more easily. The Athenians formed the left wing of the army, with the Spartans on the right and the Tegeans in the middle.

By this point, the Greek army had been reinforced by many other city-states, giving them a total strength of 110,000 men, consisting of 38,700 hoplites and 71,300 light troops, according to Herodotus. The hoplites came from the following city-states:

Cities No. of men

Sparta 10,000

Athens 8,000

Plataea 600

Megara 3,000

Corinth 5,000

Tegea 1,500

Potidaea: 300

Arcadian 600

Orchomenus 1,000

Hermion 300

Eretria and Styra 600

Chalkis 400

Ambrakia 500

Lefkas and Anactorium 800

Cephalonia 200

Aegina 500

Sicyon 3,000

Epidaurus 800

Troezen 1,000

Leprea 200

Mycene and Tiryns 400

Floia 1,000

Total 38,700

Of the light troops, 35,000 were the aforementioned helots, 1,800 were Thespians and the other 34,500 are simply said to be from the other cities, about one per hoplite. The number of helots is disputed because it implies seven helots for every Spartan. Some historians have accepted these numbers and used them as a population census of Greece at the time. Others have claimed that the numbers are bloated.

The battle near Mycale is supposed to have taken place at the same time, accounting for at least 25,000 men (mostly Athenians but also many Spartans) on the Asian front, which means the Greek coalition could have numbered around 80,000 men. Other historians have rejected the idea that there were any light troops at all, only hoplites. Considering that Pausanias tried to bring political reform to Sparta by giving the helots some rights, it is more likely than not that he had seen them in battle.

Furthermore if the whole Spartan hoplite force had indeed been sent to Plataea, it would have been risky to have left such large numbers of able-bodied helots at home; therefore having them present at the battle as auxiliary troops would have arguably been the more prudent choice.

The Greek formation, according to Herodotus, was arrayed in the following order (from right to left): Spartans, Tegeans, Corinthians, Potideans, Troezenians, Lepreats, Mycenians and Tirynthians, Fleiasians, Hermionians, Eretrians and Styrians, Chalcideans, Ambracians, Lefkadians and Anactorians, Palians from Cephalonia, Aeginians, Megarans and Athenians.

Mardonius, on the other hand, according to Herodotus, had 300,000 Persians, of which 50,000 under Artabazus did not take part in the battle because their leader disagreed with Mardonius's tactics. Ctesias who wrote in the 4th century BC a history of Persia based on Persian archives, claimed 120,000 Persian and 7,000 Greek soldiers, but placed the battle before Salamis.

This discrepancy is probably due to the fact that his work did not survive and what is known of it is a fragment in the Myriobiblos, which was compiled by the Ecumenical Patriarch Photius in the 9th century AD.

The figure of 300,000 has been doubted by several modern historians, who have given figures as low as 50,000, beginning with Ctesias's number. JAR Munro and Macan note that Herodotus mentions by name 6 superior military commanders and 29 µ???a???? (muriarchoi), that is commanders of a baivarabam. The baivarabam was the tactical unit of the ancient Persian infantry that numbered 10,000 men.

While it is possible that Xerxes, on leaving Greece after the battle of Salamis accompanied by probably 60,000 troops, did leave his formations undermanned, it would have been unwise to leave a small force since he knew that Persian archers could defeat hoplites only with superior numbers. Also, Mardonius did have a force of allied Greeks - all Greek states north of Athens - especially the ever-"medizing" (i.e. allied to the "Medes") Thebans and allies from Thessalia.

Ancient sources say they numbered perhaps 50,000, and while this may seem exaggerated, the northern states were certainly able to field 30,000 hoplites. British historian N.G.L. Hammond accepts that there were 300,000 Persians at Plataea, though he claims that the invasion force that was gathered in Doriskos one year earlier was smaller.

The Persian formation pitted the Persians against the Spartans and Tegeans, Medes against Corinthians, Potideans, Orchomenians and Sicyonians, Bactrians against Epidaurians, Troezenians, Lepreats, Tirynthians, Mycenians and Floiasians, Indians against Hermionians, Eretrians, Styrians and Chalcideans, Saces against Ambraciotians, Anactorians, Leucadians, Palians and Aeginians, the Greek allies of the Persians against Plateans and Athenians. There were however other forces in the Persian camp: Frygians, Mysians, Thracians, Paonians, Ethiopians and Egyptians armed only with knives.

Both armies camped in front of each other for 10 days, with only small raids on each side. However, the Persians diverted the Greek water supply and captured a convoy with 500 oxen, so the Greeks were forced to find a new camp. Finally Mardonius, after a council where Artabazus suggested retreating to Thebes where they had many supplies, decided to attack. During the night, Alexander of Macedon crossed the Asopus river, and appeared before the Athenian generals (Aristides only according to Plutarch) and said the following:

Athenians, I trust you these words as secret and I forbid you to repeat them to anybody but Pausanias, so as not to ruin me. Of course I would not tell you, if I was not very interested for all of Greece. For I myself am Greek, and from an old family, and I would not like to see Greece a slave and not free (Herodotus IX,44)

The Athenians and Spartans switched positions so that the Athenians would defend against the main Persian force while the Spartans would fight the Greek subjects within the Persian army. Seeing this, Mardonius switched his formation too. Then the Greeks on the 12th night from finding the second camp decided to move. This was done with some confusion.

On discovering the Greeks had abandoned their positions, Mardonius chased after them. Seeing that the Greek formation was divided in three, he decided to attack, without realising he was sending his force into a trap. The Persian cavalry and archers first came upon the Spartans who were still moving, and the infantry arrived soon after. The Spartans retreated higher in the mountains where they were protected from cavalry attacks. The cavalry and archers did little damage and withdrew when the infantry arrived. The Spartans asked the Athenians for help, but they were unable to send any because they were being attacked by the Thebans.

The numerically superior Persian infantry were of the heavy (by Persian standards) sparabara formation that was still much lighter than the Greek phalanx. The Persian defensive weapon was a large wicker shield, compared to the heavy bronze shield of the phalanx. The Persians formed a shield wall and started firing volleys of arrows against the Spartans and the Tegeans.

After suffering these volleys for some time, the Tegeans attacked, forcing the Spartans to follow suit. The Greek long spears gave them a tactical advantage over the Persian short spears and swords, and the battle soon turned into a slaughter. The Persians were annihilated; Mardonius himself was killed by a Spartan named Aeimnestus. In the meantime, while the Spartans were still suffering from the arrows, the Athenians moved to help them, but found themselves facing the Persians' Greek allies.

While most Greeks feinted cowardice, the Thebans attacked and fought bravely, being repelled with 300 casualties. Herodotus claims that the rest of the Greek and Persian forces did not fight, something very dubious. Unfortunately, no other ancient source with a full description of the battle has survived to say otherwise.

The Persian Artabazus, who had unsuccessfully tried to convince Mardonius to avoid a pitched battle, then took command and immediately retreated, allowing the Greeks to capture their camp. According to Herodotus, only 43,000 of the 300,000 Persians survived the battle, while the Greeks as a whole lost only 159 men. However Diodorus states that Persian casualties likely did not exceed 100,000.

Furthermore, he claims that only Spartans, Tegeans and Athenians died, since they were the only ones who fought. Plutarch, who had access to other sources, gives 1,360 Greek casualties, which seems more accurate, while Ephorus is probably exaggerating when he gives over 10,000. Not to be discarded fully though, this figure of over 10,000 Greek casualties is also confirmed by Diodorus.

However, historical records of the period are notoriously biased or inaccurate and the real number of casualties will never truly be known. Use of any of the ancient casualty figures places Plataea in the list of the most lethal battles in world history, and it may have been more lethal than any preceding battle.

Aftermath

According to tradition, the battle of Mycale occurred on the same day, with the Greek fleet destroying the Persian in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Ionia. The Persian army, under the command of Artabazus tried to retreat all the way back to Asia Minor. Most of the 43,000 survivors were attacked and killed by the forces of Alexander I of Macedon at the estuary of the Strymon river.

This ended the defensive phase of the Persian War, although the Persians continued to interfere in Greek politics until they were conquered in the 4th century BC by Alexander the Great. However, this was the last time the Persians tried to invade the Greek mainland with the goal of total conquest.

A bronze column in the shape of intertwined snakes (Serpent column) was created from the melted-down Persian weapons acquired in the battle plunder of the Persian camp and was offered at the oracle of Delphi, which commemorated all the Greek city-states who participated in the battle. Part of it still survives in the Hippodrome of Constantinople in present-day Istanbul, where it was carried by Constantine the Great during the founding of his city on the Greek colony of Byzantium.

It lists all city-states that took part in the battle, confirming Herodotus' account (but not his numbers). The Greeks also took Mardonius' payroll money and other treasure. The Greeks are recorded to have marvelled at the splendour of the Persian camp, asking why being so wealthy, the Persians wanted to conquer their relatively poor peninsula.

Another important and longer-lasting aftermath was that after the Persian wars the Persian empire started recruiting and relying on Greek mercenaries. Eventually, especially after the March of the 10,000, their superior fighting ability (due to their armour and the way they fought) was demonstrated, leading the way for Alexander the Great's conquests.

Leonidas (Greek: ?e???da? - "Lion's son", "Lion-like") was a king of Sparta, the 17th of the Agiad line, one of the sons of King Anaxandridas II of Sparta, who was believed to be a descendant of Heracles.

He succeeded his half-brother Cleomenes I, probably in 489 BC or 488 BC, and was married to Cleomenes' daughter, Gorgo. His name was raised to a heroic and legendary status as a result of the events in the Battle of Thermopylae.

In 480 BC, Leonidas went to Thermopylae with 300 of his personal guard, all men with male-born sons to carry on their names, where he was joined by forces from other Greek city-states, who put themselves under his command to form an army 7,000 strong. This force was assembled in

an attempt to hold the pass of Thermopylae against the hundreds of thousands of Persian soldiers who had invaded from the north of Greece under Xerxes I. The reason Leonidas took only his personal guard, and not the army, was that Spartan religious customs forbade sending an army at that time of year.

In addition, the Oracle of Delphi had foretold that Sparta could be saved only by the death of one of its kings, one of the lineage of Heracles, so he was deliberately going to his doom. Instead it seems likely that the ephors supported the plan half-heartedly due to the festival of Carneia and their policy of concentrating the Greek forces at the Isthmus of Corinth.

According to Plutarch, Leonidas' wife Gorgo asked him how she could aid his mission. He responded "Make sure you marry some man that will treat you well, bear children from him."

Several episodes demonstrate the laconic matter-of-fact bravery for which Leonidas and the Spartans were famed. On the first day of the siege Xerxes demanded the Greeks surrender their arms. Leonidas replied ????? ?aß? ("Come and get them"). This phrase has been re-used by generals and politicians throughout history and often repeated in popular culture. Today it is the emblem of the Greek 1st Army Corps.

Leonidas and his men repulsed the frontal attacks of the Persians for the first two days, killing roughly 20,000 of the enemy troops and losing few of their own. The Persian elite unit known to the Greeks as "the Immortals" were held back, and two of Xerxes' brothers died in battle. On the third day a Malian Greek traitor named Ephialtes led the Persian general Hydarnes by a mountain track to the rear of the Greeks.

When a scout was sent to check on the troops, he returned with the bad news. At that point Leonidas sent away all Greek troops and remained in the pass with his 300 Spartans, 900 Helots and 700 Thespians who refused to leave. Another 400 Thebans were kept with Leonidas as hostages.

The Thespians stayed entirely on their own will, declaring that they would not abandon Leonidas and his followers. Their leader was Demophilos, son of Diadromes, and as Herodotus writes: "Hence they lived with the Spartans and died with them".

One theory provided by Herodotus is that Leonidas sent away the remainder of his men because he cared about their safety. The King would have thought it wise to preserve those Greek troops for future battles against the Persians, but he knew well that the Spartans could never abandon their post on the battlefield.

The soldiers who stayed behind were to protect their escape against the Persian cavalry. Herodotus himself believes that Leonidas gave the order because he perceived the allies to be out of heart and unwilling to encounter the danger to which his own mind was made up. He therefore chose to dismiss all troops and save the "glory" for the Spartans.

The little Greek force, attacked from both sides, was cut down to a man except for the Thebans, who surrendered. Leonidas fell in the thickest of the fight, but the Spartans retrieved his body and protected it until their final fall to enemy arrows. Herodotus says that Xerxes ordered to have Leonidas' head cut off and his body crucified, due to his hatred towards the Spartan King.

This was considered sacrilegious and an unusual action on the part of Xerxes. A few years later, Xerxes, feeling regret for what he had done, ordered that Leonidas' body be returned to Sparta, where it received an emotional and elaborate funeral. The tomb of Leonidas lies today in the northern part of the modern town of Sparta.

A carved lion monument bearing the inscription below was dedicated at his death site commemorating the sacrifice of him and his men:

Oh stranger, go tell in Lacedaemon,

That here we lie, obeying their behests. — (Greek: ? ?e??', ?????e?? ?a?eda?µ?????? ?t? t?de ?e?µe?a, t??? ?e???? ??µas? pe???µe???) epitaph at Thermopylae (Simonides' epigram)

Two Spartans survived the conflict. Aristodemus suffered an eye injury and was sent behind the lines, eventually ordered back to Sparta with the retreating allies by the King. Pantites was sent by Leonidas to raise support in Thessaly but returned to Thermopylae only after the battle's conclusion. Pantites hanged himself in disgrace after being shunned as a "trembler".

Themistocles was the son of Neocles, an Athenian of no distinction and moderate means, his mother being a Carian or a Thracian.

According to Thucydides, although he lacked a proper education, he displayed marvellous analytical skills, even when required to act quickly. Plutarch, more disparagingly, remarks that he was power-hungry and willing to use any means to gain both personal and national prestige.

Contrast can be drawn between his motivations and those of his 'just' rival, Aristides. Little is known of his early years, but many authors resort to the myth that he was badly behaved as a child and disowned by his father (e.g. Libanius Declamations 9 and 10; Aelian; Cornelius Nepos "Themistocles"). He may have been strategos of his tribe at Marathon and it is said that he was jealous of the victories of Miltiades, repeating to himself, "Miltiades' trophy does not let me sleep" (in Greek: ??? ?? µe ?a?e?de?? t? t?? ???t??d?? t??pa???).

The death of Miltiades left the stage to Aristides and Themistocles. Their rivalry, terminated in 483-82 by the ostracism of Aristides, was largely due to the fact that Themistocles was the advocate of a policy of naval expansion. This policy was of the highest importance to Athens, and indeed, Greece.

Athens faced the equal if not superior power of Aegina, while the danger of a renewed Persian invasion loomed. Themistocles persuaded his countrymen to build 200 triremes with the money (100 talents) from a newly-discovered rich vein of silver at Laureion, and to continue his work of fortifying the harbours of Piraeus in place of the open roadstead of Phalerum. One hundred of the proposed 200 ships were built.

Themistocles may have been archon in 483-82 at the time when this naval programme began. Dionysius of Halicarnassus places his archonship in 493-92, which may be more likely: in 487 the office lost much of its importance owing to the substitution of the lot for election: the chance that the lot would at the particular crisis of 483 fall on Themistocles was remote.

In any case, at the year prior to the invasion of Xerxes Themistocles was the most influential politician in Athens, if not in Greece. Though the Greek fleet was nominally under the control of the Spartan Eurybiades, Themistocles caused the Greeks to fight the indecisive Battle of Artemisium, and more, it was he who brought about the Battle of Salamis, by his threat that he would lead the Athenian army to found a new home in the West, and by his seemingly treacherous message to Xerxes, whose fleet was lured into the channel between Salamis and the mainland, and crushed.

This left the Athenians free to restore their ruined city. Sparta, on the ground that it was dangerous to Greece that there should be any citadel north of the Isthmus of Corinth which an invader might hold, urged against this, but Themistocles by means of diplomatic delays and subterfuges enabled the work to be carried sufficiently near to completion to make the walls defensible.

He also carried out his original plan of making Piraeus a real harbour and fortress for Athens. Athens thus became the finest trade centre in Greece, and this, along with Themistocles' remission of the alien's tax, induced many foreign business men to settle in Athens.

After the crisis of the Persian invasion Themistocles and Aristides appear to have made up their differences. But Themistocles soon began to lose the confidence of the people, partly due to his arrogance (it is said that he built near his own house a sanctuary to Artemis Aristoboulë ["of good counsel"]) and partly due to his alleged readiness to take bribes. Diodorus and Plutarch both refer to some accusation levelled against him, and at some point between 476 and 471 he was ostracised.

He retired to Argos, but the Spartans further accused him of treasonable intrigues with Persia, and he fled to Corcyra, thence to Admetus, king of Molossia, and finally to Asia Minor. He was proclaimed a traitor at Athens and his property was confiscated, though his friends saved him some portion of it.

Artaxerxes I succesor of Xerxes I, offered Themistocles – who is the winner of the Battle of Salamis, asylum, after Themistocles was ostracized (banned) from Athen Greece. He was well received by the Persians and was allowed to settle in Magnesia in Thessaly. Thessaly was an ally of Persia, having supported Persia during the invasion by Xerxes.

The revenues (50 talents) of this town were assigned to him for bread, those of Myus for condiments, and those of Lampsacus for wine. His death at Magnesia, at the age of sixty-five, was possibly due to illness - although Thucydides (book I, 138) tells us that he may have taken poison, finding that he could not keep the promises that he had made to Xerxes. It was said that his bones were secretly transferred to Attica.

He was worshipped by the Magnesians as a god, as we find from a coin on which he is shown with a patera in his hand and a slain bull at his feet (hence perhaps the legend that he died from drinking bull’s blood).

Though his end was discreditable, and his great wealth can hardly have been obtained by loyal public service, there is no doubt that his services to Athens and to Greece were great. He created the Athenian fleet and with it the possibility of the Delian League, which became the Athenian empire, and there are indications (e.g. his plan of expansion in the west) that the later imperialist ideal originated with him.

Pericles had such a profound influence on Athenian society that Thucydides, his contemporary historian, acclaimed him as "the first citizen of Athens".

Pericles turned the Delian League into an Athenian empire and led his countrymen during the first two years of the Peloponnesian War. The period during which he led Athens, roughly from 461 BC to 429 BC, is sometimes known as the "Age of Pericles," though the period thus denoted can include times as early as the Persian Wars, or as late as the

next century.

Pericles promoted the arts and literature; this was a chief reason Athens holds the reputation of being the educational and cultural centre of the ancient Greek world. He started an ambitious project that built most of the surviving structures on the Acropolis (including the Parthenon).

This project beautified the city, exhibited its glory, and gave work to the people. Furthermore, Pericles fostered Athenian democracy to such an extent that critics call him a populist. Pericles was also credited with building the Long Walls, a series of walls which linked Athens to the Sea. This enabled them to survive long sieges, with the ability to recieve supplies from the sea without the risk of being blockaded, and also allowed Athens, which is landlocked, to be connected with its massive naval power.

Early years

Pericles was born in about 495 BC, in the deme of Cholargos just north of Athens.a[›] He was the son of the politician Xanthippus, who, although ostracized in 485–4 BC, returned to Athens to command the Athenian contingent in the Greek victory at Mycale just five years later. Pericles' mother, Agariste, was a scion of the powerful and controversial noble family of the Alcmaeonidae, and her familial connections played a crucial role in starting Xanthippus' political career.

Agariste was the great-granddaughter of the tyrant of Sicyon, Cleisthenes, and the niece of the Supreme Athenian reformer Cleisthenes, another Alcmaeonid.ß According to Herodotus and Plutarch, Agariste dreamed, a few nights before Pericles' birth, that she had borne a lion.

One interpretation of the anecdote treats the lion as a traditional symbol of greatness, but the story may also allude to the unusual size of Pericles' skull, which became a popular target of contemporary comedians. (Although Plutarch claims that this deformity was the reason that Pericles was always depicted wearing a helmet, this is not the case; the helmet was actually the symbol of his official rank as strategos (general)).

Pericles belonged to the local tribe of Acamantis (??aµa?t?? f???). His early years were quiet; the introverted, young Pericles avoided public appearances, preferring to devote his time to his studies.

His family's nobility and wealth allowed him to fully pursue his inclination toward education. He learned music from the masters of the time (Damon or Pythocleides could have been his teachers) and he is considered to have been the first politician to attribute great importance to philosophy. He enjoyed the company of the philosophers Protagoras, Zeno of Elea, and Anaxagoras.

Anaxagoras in particular became a close friend and influenced him greatly. Pericles' manner of thought and rhetorical charisma may have been in part products of Anaxagoras’ emphasis on emotional calm in the face of trouble and scepticism about divine phenomena. His proverbial calmness and self-control are also regarded as products of Anaxagoras' influence.

Political career until 431 BC

Entering politics

In the spring of 472 , Pericles presented the Persae of Aeschylus at the Greater Dionysia as a liturgy, demonstrating that he was then one of the wealthier men of Athens. Simon Hornblower has argued that Pericles' selection of this play, which presents a nostalgic picture of Themistocles' famous victory at Salamis, shows that the young politician was supporting Themistocles against his political opponent Cimon, whose faction succeeded in having Themistocles ostracized shortly afterwards.

Stachini says that pericles is a noob says that Pericles stood first among the Athenians for forty years. If this was so, Pericles must have taken up a position of leadership by the early 460s BC. Throughout these years he endeavored to protect his privacy and tried to present himself as a model for his fellow citizens. For example, he would often avoid banquets, trying to be frugal.

Personal life

Pericles, following Athenian custom, was first married to one of his closest relatives, with whom he had two sons, Xanthippus and Paralus. This marriage, however, was not a happy one, and at some point near 445 BC, Pericles divorced his wife and offered her to another husband, with the agreement of her male relatives. The name of his first wife is not known; the only information about her is that she was the wife of Hipponicus, before being married to Pericles, and the mother of Callias from this first marriage.

The woman he really adored was Aspasia of Miletus. She became Pericles' mistress and they began to live together as if they were married. This relationship aroused many reactions and even Pericles' own son, Xanthippus, who had political ambitions, did not hesitate to slander his father. Nonetheless, these persecutions did not undermine Pericles' morale, although he had to burst into tears in order to protect his beloved Aspasia when she was accused of corrupting Athenian society.

His greatest personal tragedy was the death of his sister and of both his legitimate sons, Xanthippus and Paralus, all affected by the epidemic, a calamity he never managed to overcome. Just before his death, the Athenians allowed a change in the law of 451 BC that made his half-Athenian son with Aspasia, Pericles the younger, a citizen and legitimate heir, a decision all the more striking in consideration that Pericles himself had proposed the law confining citizenship to those of Athenian parentage on both sides.

Darius the Great (ca. 549 BC– 486/485 BC; Old Persian Xerxes Darayawauš: "He Who Holds Firm the Good"), was the son of Hystaspes, and Persian Emperor from 522 BC to 486/485 BC. His name in Modern Persian is ?????? (Dâryûsh), in Hebrew (Daryawesh) and the ancient Greek sources call him ?a?e??? (Dareios), Indians called him ?????. Darius was the Latin spelling used by ancient Roman historians. The English pronunciation is /dæri?s/.

Darius in his inscriptions appears as a fervent worshiper of Ahura Mazda. Darius converted to Zoroastrianism. A great statesman and organizer, The 12 year old soon to be 13 Darius thoroughly revised the Persian system of administration and also the legal code. His revisions of the legal code revolved around laws of evidence, slave sales,

deposits, bribery, and assault.

Having ascended to power amidst a controversy and bloodshed that claimed the lives of two sons of Cyrus the Great, Darius I's reign was marked by revolt; twice Babylonia revolted, three times Susiana, and Ionian revolt precipitated several ill-fated Persian expeditions against Greece, including a crushing defeat at Marathon.

Darius subjugated the nations of the Pontic and Armenian mountains, and extended Persian dominion to the Caucasus; for the same reasons he fought against the Saka and other Iranian steppe tribes, as well as the Turanians from beyond the Oxus. In the process of these campaigns he made military reforms such as introducing conscription, pay for soldiers, military training and he also made changes in the army and navy.

It was through the organization of the empire he became the true successor of Cyrus the Great. His organizing of provinces and fixing of tributes is described by Herodotus (iii. 90 if.), evidently from good official sources. He divided the Persian Empire into twenty provinces, each under the supervision of a governor or satrap.

The satrap position was usually hereditary and largely autonomous, allowing each province its own distinct laws, traditions, and elite class. Every province, however, was responsible for paying a gold or silver tribute to the emperor; many areas, such as Babylonia, underwent severe economic decline resulting from these quotas.

Each province also had an independent financial controller and an independent military coordinator as well as the satrap, who controlled administration and the law. All three probably reported directly to the king. This distributed power within the province more evenly and lowered the chance of revolt. Darius also increased the bureaucracy of the empire, with many scribes employed to provide records of the administration.

Building Projects

Many building projects were started during the reign of Darius, the largest being the building of the new capital of Persepolis. Pasargadae was too well associated with the previous dynasty of Cyrus and Cambyses and so Darius sought a new capital. The city would have walls sixty feet high and thirty-three feet thick and would be an enormous engineering undertaking. Darius' tomb was cut into a rock face not far from the city.

He dug a canal from the Nile to Suez, and, as the fragments of a hieroglyphic inscription found there show, his ships sailed from the Nile through the Red Sea by Saba to Persia. Darius also commissioned the extensive road network that was built all over the country.

The Persepolis Tablets mention a ‘royal road’ from Susa to Persepolis and from Sardis to Susa built by Darius. It was highly organised with rest stations, guarded garrisons, inns and apparently no bandits. Darius is also remembered for his Behistun Inscription which was chiselled into the rock face near the town of Behistun. It showed Darius' successful ascension to the throne and described Darius' legitimacy to be king.

Economy, diplomacy and trade

Darius is often renowned above all as being a great financier. He fixed the coinage and introduced the golden Daric. He developed commerce within the empire and trade without. For example, he sent an expedition down the Kabul and Indus Rivers, led by the Carian captain Scylax of Caryanda, who explored the Indian Ocean from the mouth of the Indus to Suez. During his reign, the population increased and industries flourished in towns.

Persia under Darius probably had connections with Carthage (cf. the Karka of the Nakshi Rustam inscription) of Sicily and Italy. At the same time he attempted to gain the good-will of the subject nations, and for this purpose promoted the aims of their priests.

He allowed the Jews to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem and it was finished in 516 BC, his sixth year. In Egypt his name appears on the temples which he built in Memphis, Edfu and the Great Oasis. He called the high-priest of Sais, Tzahor, to Susa (as we learn from his inscription in the Vatican Museum), and gave him full powers to reorganize the "house of life," the great medical school of the temple of Sais.

In the Egyptian traditions he is considered one of the great benefactors and lawgivers of the country. In similar relations he stood to the Greek sanctuaries (cf. his rescript to "his slave" Godatas, the inspector of a royal park near Magnesia on the Maeander, in which he grants freedom of taxes and forced labor to the sacred territory of Apollo); all the Greek oracles in Asia Minor and Europe therefore stood on the side of Persia in the Persian Wars and admonished the Greeks against attempting resistance.

Weights and measures were standardized (as in a "royal cubit" or a "king’s measure") but often they still operated side by side with their Egyptian or Babylonian counterparts. This would have been a boon for merchants and traders as trade would now have been far simpler. The upgraded communication and administration networks also helped to turn the Empire ruled by the Achaemenid dynasty into a seemingly commercial entity based on generating wealth.

Darius also continued the process of religious tolerance to his subjects, which had been important parts of the reigns of Cyrus and Cambyses. Darius himself was likely monotheistic - in royal inscriptions Ahuramazda is the only god mentioned by name. But, time and again he is mentioned worshipping, funding or giving 'lip-service' to various pantheons of gods.

This was important as the majority of the empire's inhabitants were polytheists. Also, like many other Persian Kings, he maintained a no-slave policy; for example, all workers at the Persepolis site and other sites made for him were paid, which was revolutionary at the time. His human rights policies were also common to his ancestors and future Persian kings, continuing the legacy of the first human rights document ever made.

European campaigns

About 512 BC Darius undertook a war against the Scythians. A great army crossed the Bosporus, subjugated eastern Thrace, Macedonia submitted voluntarily, and crossed the Danube. The purpose of this war can only have been to attack the nomadic tribes in the rear and thus to secure peace on the northern frontier of the empire.

Yet the whole plan was based upon an incorrect geographical assumption; a common one in that era, and repeated by Alexander the Great and his Macedonians, who believed that on the Hindu Kush (which they called the Caucasus Indicus) and on the shores of the Jaxartes (which they called Tanais, i.e., the River Don) they were quite near to the Black Sea.

Of course the expedition undertaken on these grounds could only prove a failure; having advanced for some weeks into the steppes of Ukraine, Darius was forced to return. The details given by Herodotus (according to him, Darius had reached the Volga) are quite fantastic; and the account which Darius himself had given on a tablet, which was added to his great inscription in Behistun, is destroyed with the exception of a few words.

At the time, European Greece was intimately connected with the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor and as a result Athens and Eretria gave support to the Ionian Revolt against the Persians. Once the rebellion was put down, the Persians attempted to punish Athens and European Greece for meddling in the rebellion.

But the first expedition, that of Mardonius, failed on the cliffs of Mount Athos (492 BC), and the army which was led into Attica by Datis in 490 BC was beaten at the Battle of Marathon. Before Darius had finished his preparations for a third expedition an insurrection broke out in Egypt (486 BC). In the next year Darius died, probably in October 485 BC, after a reign of thirty-six years.

Darius II of Persia

Darius II, originally called Ochus and often surnamed Nothus (from Greek ?????, meaning 'bastard'), was emperor of Persia from 423 BC to 404 BC.

Artaxerxes I, who died shortly after December 24, 424 BC, was followed by his son Xerxes II. After a month and a half Xerxes II was murdered by his brother Secydianus or Sogdianus (the form of the name is uncertain). His illegitimate brother, Ochus, satrap of Hyrcania, rebelled against Sogdianus, and after a short fight killed him, and suppressed by treachery the attempt of his own brother Arsites to imitate his example.

Ochus adopted the name Darius (in the chronicles he is called Nothos, meaning "the bastard"). Neither Xerxes II nor Secydianus occurs in the dates of the numerous Babylonian tablets from Nippur; here the reign of Darius II follows immediately after that of Artaxerxes I.

Of Darius's reign historians know very little (a rebellion of the Medes in 409 BC is mentioned by Xenophon), except that he was quite dependent on his wife Parysatis. In the excerpts from Ctesias some harem intrigues are recorded, in which he played a disreputable part. As long as the power of Athens remained intact he did not meddle in Greek affairs; even the support which the Athenians in 413 BC gave to the rebel Amorges in Caria would not have roused him, had not the Athenian power been broken in the same year before Syracuse.

He gave orders to his satraps in Asia Minor, Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus, to send in the overdue tribute of the Greek towns, and to begin a war with Athens; for this purpose they entered into an alliance with Sparta. In 408 BC he sent his son Cyrus to Asia Minor, to carry on the war with greater energy. In 404 BC Darius II died after a reign of nineteen years, and was followed by Artaxerxes II.

Darius III of Persia

Darius III or Codomannus (ca. 380 - 330 BC), Persian ?????? Dariyuš [d??ri'u??]; was the last king of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia from 336 BC to 330 BC. He was deposed during Alexander the Great's conquest.

Appointment

After the ambitious Vizier Bagoas murdered King Artaxerxes III of Persia in 338 BC, and his son King Arses in 336 BC, he sought to install a new monarch who would be easier to control. He chose Codomannus, a distant relative of the royal house who had distinguished himself in a combat of champions in a war against the Cadusii and was serving at the time as a royal courier . Codomannus was the son of Arsames son of Ostanes, one of Artaxerxes's brothers and Sisygambis, daughter of Artaxerxes II Memnon.

Codomannus took the regnal name Darius III, and quickly demonstrated his independence from his assassin benefactor. Bagoas then tried to poison Darius as well, but Darius was warned and forced Bagoas to drink the poison himself . The new king found himself in control of an unstable empire, large portions of which were governed by jealous and unreliable satraps and inhabited by disaffected and rebellious subjects.

In 336 BC Philip II of Macedon was authorized by the League of Corinth as its Hegemon to initiate a sacred war of vengeance against the Persians for desecrating and burning the Athenian temples during the Second Persian War.

He sent an advance force into Asia Minor under the command of his generals Parmenion and Attalus to "liberate" the Greeks living under Persian control. After they took the Greek cities of Asia from Troy to the Maiandros river, Philip was assassinated and his campaign was suspended while his heir consolidated his control of Macedonia and Greece.

Conflict With Alexander

In the spring of 334 BC Philip's heir, Alexander the Great, who had himself been confirmed as Hegemon by the League of Corinth, invaded Asia Minor at the head of a combined Greek army and almost immediately faced and defeated a Persian force at the Battle of the Granicus.

In 333 BC Darius himself took the field against the Macedonian king, but his much larger army was outflanked and defeated at the Battle of Issus and Darius was forced to flee, leaving behind his chariot, his camp, and his family, all of which were captured by Alexander.

In 331 BC, Darius' sister-wife Statira, who had otherwise been well-treated , died in captivity, reputedly during childbirth . In September of that year, after rejecting the Great King's peace overtures, Alexander again defeated Darius at the Battle of Gaugamela, when his chariot driver was killed and the Great King was knocked off his feet, which set off a general Persian rout, as his troops panicked at what they believed was the death of their king.

Darius then fled to Ecbatana to begin raising a third army, while Alexander took possession of Babylon, Susa and the Persian capital at Persepolis.

Darius was deposed by his satrap Bessus and was assassinated at Bessus' order in July 330 BC, in order to slow Alexander's pursuit, and reportedly against Alexander's express wish that Darius be caught alive.

Bessus took the regnal name Artaxerxes V. Alexander gave Darius a magnificent funeral and eventually married his daughter Statira at Opis in 324 BC. According to the historian Plutarch, Alexander also took on one of Darius' catamites, the eunuch Bagoas.

Helmets were rare in the Persian army, although later Achaemenid cavalry were well protected by bronze helmets.

Instead of helmets most soldiers wore a cloth headgear known as a tiara, which featured a scarf that could be pulled over the face.

In the early Persian Empire helmets were worn by a small number of soldiers, and even then only by those who were rich enough to buy one.

Early helmets were typical eastern conical helmets, made of bronze, while later helmets were highly influenced by the Greeks.

Typically helmets were worn by the cavalry, who were the only soldiers who could afford to buy them.

Xiphos

In the 4th century BC Greek arms and equipment were state of the art and the Persians (like many armies) adopted Greek equipment, including the straight Greek xiphos.

Since the Persian Wars in the early 5th century, the Persians had suffered many defeats at the hands of the Greeks and logically it was thought that equipping oneself like the enemy would aid in battle against that enemy. Infantry and cavalry of the late Achaemenid Empire carried

the xiphos, which was used by the cavalry mainly for defense once they had thrown their javelins.

Palta

Cavalry and missile troops made up the bulk of the Persian army, many of these troops being equipped with these light javelins. They were roughly 4 feet long, with throwing straps to increase the range and power of the weapon when the iron spearhead struck an enemy. Horsemen used a pair of palta as their main offensive weapons, reserving their swords for defense.

According to some ancient texts, one javelin was used to throw, while the other was kept for close combat if necessary. In many cases though, the palta would be tossed away and a bladed weapon would be used once hand-to-hand combat began. Light infantry were equipped with javelins as well, often carrying a sagaris for close combat.

Bow

The bow was the core weapon of the Persian army, most of the infantry being armed with a powerful recurved bow similar to the similar Scythian weapon. Recurved bows gained their power by bending the bow opposite to the natural curve of the weapon, creating added tension and force. In battle the large numbers of Persian archers would fire in massive barrages, sending sheets of arrows down on their opponents.

Unfortunately, despite the power of their bow, the Persian arrows were extremely light, made of cane and tipped with a three-flanged bronze arrowhead. Due to the lightness of the missile, Persian troops were unable to puncture the heavy armor of Hellenistic soldiers.

The recurved bow could be held in a carrying case hung on the back or the left side of a soldier’s belt. In addition the quiver was worn on the hip and allowed for rapid fire, whether on foot or on horseback. The famous Immortals also used the recurved bow, although they carried their quiver on their backs to allow them to close for hand-to-hand combat.

Thrusting Spear

Persian soldiers used a fairly short thrusting spear as their main weapon. Roughly 7 feet long, they were equipped with a broad iron spearhead and counterbalanced by a round metal counterweight. In more elite units the counterweight was silver for soldiers, their officers being equipped with golden ones while bronze counterweights were more common in the rank and file of the Persian army. As a result of these metal counterweights Persian troops were known as “apple-bearers”. In addition to the short spear, the Persians also fielded pikes of roughly 10 feet.

Akinakes

Originally developed by the Scythians, the early Achaemenid Persians adopted the akinakes as their main sword in combat. Roughly 20 inches long (give or take a few inches), the akinakes was worn on the right hip, near the soldier’s fighting hand. The iron blade could be used for either cutting or stabbing, being double edged. Elite troops such as the famous Persian Immortals, or Amrtaka, were the main users of the akinakes, common soldiers being too poor afford swords. Persian soldier’s began using the weapon in the 7th century BC until it finally disappeared from history in the 2nd century BC.

Kopis

The kopis was not limited just to the Greeks, but was utilized by the Persians as well. Infantry and cavalry carried this heavy slashing sword.

Akinaka

Most Persian infantry did not carry swords, rather large daggers, which they carried on their right side, like the akinakes. They could be used in full hand-to-hand combat like a sword or used to kill wounded opponents on a battlefield. Akinaka were in the 10 to 14 inch range.

Sagaris

As with the akinakes, the sagaris (light battle axe) was Scythian in origin, having been adopted by some Persians in the early Achaemenid Empire. It featured a relatively slender iron axe head coupled with a long handle with a reverse spike opposite the axe blade. The sagaris could be used one handed and was capable of chopping through heavy bronze armor, one famous instance of this was when Alexander the Great was almost killed by a sagaris-wielding Persian cavalryman.

During the Battle of Granicus, Alexander was leading the Companion Cavalry in combat, when a Persian horseman managed to land a blow with his sagaris on the Macedonian’s helmet, splitting it. The blade of the axe actually touched Alexander’s hair, but fortunately for the Macedonian king, a comrade impaled his attacker with a spear, leaving Alexander unscathed. Many Persian cavalrymen used a sagaris in place of sword for close quarter combat.

Philip II of Macedon (382–336 BC; in Greek, F???pp?? = f???? (friend) + ?pp?? (horse), transliterated Philippos) was king from 359 BC until his assassination. He was father of Alexander III, Philip III and possibly Ptolemy I Soter, the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty.

Life

Born in Pella, Philip was the youngest son of King Amyntas III and Eurydice. In his youth, (c. 368 – 365 BC) Philip was

a hostage in Thebes, which was the leading city of Greece during the Theban hegemony. While a captive there, Philip received a military and diplomatic education from Epaminondas, was involved in a pederastic relationship with Pelopidas and lived with Pammenes, who was an enthusiastic advocate of the Sacred Band of Thebes.

In 364 BC, Philip returned to Macedon. The deaths of Philip's elder brothers, King Alexander II and Perdiccas III, allowed him to take the throne in 359 BC. Originally appointed regent for his infant nephew Amyntas IV, who was the son of Perdiccas III, Philip managed to take the kingdom for himself that same year.

Philip's military skills and expansionist vision of Macedonian greatness brought him early success. He had however first to re-establish a situation which had been greatly worsened by the defeat against the Illyrians in which King Perdiccas himself had died. The Paionians and the Thracians had sacked and invaded the Eastern regions of the country, while the Athenians had landed at Methoni, on the coast, a contingent under a Macedonian pretender called Argaeus.

Using diplomacy, Philip pushed back Paionians and Thracians promising tributes, and crushed the 3,000 Athenians hoplites (359). Momentarily free from his opponents, he concentrated in strengthening his internal position and, above all, his army. His most important innovation was doubtless the introduction of the phalanx infantry corps, armed with the famous sarissa, an exceedingly long spear which was intended mostly to counter cavalry (at the time, the most important army corps in Macedon).

Philip had married Audata, grand-granddaughter of the Illyrian king of Dardania, Bardyllis. However, this did not prevent him to march against them in 358, crushing them in a ferocious battle in which some 7,000 Illyrians died (357). By this move, Philip established his authority inland as far as Lake Ohrid.

He also used the Social War as an opportunity for expansion. He agreed with the Athenians, who had been so far unable to conquer Amphipolis, which commanded the gold mines of Mount Pangaion, to lease it to them after its conquest, in exchange of Pidna (lost by Macedon in 363).

However, after conquering Amphipolis, he kept both the cities (357). As Athens declared war against him, he allied with the Chalcidian League of Olynthus. He subsequently conquered Potidaea, this time keeping his word and ceding it to the League in 356. One year before Philip had married the Epirote princess Olympias, who was the daughter of the king of the Molossians.

In 356 BC, Philip also conquered the town of Crenides, on Thasos island, and changed its name to Philippi: he established a powerful garrison there to control its mines, which granted him much of the gold later used for his campaigns. In the meantime, his general Parmenio defeated the Illyrians again. Also in 356 Alexander was born, and Philip's race horse won in the Olympics.

In 355-354 he besieged Methone, the last city on the Thermaic Gulf controlled by Athens. During the siege, Philip lost an eye. Despite the arrival of two Athenians fleets, the city fell in 354. Philip also attacked Abdera and Maronea, on the Thracian sea-board (354-353).

Involved in the Sacred War which had broken out in Greece, in the summer 353 he invaded Thessaly, defeating 7,000 Phocians under the brother of Onomarchus. The latter however defeated Philip in the two succeeding battles. Philip returned to Thessaly the next summer, this time with an army of 20,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry including all Thessalian troops.

In the Battle of Crocus Field 6,000 Phocians fell, while 3,000 were taken as prisoners and later drowned. This battle granted Philip an immense prestige, as well the free acquisition of Pherae. Philip was also tagus of Thessaly, and he claimed as his own Magnesia, with the important harbour of Pagasae. Philip did not attempt to advance into central Greece because the Athenians, unable to arrive in time to defend Pagasae, had occupied Thermopylae.

Hostilities with Athens did not yet take place, but Athens was threatened by the Macedonian party which Philip's gold created in Euboea. From 352 to 346 BC, Philip did not again come south. He was active in completing the subjugation of the Balkan hill-country to the west and north, and in reducing the Greek cities of the coast as far as the Hebrus (Maritza). to the chief of these coastal cities, Olynthus, Philip continued to profess friendship until its neighboring cities were in his hands.

In 349 BC, Philip started the siege of Olynthus, which, apart from its strategic position, housed his relatives Arrhidaeus and Menelaus, pretenders to the Maceodian throne. Olynthus had at first allied itself with Philip, but later shifted its allegiance to Athens. The latter, however, did nothing to help the city, its expeditions hold back by a revolt in Euboia (probably paid by Philip's gold). The Macedonian king finally took Olynthus in 348 BC and razed the city to the ground. The same fate was inflicted to other cities of the Chalcidian peninsula.

In 346 BC, he intervened effectively in the war between Thebes and the Phocians, but his wars with Athens continued intermittently.

Macedon and the regions adjoining it having now been securely consolidated, Philip celebrated his Olympic games at Dium. In 347 BC, Philip advanced to the conquest of the eastern districts about the Hebrus, and compelled the submission of the Thracian prince Cersobleptes. Meanwhile, Athens had made overtures for peace, and when Philip, in 346 BC, again moved south, peace was sworn in Thessaly.

With key Greek city-states in submission, Philip turned to Sparta; he sent them a message, "You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city." Their reply was "If." Philip and Alexander would both leave them alone.

Later, the Macedonian arms were carried across Epirus to the Adriatic Sea. In 342 BC, Philip led a great military expedition north against the Scythians, conquering the Thracian fortified settlement Eumolpia to give it his name, Philippoupolis (modern Plovdiv).

In 340 BC, Philip started the siege of Perinthus. Philip began another siege in 339 BC of the city of Byzantium. After unsuccessful sieges of both cities, Philip's influence all over Greece was compromised.

However, Philip successfully reasserted his authority in the Aegean by defeating an alliance of Thebans and Athenians at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC. He erected a memorial of a marble lion to the Sacred Band of Thebes for their bravery that still stands today.

Philip created and led the League of Corinth in 337 BC. Members of the League agreed never to wage war against each other, unless it was to suppress revolution. Philip was elected as leader (hegemon) of the army of invasion against the Persian Empire. In 336 BC, when the invasion of Persia was in its very early stage, Philip was assassinated, and was succeeded on the throne of Macedon by his son Alexander III.

Assassination

The murder happened in October of 336 BC, at Aegae, the ancient capital of the kingdom of Macedon. The court had gathered there for the celebration of the marriage between Alexander of Epirus and Philip's daughter Cleopatra.

While the king was entering unprotected into the town's theatre (highlighting his approachability to the Greek diplomats present), he was killed by Pausanias of Orestis, one of Philip's seven bodyguards. The assassin immediately tried to escape and reach his associates who were waiting for him with horses at the entrance of Aegae. He was pursued by three of Philip's bodyguards and died by their hands.

The reasons for Pausanias' assassination of Phillip are difficult to fully expound, since there was controversy already among ancient historians. The only contemporary account in our possession is that of Aristotle, who states rather tersely that Philip was killed because Pausanias had been offended by the followers of Attalus, the king's father-in-law.

Fifty years later, the historian Cleitarchus expanded and embellished the story. Centuries later, this version was to be narrated by Diodorus Siculus and all the historians who used Cleitarchus. In the sixteenth book of Diodorus' history, Pausanias had been a lover of Philip, but became jealous when Philip turned his attention to a younger man, also called Pausanias. His taunting of the new lover caused the youth to throw away his life, which turned his friend, Attalus, against Pausanias. Attalus took his revenge by inviting Pausanias to dinner, getting him drunk, then subjecting him to sexual assault.

When Pausanias complained to Philip the king felt unable to chastise Attalus, as he was about to send him to Asia with Parmenion, to establish a bridgehead for his planned invasion. He had also married Attalus's niece, or daughter, Eurydice. Rather than offend Attalus, Phillip attempted to mollify Pausanius by elevating him within the Bodyguard.

Pausanias' desire for revenge seems to have turned towards the man who had failed to avenge his damaged honour; so he planned to kill Philip, and some time after the alleged rape, while Attalus was already in Asia fighting the Persians, put his plan in action. Other historians (e.g., Justin 9.7) suggested that Alexander and/or his mother Olympias were at least privy to the intrigue, if not themselves instigators.

The latter seems to have been anything but discreet in manifesting her gratitude to Pausanias, if we accept Justin's report: he tells us that the same night of her return from exile she placed a crown on the assassin's corpse and erected a tumulus to his memory, ordering annual sacrifices to the memory of Pausanias.

Many modern historians have observed that all the accounts are improbable. In the case of Pausanias, the stated motive of the crime hardly seems adequate. On the other hand, the implication of Alexander and Olympias seems specious: to act as they did would have required brazen effrontery in the face of a military machine personally loyal to Philip.

What appears to be recorded in this are the natural suspicions that fell on the chief beneficiaries of the murder; their actions after the murder, however sympathetic they might appear (if actual), cannot prove their guilt in the deed itself.

Further convoluting the case is the possible role of propaganda in the surviving accounts: Attalus was executed in Alexander's consolidation of power after the murder; one might wonder if his enrollment among the conspirators was not for the effect of introducing political expediency in an otherwise messy purge (Attalus had publicly declared his hope that Alexander would not succeed Philip, but rather that a son of his own niece Eurydice, recently married to Philip and brutally murdered by Olympias after Philip's death, would gain the throne of Macedon).

Olympias

Olympias (Greek: ???µp???; ca. 376 BC—316 BC) was an Epirote princess, a wife of Macedonian king Philip II of Macedon and the mother of Alexander the Great. A devout worshipper of Dionysus, she was said to have kept pet snakes. Olympias apparently was originally named Myrtale. Later she may have been called Olympias as a recognition of Philip's victory in the Olympic Games of 356 BC.

Life

Olympias was daughter of Neoptolemus, king of Epirus. Her father claimed descent from Neoptolemus, son of Achilles. When her father died ca. 360 BC, his brother and successor Arymbas (grandfather of Pyrrhus of Epirus) made a treaty with the new king of Macedonia, Philip II of Macedon. The alliance was cemented with a diplomatic marriage: Arymbas' niece Olympias became queen of Macedonia in 359 BC.

It is said that Philip II had first fallen in love with Olympias when they were among the initiants into the Kabeiria Mysteries of Dionysus in Samothrace. However, their marriage was stormy, and, feeling neglected and angry, Olympias returned to Epirus in the fall of 357 BC, wintering there.

Late in spring 356 BC, under pressure from her uncle, the Epirotan king Arymbas, she returned to Pella, the Macedonian capital. Upon her return, she was pregnant, and she bore her famous son Alexander in late July, 356 BC. Not long afterwards she also bore Philip a daughter, Cleopatra.

Despite the arrival of his first legitimate son (he had already fathered another illegitimate son, Philip III), Philip II was scorned for having a child not of "pure Macedonian blood". Angry at her husband for not accepting Alexander, Olympias insisted it was Zeus, King of the Gods, who had impregnated her while she slept under an oak tree (which were sacred to him). Alexander appeared to have believed the tale, as he later sought – and probably received – confirmation of his divine descent at the sanctuary of Zeus Ammon (of the sands) in the Siwa Oasis in Egypt.

Olympias was enraged by Philip's marriage to Cleopatra Eurydice, in 337 BC. She was not angry because Philip had chosen a new woman to be his wife - indeed, he had several lovers and multiple wives - but because upon marrying her he divorced Olympias and disowned their son, Alexander. At the wedding banquet, Cleopatra Eurydice's guardian Attalus wished that the new couple would produce "legitimate heirs" together.

Accompanied by Alexander, Olympias withdrew for approximately a year to Epirus, where her brother Alexander I of Epirus was now king. She and her son returned to Pella after an apparent reconciliation, or at least cessation of hostilities; Philip had cemented his ties to Alexander I by offering him the hand of his and Olympias' daughter Cleopatra in marriage.

At the wedding soon afterwards, Philip was murdered; it is unclear whether Olympias had anything to do with its planning. Alexander had the body of Philip's assassin (Pausanias of Orestis) crucified and left on public display as a criminal. However, once Alexander left Macedon on campaign, Olympias dedicated a memorial to Pausanias.

Olympias murdered Caranus, son of Philip and his last wife, Cleopatra Eurydice. She also murdered Caranus's sister, Europa, and forced Cleopatra Eurydice to hang herself.

During the absence of Alexander, with whom she regularly corresponded on public as well as domestic affairs, she wielded great influence in Macedon, causing trouble to the regent, Antipater.

Upon Alexander's death in 323 BC, Olympias found it prudent to withdraw again into Epirus. She supported her grandson Alexander, son of Alexander the Great, and in 317 BC, allied with Polyperchon who had succeeded Antipater in 319 BC. Olympias took the field with an Epirote army in an attempt to drive Cassander, Antipater's son, from power in Macedon.

When she engaged Eurydice III (Philip's granddaughter through his wife Audata) in battle, Eurydice's troops defected to Olympias, unwilling to fight against the mother of Alexander. Olympias imprisoned Eurydice and her husband Philip Arrhidaeus; he was executed and Eurydice was forced to hang herself. For a short period Olympias was mistress of Macedonia.

Cassander hastened from Peloponnesus, and, after an obstinate siege, compelled the surrender of Pydna, where Olympias had taken refuge.

One of the terms of the capitulation had been that Olympias' life should be spared. In spite of this, she was brought to trial for the numerous and cruel executions of which she had been guilty during her short span of power. Condemned without a hearing, she was put to death in 316 BC by the friends of those whom she had slain, and Cassander is said to have denied her remains the rites of burial.

By tradition, Olympias was descended from another woman of the same name, daughter of Neoptolemus and Andromache and so granddaughter of Achilles and Deidamea. This formed the basis of Alexander's claims to be a new Achilles.

Following the unification of the multiple city-states of ancient Greece under the rule of his father, Philip II of Macedon (a labour Alexander had to repeat twice because the southern Greeks rebelled after Philip's death), Alexander conquered the Persian Empire, including Anatolia, Syria, Phoenicia, Judea, Gaza, Egypt, Bactria and

Mesopotamia and extended the boundaries of his own empire as far as the Punjab. Before his death, Alexander had already made plans to also turn west and conquer Europe. He also wanted to continue his march eastwards in order to find the end of the world, since his boyhood tutor Aristotle told him tales about where the land ends and the Great Outer Sea begins.

Alexander integrated foreigners into his army, leading some scholars to credit him with a "policy of fusion." He encouraged marriage between his army and foreigners, and practiced it himself. After twelve years of constant military campaigning, Alexander died, possibly of malaria, West Nile virus, typhoid, viral encephalitis or the consequences of heavy drinking.

His conquests ushered in centuries of Greek settlement and cultural influence over distant areas, a period known as the Hellenistic Age, a combination of Greek and Middle Eastern culture. Alexander himself lived on in the history and myth of both Greek and non-Greek cultures. After his death (and even during his life) his exploits inspired a literary tradition in which he appears as a legendary hero in the tradition of Achilles.

Early life

Born in Pella, Macedonia in northern Greece, Alexander was the son of King Philip II of Macedon and of his fourth wife Olympias, an Epirote princess. On his mother's side, he was a second cousin of Pyrrhus of Epirus; thus, there are notable examples of military genius on both sides of his family. According to Plutarch (Alexander 3.1,3), Olympias was impregnated not by Philip, who was afraid of her and her affinity for sleeping in the company of snakes, but by Zeus Ammon.

Plutarch relates that both Philip and Olympias dreamt of their son's future birth. Olympias dreamed of a loud burst of thunder and of lightning striking her womb, followed by a fire which traveled from it, and was not quenched until half-way across the room.

In Philip's dream, he sealed her womb with the seal of the lion. Alarmed by this, he consulted the seer Aristander of Telmessus, who determined that his wife was pregnant and that the child would have the character of a lion. Another odd coincidence is that the temple of Artemis in Ephesus was set on fire the same night of his birth. Plutarch claimed the Gods were too busy watching over Alexander to care for the temple.

In his early years, Alexander was raised by his nurse Lanike, who was Cleitus' older sister. Then, a much more strict teacher educated Alexander: Leonidas, a relative of his mother Olympias.

But Aristotle was Alexander's most famous and important tutor since he gave Alexander a thorough training in rhetoric and literature and stimulated his interest in science, medicine, and philosophy. After his visit to the Oracle of Ammon at Siwa, according to five historians of antiquity (Arrian, Curtius, Diodorus, Justin, and Plutarch), rumors spread that the Oracle had revealed Alexander's father to be Zeus, rather than Philip.

According to Plutarch, his father descended from Heracles through Caranus and his mother descended from Aeacus through Neoptolemus and Achilles. Aristotle gave him a copy of the Iliad which he always kept with him and read frequently. Alexander also had another tutor named Leonidas, who thought Alexander narcissistic, and silly, and who was equally disliked by Alexander.

Apparently, when Alexander threw in a large amount of sacrificial incense to the gods, Leonidas harshly reprimanded him, telling him that when he had conquered the spice bearing regions, he could waste as much as he wanted. Years later, when Alexander had conquered Gaza, a city directly on the Persian spice trade route, he sent back over 15 tons of Myrrh to Leonidas as a sort of ultimate comeback.

When Alexander was ten years old, a Thessalian brought a black horse to sell to Philip. The horse turned out to be wild and no man could mount him. The young Alexander went to the horse, and turned him towards the sun, for he had noticed that the horse was just afraid of his own shadow, then he was able to mount it and run it.

His father and other people who saw this were very impressed, and when the young Alexander returned and dismounted the horse Philip kissed him with tears of joy and said "My son, seek thee out a kingdom equal to thyself; Macedonia has not room for thee." This line probably had as much paranoid fear in it as pride.

Philip II knew perfectly well what happened to Macedonian kings with ambitious sons. The horse was named Bucephalus (which means "ox-head"). Bucephalus would be his companion and one of his best friends for the next two decades until the horse died (according to Plutarch due to old age, for he was already 30), other sources claimed that Bucephalus died of wounds sustained in a battle in India. Alexander then named a city after him called Bucephalia or Bucephala.

Ascent of Macedon

When Philip led an attack on Byzantium in 340 BC, Alexander, aged 16, was left as regent of Macedonia. In 339 BC, Philip took a fifth wife, Cleopatra Eurydice. As Alexander's mother, Olympias, was from Epirus (a land in the western part of the Greek peninsula and not part of Macedon), and Cleopatra Eurydice was a true Macedonian, this led to a dispute over Alexander's legitimacy as heir to the throne.

Attalus, the uncle of the bride, supposedly gave a toast during the wedding feast giving his wish for the wedding to result in a legitimate heir to the throne of Macedon; Alexander hurled his goblet at Attalus shouting "What am I, a bastard then?" Alexander's father apparently had drawn his sword and moved towards Alexander, but then had fallen in a drunken stupor. Alexander remarked "Here is the man planning on conquering from Greece to Asia, and he cannot even move from one table to another." Alexander and his mother then left Macedon in anger, while his sister (also named Cleopatra) remained.

Eventually Philip reconciled with his son, and Alexander returned home; Olympias remained in Epirus. In 338 BC Alexander assisted his father at the decisive Battle of Chaeronea against the city-states of Athens and Thebes, in which the cavalry wing led by Alexander annihilated the Sacred Band of Thebes, an elite corps regarded as invincible. After the battle, Phillip led a wild celebration, from which Alexander was notably absent (it is believed he was treating the wounded and burying the dead, both of his own troops and of the enemy).

It is speculated that Alexander personally treated Demades, a notable orator of Athens, who had opposed Athenian alignment against Philip. The assembled Athenian army voted on a peace plan drawn up and presented by Demades. Philip was content to deprive Thebes of its dominion over Boeotia and leave a Macedonian garrison in the citadel. A few months later, to strengthen Macedon's control over the Greek city-states, the League of Corinth was formed.

In 336 BC Philip was assassinated at the wedding of his daughter Cleopatra to her uncle King Alexander of Epirus. The assassin was supposedly a former lover of the king, the disgruntled young nobleman Pausanias of Orestis, who held a grudge against Philip because the king had ignored a complaint he had expressed.

Philip's murder was once thought to have been planned with the knowledge and involvement of Alexander or Olympias. Another possible instigator could have been Darius III, the recently crowned King of Persia.

After Philip's death, the army proclaimed Alexander, then aged 20, as the new king of Macedon. Greek cities like Athens and Thebes, which had been forced to pledge allegiance to Philip, saw in the new king an opportunity to retake their full independence. Alexander moved swiftly and Thebes, which had been most active against him, submitted when he appeared at its gates. The assembled Greeks at the Isthmus of Corinth, with the exception of the Spartans, elected him to the command against Persia, which had previously been bestowed upon his father.

The next year, (335 BC), Alexander felt free to engage the Thracians and the Illyrians in order to secure the Danube as the northern boundary of the Macedonian kingdom. While he was triumphantly campaigning north, the Thebans and Athenians rebelled once again. Alexander reacted immediately and while the other cities once again hesitated, Thebes decided this time to resist with the utmost vigor.

The resistance was useless; in the end, the city was conquered with great bloodshed. The Thebans encountered an even harsher fate when their city was razed to the ground and its territory divided between the other Boeotian cities. Moreover, all of the city's citizens were sold into slavery; Alexander spared only the priests, the leaders of the pro-Macedonian party, and the descendants of Pindar, whose house was the only one left standing.

The end of Thebes cowed Athens into submission, but According to Plutarch, a special Athenian embassy led by Phocion, an opponent of the anti-Macedonian faction, was able to persuade Alexander to give up his demand for the exile of leaders of the anti-Macedonian party, particularly Demosthenes.

Alexander's army had crossed the Hellespont with about 42,000 Macedonians and Greeks, more southern city-states of Greece, but also including some Thracians, Paionians and Illyrians.

After an initial victory against Persian forces at the Battle of Granicus, Alexander accepted the surrender of the

Persian provincial capital and treasury of Sardis and proceeded down the Ionian coast. At Halicarnassus, Alexander successfully waged the first of many sieges, eventually forcing his opponents, the mercenary captain Memnon of Rhodes and the Persian satrap of Caria, Orontobates, to withdraw by sea.

Alexander left Caria in the hands of Ada, who was ruler of Caria before being deposed by her brother Pixodarus. From Halicarnassus, Alexander proceeded into mountainous Lycia and the Pamphylian plain, asserting control over all coastal cities and denying them to his enemy. From Pamphylia onward, the coast held no major ports and so Alexander moved inland.

At Termessus, Alexander humbled but did not storm the Pisidian city. At the ancient Phrygian capital of Gordium, Alexander "undid" the tangled Gordian Knot, a feat said to await the future "king of Asia." According to the most vivid story, Alexander proclaimed that it did not matter how the knot was undone, and he hacked it apart with his sword. Another version claims that he did not use the sword, but actually figured out how to undo the knot.

Alexander's army crossed the Gülek Pass(Cilician Gates), met and defeated the main Persian army under the command of Darius III at the Battle of Issus in 333 BC. Darius was forced to leave the battle and left behind his wife, his two daughters, his mother Sisygambis, and much of his personal treasure.

Later afterwards he offered a peace treaty to Alexander of 10,000 talents of ransom for his family, and a great deal of territory. Alexander replied that since he was now king of Persia, it was he alone who decided who got what territory. Proceeding down the Mediterranean coast, he took Tyre and Gaza after famous sieges (see Siege of Tyre). Alexander passed through Judea near Jerusalem but probably did not visit the city.

In 332 BC–331 BC, Alexander was welcomed as a liberator in Egypt and was pronounced the son of Zeus by Egyptian priests of the god Ammon at the Oracle of the god at the Siwa Oasis in the Libyan desert. Henceforth, Alexander referred to the god Zeus-Ammon as his true father, and subsequent currency featuring his head with ram horns was proof of this widespread belief.

He founded Alexandria in Egypt, which would become the prosperous capital of the Ptolemaic dynasty after his death. Leaving Egypt, Alexander marched eastward into Assyria (now northern Iraq) and defeated Darius and a third Persian army at the Battle of Gaugamela. Darius was forced to leave the field after his charioteer was killed, and Alexander chased him as far as Arbela. While Darius fled over the mountains to Ecbatana (modern Hamadan), Alexander marched to Babylon.

From Babylon, Alexander went to Susa, one of the Achaemenid capitals, and captured its treasury. Sending the bulk of his army to Persepolis, the Persian capital, by the Royal Road, Alexander stormed and captured the Persian Gates (in the modern Zagros Mountains), then sprinted for Persepolis before its treasury could be looted. After several months Alexander allowed the troops to loot Persepolis.

A fire broke out in the eastern palace of Xerxes and spread to the rest of the city. It was not known if it was a drunken accident or a deliberate act of revenge for the burning of the Athenian Acropolis during the Second Persian War.

The Book of Arda Wiraz, a Zoroastrian work composed in the 3rd or 4th century AD, also speaks of archives containing "all the Avesta and Zand, written upon prepared cow-skins, and with gold ink" that were destroyed; but it must be said that this statement is often treated by scholars with a certain measure of skepticism, because it is generally thought that for many centuries the Avesta was transmitted mainly orally by the Magians.

He then set off in pursuit of Darius, who was kidnapped, and then murdered by followers of Bessus, his Bactrian satrap and kinsman. Bessus then declared himself Darius' successor as Artaxerxes V and retreated into Central Asia to launch a guerrilla campaign against Alexander. With the death of Darius, Alexander declared the war of vengeance over, and released his Greek and other allies from service in the League campaign (although he allowed those that wished to re-enlist as mercenaries in his imperial army).

His three-year campaign against first Bessus and then the satrap of Sogdiana, Spitamenes, took him through Media, Parthia, Aria (West Afghanistan), Drangiana, Arachosia (South and Central Afghanistan), Bactria (North and Central Afghanistan), and Scythia. In the process, he captured and refounded Herat and Maracanda. Moreover, he founded a series of new cities, all called Alexandria, including modern Kandahar in Afghanistan, and Alexandria Eschate ("The Furthest") in modern Tajikistan. In the end, both of his opponents were betrayed by their men, Bessus in 329 BC and Spitamenes the year after.

Hostility toward Alexander

During this time, Alexander adopted some elements of Persian dress and customs at his court, notably the custom of proskynesis, a symbolic kissing of the hand that Persians paid to their social superiors, but a practice of which the Greeks disapproved. The Greeks regarded the gesture as the preserve of deities and believed that Alexander meant to deify himself by requiring it.

This cost him much in the sympathies of many of his countrymen. Here, too, a plot against his life was revealed, and one of his officers, Philotas, was executed for treason for failing to bring the plot to his attention. Parmenion, Philotas' father, who had been charged with guarding the treasury at Ecbatana, was assassinated by command of Alexander, who feared that Parmenion might attempt to avenge his son. Several other trials for treason followed, and many Macedonians were executed.

Later on, in a drunken quarrel at Maracanda, he also killed the man who had saved his life at Granicus, Cleitus the Black. Later in the Central Asian campaign, a second plot against his life, this one by his own pages, was revealed, and his official historian, Callisthenes of Olynthus (who had fallen out of favor with the king by leading the opposition to his attempt to introduce proskynesis), was implicated on what many historians regard as trumped-up charges. There is evidence to show that Callisthenes, the teacher of the pages, was likely the one who persuaded them to assassinate the king.

Invasion of India

After the death of Spitamenes and his marriage to Roxana (Roshanak in Bactrian) to cement his relations with his new Central Asian satrapies, in 326 BC Alexander was finally free to turn his attention to the Indian subcontinent. Alexander invited all the chieftains of the former satrapy of Gandhara, in the north of what is now Pakistan, to come to him and submit to his authority.

Ambhi (Greek: Omphis), ruler of Taxila, whose kingdom extended from the Indus to the Jhelum (Greek:Hydaspes), complied. But the chieftains of some hilly clans including the, Aspasios and Assakenois sections of the Kambojas (classical names), known in Indian texts as Ashvayanas and Ashvakayanas (names referring to the equestrian nature of their society from the Sanskrit root work Ashva meaning horse), refused to submit.

Alexander personally took command of the shield-bearing guards, foot-companions, archers, Agrianians and horse-javelin-men and led them against the Kamboja clans—the Aspasios of Kunar/Alishang valleys, the Guraeans of the Guraeus (Panjkora) valley, and the Assakenois of the Swat and Buner valleys. Writes one modern historian: "They were brave people and it was hard work for Alexander to take their strongholds, of which Massaga and Aornus need special mention."

A fierce contest ensued with the Aspasios in which Alexander himself was wounded in the shoulder by a dart but eventually the Aspasios lost the fight; 40,000 of them were enslaved. The Assakenois faced Alexander with an army of 30,000 cavalry, 38,000 infantry and 30 elephants. They had fought bravely and offered stubborn resistance to the invader in many of their strongholds like cities of Ora, Bazira and Massaga.

The fort of Massaga could only be reduced after several days of bloody fighting in which Alexander himself was wounded seriously in the ankle. When the Chieftain of Massaga fell in the battle, the supreme command of the army went to his old mother Cleophis (q.v.) who also stood determined to defend her motherland to the last extremity. The example of Cleophis assuming the supreme command of the military also brought the entire women of the locality into the fighting.

Alexander could only reduce Massaga by resorting to political strategem and actions of betrayal. According to Curtius: "Not only did Alexander slaughter the entire population of Massaga, but also did he reduce its buildings to rubbles." A similar manslaughter then followed at Ora, another stronghold of the Assakenois.

In the aftermath of general slaughter and arson committed by Alexander at Massaga and Ora, numerous Assakenian people fled to a high fortress called Aornos. Alexander followed them close behind their heels and captured the strategic hill-fort but only after the fourth day of a bloody fight. The story of Massaga was repeated at Aornos and a similar carnage on the tribal-people followed here too.

Writing on Alexander's campaign against the Assakenois, Victor Hanson comments: "After promising the surrounded Assacenis their lives upon capitulation, he executed all their soldiers who had surrendered. Their strongholds at Ora and Aornus were also similarly stormed. Garrisons were probably all slaughtered.”

Sisikottos, who had helped Alexander in this campaign, was made the governor of Aornos.

See main article: Alexander's Conflict with the Kambojas

After reducing Aornos, Alexander crossed the Indus and fought and won an epic battle against Porus, a ruler of a region in the Punjab in the Battle of Hydaspes in 326 BC.

After the battle, Alexander was greatly impressed by Porus for his bravery in battle, and therefore made an alliance with him and appointed him as satrap of his own kingdom, even adding some land he did not own before. Alexander then named one of the two new cities that he founded, Bucephala, in honor of the horse who had brought him to India, who had died during the Battle of Hydaspes. Alexander continued on to conquer all the headwaters of the Indus River.

East of Porus' kingdom, near the Ganges River, was the powerful empire of Magadha ruled by the Nanda dynasty. Fearing the prospects of facing another powerful Indian army and exhausted by years of campaigning, his army mutinied at the Hyphasis River (the modern Beas River) refusing to march further east. This river thus marks the easternmost extent of Alexander's conquests:

As for the Macedonians, however, their struggle with Porus blunted their courage and stayed their further advance into India. For having had all they could do to repulse an enemy who mustered only twenty thousand infantry and two thousand horse, they violently opposed Alexander when he insisted on crossing the river Ganges also,

the width of which, as they learned, was thirty-two furlongs, its depth a hundred fathoms, while its banks on the further side were covered with multitudes of men-at-arms and horsemen and elephants. For they were told that the kings of the Ganderites and Praesii were awaiting them with eighty thousand horsemen, two hundred thousand footmen, eight thousand chariots, and six thousand fighting elephants.

Plutarch, Vita Alexandri, 62

Alexander, after the meeting with his officer Coenus, was convinced that it was better to return. Alexander was forced to turn south. Along the way his army ran into the Malli clans (in modern day Multan). The Malli were the most warlike clans in South Asia during that period. Alexander's army challenged the Malli, and the ensuing battle led them to the Malli citadel. During the assault, Alexander himself was wounded seriously by a Malli arrow.

His forces, believing their king dead, took the citadel and unleashed their fury on the Malli who had taken refuge within it. Following this, the surviving Malli surrendered to Alexander's forces, and his beleaguered army moved on. He sent much of his army to Carmania (modern southern Iran) with his general Craterus, and commissioned a fleet to explore the Persian Gulf shore under his admiral Nearchus, while he led the rest of his forces back to Persia by the southern route through the Gedrosian Desert (now part of southern Iran and Makran now part of Pakistan).

Alexander left forces in India however. In the territory of the Indus, he nominated his officer Peithon as a satrap, a position he would hold for the next ten years until 316 BC, and in the Punjab he left Eudemus in charge of the army, at the side of the satrap Porus and Taxiles. Eudemus became ruler of the Punjab after their death. Both rulers returned to the West in 316 BC with their armies, and Chandragupta Maurya established the Maurya Empire in India.

After India

Discovering that many of his satraps and military governors had misbehaved in his absence, Alexander executed a number of them as examples on his way to Susa. As a gesture of thanks, he paid off the debts of his soldiers, and announced that he would send those over-aged and disabled veterans back to Macedonia under Craterus, but his troops misunderstood his intention and mutinied at the town of Opis, refusing to be sent away and bitterly criticizing his adoption of Persian customs and dress and the introduction of Persian officers and soldiers into Macedonian units.

Alexander executed the ringleaders of the mutiny, but forgave the rank and file. In an attempt to craft a lasting harmony between his Macedonian and Persian subjects, he held a mass marriage of his senior officers to Persian and other noblewomen at Susa, but few of those marriages seem to have lasted much beyond a year.

His attempts to merge Persian culture with his Greek soldiers also included training a regiment of Persian boys in the ways of Macedonians. Most historians believe that Alexander adopted the Persian royal title of shahanshah ("great king" or "king of kings").

It is claimed that Alexander wanted to overrun or integrate the Arabian peninsula, but this theory is widely disputed. It was assumed that Alexander would turn westwards and attack Carthage and Italy, had he conquered Arabia.

After traveling to Ecbatana to retrieve the bulk of the Persian treasure, his closest friend and possibly lover Hephaestion died of an illness, or possibly of poisoning. Alexander mourned by Hephaestion's side for six months.

Death

On the afternoon of June 10–11, 323 BC, Alexander died in the palace of Nebuchadrezzar II of Babylon. He was just one month short of attaining 33 years of age. Various theories have been proposed for the cause of his death which include poisoning by the sons of Antipater or others, sickness that followed a drinking party, or a relapse of the malaria he had contracted in 336 BC.

It is known that on May 29, Alexander participated in a banquet organized by his friend Medius of Larissa. After some heavy drinking, immediately before or after a bath, he was forced into bed due to severe illness. The rumors of his illness circulated with the troops causing them to be more and more anxious. On June 9, the generals decided to let the soldiers see their king alive one last time. They were admitted to his presence one at a time. Because the king was too ill to speak, he confined himself to moving his hand. The day after, Alexander was dead.

Cause

The poisoning theory derives from the story held in antiquity by Justin and Curtius. The original story stated that Cassander, son of Antipater, viceroy of Greece, brought the poison to Alexander in Babylon in a mule's hoof, and that Alexander's royal cupbearer, Iollas, brother of Cassander, administered it. Many had powerful motivations for seeing Alexander gone, and were none the worse for it after his death.

Deadly agents that could have killed Alexander in one or more doses include hellebore and strychnine. In R. Lane Fox's opinion, the strongest argument against the poison theory is the fact that twelve days had passed between the start of his illness and his death and in the ancient world, such long-acting poisons were probably not available.

The warrior culture of Macedon favoured the sword over strychnine, and many ancient historians, like Plutarch and Arrian, maintained that Alexander was not poisoned, but died of natural causes. Instead, it is likely that Alexander died of malaria or typhoid fever, which were rampant in ancient Babylon. Other illnesses could have also been the culprit, including acute pancreatitis or the West Nile virus.

Recently, theories have been advanced stating that Alexander may have died from the treatment not the disease. Hellebore, believed to have been widely used as a medicine at the time but deadly in large doses, may have been overused by the impatient king to speed his recovery, with deadly results. Disease-related theories often cite the fact that Alexander's health had fallen to dangerously low levels after years of heavy drinking and suffering several appalling wounds (including one in India that nearly claimed his life), and that it was only a matter of time before one sickness or another finally killed him.

No story is conclusive. Alexander's death has been reinterpreted many times over the centuries, and each generation offers a new take on it. What is certain is that Alexander died of a high fever on June 10 or 11 of 323 BC.

Alexander's successor

On his death bed, his marshals asked him to whom he bequeathed his kingdom. Since Alexander had no obvious and legitimate heir (his son Alexander IV would be born after his death, and his other son was by a concubine, not a wife), it was a question of vital importance. There is some debate to what Alexander replied. Some believe that Alexander said, "Kratisto" (that is, "To the strongest!") or "Krat'eroi" (to the stronger).

Alexander may have said, "Krater'oi" (To Craterus). This is possible because the Greek pronunciation of "the stronger" and "Craterus" differ only by the position of the accented syllable. Most scholars believe that if Alexander did intend to choose one of his generals, his obvious choice would have been Craterus because he was the commander of the largest part of the army (infantry), because he had proven himself to be an excellent strategist, and because he displayed traits of the "ideal" Macedonian.

But Craterus was not around, and the others may have chosen to hear "Krat'eroi" — the stronger. Regardless of his reply, Craterus was assassinated before he could take over the empire. The empire then split amongst his successors (the Diadochi).

Alexander's death has been surrounded by as much controversy as many of the events of his life. Before long, accusations of foul play were being thrown about by his generals at one another, making it incredibly hard for a modern historian to sort out the propaganda and the half-truths from the actual events.

No contemporary source can be fully trusted because of the incredible level of self-serving recording, and as a result what truly happened to Alexander the Great may never be known. Most theories that he died from syphilis have been more or less discredited.

Alexander's body was placed in a gold anthropid sarcophagus, which was in turn placed in a second gold casket and covered with a purple robe.

Alexander's coffin was placed, together with his armour, in a gold carriage that had a vaulted roof supported by an Ionic peristyle. The decoration of the carriage was very

lavish and is described in great detail by Diodoros.

According to one legend, Alexander was preserved in a clay vessel full of honey (which can act as a preservative) and interred in a glass coffin. According to Aelian (Varia Historia 12.64), Ptolemy stole the body and brought it to Alexandria, where it was on display until Late Antiquity. It was here that Ptolemy IX, one of the last successors of Ptolemy I, replaced Alexander's sarcophagus with a glass one, and melted the original down in order to strike emergency gold issues of his coinage. The citizens of Alexandria were outraged at this and soon after Ptolemy IX was killed. Its current whereabouts are unknown.

Roman emperor Caligula was said to have looted the tomb, stealing Alexander's breastplate, and wearing it. About 200 AD, Emperor Septimius Severus closed Alexander's tomb to the public. His son and successor, Caracalla, was a great admirer of Alexander, and visited the tomb in his own reign. After this, details on the fate of the tomb are sketchy.

The so-called "Alexander Sarcophagus," discovered near Sidon and now in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, is now generally thought to be that of Abdylonymus, whom Hephaestion had appointed as the king of Sidon by Alexander's order. The sarcophagus depicts Alexander and his companions hunting and in battle with the Persians.

Alexander's testament

Some classical authors, such as Diodorus, relate that Alexander had given detailed written instructions to Craterus some time before his death. Although Craterus had already started to implement Alexander's orders, such as the building of a fleet in Cilicia for expedition against Carthage, Alexander's successors chose not to further implement them, on the ground they were impractical and dispendious.

The testament, described in Diodorus XVIII, called for military expansion into the Southern and Western Mediterranean, monumental constructions, and the intermixing of Eastern and Western populations. Its most remarkable items were:

The completion of a pyre to Hephaestion

The building of "a thousand warships, larger than triremes, in Phoenicia, Syria, Cilicia, and Cyprus for the campaign against the Carthaginians and the other who live along the coast of Libya and Iberia and the adjoining coastal regions as far as Sicily"

The building of a road in northern Africa as far as the Pillars of Heracles, with ports and shipyards along it.

The erection of great temples in Delos, Delphi, Dodona, Dium, Amphipolis, Cyrnus and Ilium.

The construction of a monumental tomb for his father Philip, "to match the greatest of the pyramids of Egypt"

The establishment of cities and the "transplant of populations from Asia to Europe and in the opposite direction from Europe to Asia, in order to bring the largest continent to common unity and to friendship by means of intermarriage and family ties." (Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historia, XVIII)

Personal life

Alexander's lifelong companion was Hephaestion, the son of a Macedonian noble. Hephaestion also held the position of second-in-command of Alexander's forces until his death, which devastated Alexander.

Alexander married two women: Roxana, daughter of a minor noble and Stateira, a Persian princess and daughter of Darius III of Persia. Another personage from the court of Darius III with whom he was intimate was Bagoas. His son by Roxana, Alexander IV of Macedon, was killed after the death of his father, before he reached adulthood.

Alexander was admired during his lifetime for treating all his lovers humanely. Plutarch has argued that Alexander's love of males took an ethical approach, inspired by the teachings of his mentor, Aristotle.

Legacy and division of the empire

After Alexander's death, in 323 BC, the rule of his Empire was given to Alexander's half-brother Philip Arridaeus and Alexander's son Alexander IV. However, since Philip was mentally ill and the son of Alexander still a baby, two regents were named in Perdiccas (who had received Alexander's ring at this death) and Craterus (who may have been the one mentioned as successor by Alexander), although Perdiccas quickly managed to take sole power.

Perdiccas soon eliminated several of his opponents, killing about 30 (Diodorus Siculus), and at the Partition of Babylon named former generals of Alexander as satraps of the various regions of his Empire. In 321 BC Perdiccas was assassinated by his own troops during his conflict with Ptolemy, leading to the Partition of Triparadisus, in which Antipater was named as the new regent, and the satrapies again shared between the various generals. From that time, Alexander's officers were focused on the explicit formation of rival monarchies and territorial states.

Ultimately, the conflict was settled after the Battle of Ipsus in Phrygia in 301 BC. Alexander's empire was divided at first into four major portions: Cassander ruled in Macedon, Lysimachus in Thrace, Seleucus in Mesopotamia and Persia, and Ptolemy I Soter in the Levant and Egypt.

Antigonus ruled for a while in Anatolia and Syria but was eventually defeated by the other generals at Ipsus (301 BC). Control over Indian territory passed to Chandragupta Maurya, the first Maurya emperor, who further expanded his dominions after a settlement with Seleucus.

By 270 BC, the Hellenistic states were consolidated, with

The Antigonid Empire in Macedonia and Greece;

The Seleucid Empire in Mesopotamia and Persia;

The Ptolemaic kingdom in Egypt, Palestine and Cyrenaica

By the 1st century BC though, most of the Hellenistic territories in the West had been absorbed by the Roman Republic. In the East, they had been dramatically reduced by the expansion of the Parthian Empire. The territories further east seceded to form the Greco-Bactrian kingdom (250 BC- 140 BC), which further expanded into India to form the Indo-Greek kingdom (180 BC- 10 AD).

The Ptolemy dynasty persisted in Egypt until the time of Cleopatra, best known for her alliances with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, just before the Roman republic officially became the Roman Empire.

Alexander's conquests also had long term cultural effects, with the flourishing of Hellenistic civilization throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, and the development of Greco-Buddhist art in the Indian subcontinent. Alexander and his successors were tolerant of non-Greek religious practices, and

interesting syncretisms developed in the new Greek towns he founded in Central Asia. The first realistic portrayals of the Buddha appeared at this time; they are reminiscent of Greek statues of Apollo. Several Buddhist traditions may have been influenced by the ancient Greek religion; the concept of Boddhisatvas is reminiscent of Greek divine heroes, and some Mahayana ceremonial practices (burning incense, gifts of flowers and food placed on altars) are similar to those practiced by the ancient Greeks. Zen Buddhism draws in part on the ideas of Greek stoics, such as Zeno[citation needed].

Among other effects, the Hellenistic, or koine dialect of Greek became the lingua franca through the so-called civilized world. For instance the standard version of the Hebrew Scriptures used among the Jews of the diaspora, especially in Egypt, during the life of Jesus was the Greek Septuagint translation, which was compiled ca 200 BC by seventy-odd scholars under the patronage of the Macedonian ruler Ptolemy II Philadelphus.

Thus many Jews from Egypt or Rome would have trouble understanding the teachings of the scholars in the Temple in Jerusalem who were using the Hebrew original text and an Aramaic translation, being themselves only acquainted with the Greek version. There has been much speculation on the issue whether Jesus spoke Koine Greek as the Gospel-writers, themselves writing in Greek, don't say anything decisive about the matter.

Influence on Ancient Rome

In the late Republic and early Empire, educated Roman citizens used Latin only for legal, political, and ceremonial purposes, and used Greek to discuss philosophy or any other intellectual topic. No Roman wanted to hear it said that his Greek was weak. Throughout the Roman world, the one language spoken everywhere was Alexander's Greek.

Alexander and his exploits were admired by many Romans who wanted to associate themselves with his achievements, although very little is known about Roman-Macedonian diplomatic relations of that time. Julius Caesar wept in Spain at the mere sight of Alexander's statue and Pompey the Great rummaged through the closets of conquered nations for Alexander's 260-year-old cloak, which the Roman general then wore as the costume of greatness.

However, in his zeal to honor Alexander, Augustus accidentally broke the nose off the Macedonian's mummified corpse while laying a wreath at the hero's shrine in Alexandria, Egypt. The unbalanced emperor Caligula later took the dead king's armor from that tomb and donned it for luck.

The Macriani, a Roman family that rose to the imperial throne in the 3rd century A.D., always kept images of Alexander on their persons, either stamped into their bracelets and rings or stitched into their garments. Even their dinnerware bore Alexander's face, with the story of the king's life displayed around the rims of special bowls.

In the summer of 1995, during the archaeological work of the season centered on excavating the remains of domestic architecture of early-Roman date, a statue of Alexander was recovered from the structure, which was richly decorated with mosaic and marble pavements and probably was constructed in the 1st century AD and occupied until the 3rd century.

Alexander's character

Modern opinion on Alexander has run the gamut from the idea that he believed he was on a divinely-inspired mission to unite the human race, to the view that he was a megalomaniac bent on world domination. Such views tend to be anachronistic, and the sources allow for a variety of interpretations. Much about Alexander's personality and aims remains enigmatic. There were no disinterested commentators in Alexander's own time or soon afterward, so all accounts need to be read with skepticism.

Alexander is remembered as a legendary hero in Europe and much of both Southwest Asia and Central Asia, where he is known as Iskander or Iskandar Zulkarnain. To Zoroastrians, on the other hand, he is remembered as the conqueror of their first great empire and as the destroyer of Persepolis. Ancient sources are generally written with an agenda of either glorifying or denigrating the man, making it difficult to evaluate his actual character.

Most refer to a growing instability and megalomania in the years following Gaugamela, but it has been suggested that this simply reflects the Greek stereotype of an orientalizing king. The murder of his friend Cleitus, which Alexander deeply and immediately regretted, is often cited as a sign of his paranoia, as is his execution of Philotas and his general Parmenion for failure to pass along details of a plot against him. There is also the view that this may have been more prudence than paranoia.

Modern Alexandrists continue to debate these same issues, among others, in modern times. One unresolved topic involves whether Alexander was actually attempting to better the world by his conquests, or whether his purpose was primarily to rule the world.

Partially in response to the ubiquity of positive portrayals of Alexander, an alternate character is sometimes presented which emphasizes some of Alexander's negative aspects. Some proponents of this view cite the destructions of Thebes, Tyre, Persepolis, and Gaza as examples of atrocities, and argue that Alexander preferred to fight rather than negotiate.

It is further claimed, in response to the view that Alexander was generally tolerant of the cultures of those whom he conquered, that his attempts at cultural fusion were severely practical and that he never actually admired Persian art or culture. To this way of thinking, Alexander was, first and foremost, a general rather than a statesman.

Alexander's character also suffers from the interpretation of historians who themselves are subject to the bias and idealisms of their own time. Good examples are W. W. Tarn, who wrote during the late 19th century and early 20th century, and who saw Alexander in an extremely good light, and Peter Green, who wrote after World War II and for whom Alexander did little that was not inherently selfish or ambition-driven. Tarn wrote in an age where world conquest and warrior-heroes were acceptable, even encouraged, whereas Green wrote with the backdrop of the Holocaust and nuclear weapons.

Greek and Latin sources

In addition to cuneiform evidence from Babylonia that is still being discovered and translated, there are numerous Greek and Latin texts about Alexander. Unfortunately, the primary sources, texts written by people who actually knew Alexander or who gathered information from men who served with Alexander, are all lost, apart from a few inscriptions and some letter-fragments of dubious authenticity.

Contemporaries who wrote full accounts of his life include the historian Callisthenes, Alexander's general Ptolemy, Aristobulus, Nearchus, and Onesicritus. Another influential account is by Cleitarchus who, while not a direct witness of Alexander's expedition, used sources which had just been published. His work was to be the backbone of that of Timagenes, who heavily influenced many historians whose work still survives. None of these works survives, but we do have later works based on these primary sources.

The five main surviving accounts are by Arrian, Curtius, Plutarch, Diodorus, and Justin.

Anabasis Alexandri (The Campaigns of Alexander in Greek) by the Greek historian Arrian of Nicomedia, writing in the 2nd century AD, and based largely on Ptolemy and, to a lesser extent, Aristobulus and Nearchus. It is considered generally the most trustworthy source.

Historiae Alexandri Magni, a biography of Alexander in ten books, of which the last eight survive, by the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus, written in the 1st century AD, and based largely on Cleitarchus through the mediation of Timagenes, with some material probably from Ptolemy;

Life of Alexander (see Parallel Lives) and two orations On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander the Great (see Moralia), by the Greek historian and biographer Plutarch of Chaeronea in the second century, based largely on Aristobulus and especially Cleitarchus.

Bibliotheca historia (Library of world history), written in Greek by the Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus, from which Book 17 relates the conquests of Alexander, based almost entirely on Timagenes's work. The books immediately before and after, on Philip and Alexander's "Successors," throw light on Alexander's reign.

The Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus by Justin, which contains factual errors and is highly compressed. It is difficult in this case to understand the source, since we only have an epitome, but it is thought that also Pompeius Trogus may have limited himself to use Timagenes for his Latin history.

To these five main sources some like to add the Metz Epitome, an anonymous late Latin work that narrates Alexander's campaigns from Hyrcania to India. Much is also recounted incidentally in other authors, including Strabo, Athenaeus, Polyaenus, Aelian, and others.

The "problem of the sources" is the main concern (and chief delight) of Alexander-historians. In effect, each presents a different "Alexander", with details to suit. Arrian is mostly interested in the military aspects, while Curtius veers to a more private and darker Alexander. Plutarch can't resist a good story, light or dark. All, with the possible exception of Arrian, include a considerable level of fantasy, prompting Strabo to remark, "All who wrote about Alexander preferred the marvelous to the true." Nevertheless, the sources tell us much, and leave much to our interpretation and imagination. Perhaps Arrian's words are most appropriate:

One account says that Hephaestion laid a wreath on the tomb of Patroclus; another that Alexander laid one on the tomb of Achilles, calling him a lucky man, in that he had Homer to proclaim his deeds and preserve his memory. And well might Alexander envy Achilles this piece of good fortune; for in his own case there was no equivalent: his one failure, the single break, as it were, in the long chain of his successes, was that he had no worthy chronicler to tell the world of his exploits.

Alexander was a legend in his own time. His court historian Callisthenes portrayed the sea in Cilicia as drawing back from him in proskynesis.

Writing after Alexander's death, another participant, Onesicritus, went so far as to invent a tryst between Alexander and Thalestris, queen of the mythical Amazons. When Onesicritus read this passage to his patron, Alexander's general and later King Lysimachus reportedly

quipped, "I wonder where I was at the time."

In the first centuries after Alexander's death, probably in Alexandria, a quantity of the more legendary material coalesced into a text known as the Alexander Romance, later falsely ascribed to the historian Callisthenes and therefore known as Pseudo-Callisthenes. This text underwent numerous expansions and revisions throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, exhibiting a plasticity unseen in "higher" literary forms. Latin and Syriac translations were made in Late Antiquity. From these, versions were developed in all the major languages of Europe and the Middle East, including Armenian, Georgian, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, Serbian, Slavonic, Romanian, Hungarian, German, English, Italian, and French. The "Romance" is regarded by many Western scholars as the source of the account of Alexander given in the Qur'an (Sura The Cave). It is the source of many incidents in Ferdowsi's "Shahnama". A Mongolian version is also extant.

Alexander is also a character of Greek folklore (and other regions), as the protagonist of 'apocryphal' tales of bravery. A maritime legend says that his sister is a mermaid and asks the sailors if her brother is still alive. The unsuspecting sailor who answers truthfully arises the mermaid's wrath and his boat perishes in the waves; a sailor mindful of the circumstances will answer "He lives and reigns, and conquers the world", and the sea about his boat will immediately calm. Alexander is also a character of a standard play in the Karagiozis repertory, "Alexander the Great and the Accursed Serpent".

Some believe that, excepting certain religious texts, it is the most widely-read work of pre-modern times.

Alexander in the Qur'an

Alexander the Great sometimes is identified in Persian and Arabic traditions sources as Dhul-Qarnayn, Arabic for the "Two-Horned One", possibly a reference to the appearance of a horn-headed figure that appears on coins minted during his rule and later imitated in ancient Middle Eastern coinage. If this theory is followed, accounts of the Alexander legend, can be found in Qur'an if Alexander is the Dhul-Qarnayn mentioned in the Quran.

It can be found in the Persian tradition too if the theory is accurate. The same traditions from the Pseudo-Callisthenes were combined in Persia with Sassanid Persian ideas about Alexander in the Iskandarnamah. In this tradition, Alexander built a wall of iron and melted copper in which Gog and Magog are confined.

Some Muslim scholars disagree that Alexander was Dhul-Qarnayn. There are actually some theories that Dhul-Qarnayn was a Persian King with a vast Empire as well, possibly King Cyrus the Great. The reason being is Dhul-Qarnayn is described in the Holy Quran as a monotheist believer who worshipped Allah (God). This, it is claimed, removes Alexander as a candidate for Dhul-Qarnayn as Alexander was a polytheist. Yet contemporaneous Persian nobles would have practiced Zurvanism, thus disqualifying them on the same basis. It is more likely that the core story is a composite taken from accounts of Alexander and validated with Abrahamic embellishments.

Alexander in the Bible

Alexander was briefly mentioned in the first Book of the Maccabees Chapter 1, verses 1-7. The following is a brief summary on how Alexander was portrayed in the Bible (RSV-CE version).

He was described as Alexander son of Philip the Macedonian. Defeated Darius, king of the Persians and succeeded him as king (Alexander previously became king of Greece). Fought many battles and advanced to the ends of the earth. He gathered a strong army and ruled over countries and nations. He fell sick and perceived that he was dying so he summoned his officers and divided his kingdom among them. After Alexander reigned for twelve years, he died.

Alexander in Shahnameh

Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, one of the oldest books written in Modern Persian, has a chapter about Alexander. It is an epic style poetry book written around 1000 AD and is believed to be the reason Persian language exists today. It starts with mystical history of Iran until mention of Alexander and a brief mention of Arsacids. The accounts after that, still in poetry and epic style, mentions real names.

The book writes about Alexander as a child a Persian King, Daraaye Darab and the last in the list Kings in the book whose name does not match the real kings, and a daughter of Philip,a Roman King. However, due to a problems in the relationship between the king and Philip's daughter, she was sent back to Rome. Alexander was born afterwards but Philip claims him his own and keeps the identity of the son secret.

Names of Alexander

Alexander is also known in the Zoroastrian Middle Persian work Arda Wiraz Namag as "the accursed Alexander" due to his conquest of the Persian Empire and the destruction of its capital Persepolis.

He is known as Eskandar-e Maqduni (Alexander of Macedonia) in Persian, Al-Iskander Al-Makadoni (Alexander of Macedonia) in Arabic, Alexander Mokdon in Hebrew, and Tre-Qarnayia in Aramaic (the two-horned one, apparently due to an image on coins minted during his rule that seemingly depicted him with the two ram's horns of the Egyptian god Ammon), al-Iskandar al-Akbar ???????? ?????? (Alexander the Great) in Arabic, Sikandar-e-azam (????? ????) in Urdu and Skandar in Pashto. Sikandar, his name in Urdu and Hindi, is also a term used as a synonym for "expert" or "extremely skilled".

Diogenes was a soldier, possibly a Greek or Hellenized mercenary, in the service of the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BCE). He appears in Josephus's work Antiquities of the Jews.

In revenge for the support of certain Pharisees for Demetrius III of Syria's invasion of Judea, Diogenes advised Alexander to crucify 800 Pharisee scholars and murder their families before their eyes. Following

Alexander's death, his widow and successor Salome Alexandra, probably at the urging of her brother Simeon ben Shetach, had Diogenes put to death.

King Philip II of Macedon took advantage of the feuding between Greek city states to take control of all of Greece. Upon his assasination, his son, Alexander the Great inherited Philip II's realm.

During Alexander's life he expanded the empire to stretch through Egypt and parts of India. Alexander the Great's empire was crippled after his death. From his empire, three main Hellenistic civilizations emerged: Ptolemaic Egypt,

Macedon, and Seleucid Syria. The seperate kindoms flourished in education, but internal rivalries led to the fall of each to Roman conquerers.

Aristotle (Greek: ???st?t???? Aristotéles) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great.

He wrote on diverse subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry (including theater), biology and zoology, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, and ethics.

Along with Socrates and Plato, Aristotle was one of the most influential of the ancient Greek philosophers. They transformed Presocratic Greek philosophy into the

foundations of Western philosophy as we know it. Some consider Plato and Aristotle to have founded two of the most important schools of Ancient philosophy; others consider Aristotelianism as a development and concretization of Plato's insights.

Life

Aristotle was born in Stageira (Greek: St??e??a) in Chalcidice. His parents were Phaestis and Nicomachus, who became physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. Aristotle was educated as a member of the aristocracy. At about the age of eighteen, he went to Athens to continue his education at Plato's Academy.

Aristotle remained at the Academy for nearly twenty years, not leaving until after Plato's death in 347 BC. He then traveled with Xenocrates to the court of Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor. While in Asia, Aristotle traveled with Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and zoology of the island. Aristotle married Hermias' daughter (or niece) Pythias. She bore him a daughter, whom they named Pythias. Soon after Hermias' death, Aristotle was invited by Philip of Macedon to become tutor to Alexander the Great.

After spending several years tutoring the young Alexander, Aristotle returned to Athens. By 335 BC, he established his own school there, the Lyceum. Aristotle directed courses at the Lyceum for the next twelve years. While in Athens, his wife Pythias died. Aristotle soon became involved with Herpyllis of Stagira, who bore him a son whom he named after his father, Nicomachus.

It is during this time in Athens that Aristotle is thought to have composed many of his works. Although Aristotle wrote dialogues, only fragments of these have survived. The works that have survived are in treatise form and, for the most part, were not meant for widespread publication.

These are generally thought to be lecture notes or texts used by his students. Among the most important are Physics, Metaphysics (or Ontology), Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, De Anima (On the Soul) and Poetics. These works, although connected in many fundamental ways, differ significantly in both style and substance.

Aristotle not only studied almost every subject possible at the time, but made significant contributions to most of them. In science, Aristotle studied anatomy, astronomy, economics, embryology, geography, geology, meteorology, physics, and zoology. In philosophy, Aristotle wrote on aesthetics, ethics, government, metaphysics, politics, psychology, rhetoric and theology.

He also dealt with education, foreign customs, literature and poetry. His combined works practically constitute an encyclopedia of Greek knowledge. It has been remarked that Aristotle was likely the last person to know everything there was to be known in his own time.

Upon Alexander's death in 323 BC, anti-Macedonian feelings in Athens once again flared. Eurymedon the hierophant denounced Aristotle, claiming he did not hold the gods in honor. Aristotle fled the city to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, explaining, "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy." However, he died there of natural causes within the year. Aristotle left a will, which has been preserved, in which he asked to be buried next to his wife.

Methodology

For more details on this topic, see Aristotle's theory of universals.

Aristotle defines his philosophy in terms of essence, saying that philosophy is "the science of the universal essence of that which is actual". Plato had defined it as the "science of the idea", meaning by idea what we should call the unconditional basis of phenomena. Both pupil and master regard philosophy as concerned with the universal; Aristotle, however, finds the universal in particular things, and called it the essence of things, while Plato finds that the universal exists apart from particular things, and is related to them as their prototype or exemplar.

For Aristotle, therefore, philosophic method implies the ascent from the study of particular phenomena to the knowledge of essences, while for Plato philosophic method means the descent from a knowledge of universal ideas to a contemplation of particular imitations of those ideas. In a certain sense, Aristotle's method is both inductive and deductive, while Plato's is essentially deductive from a priori principles (Jori, 2003).

In Aristotle's terminology, "natural philosophy" was a branch of philosophy that studied the phenomena of the natural world, and included matters that today fall under the domain of physics, biology, and other natural sciences. In modern times the scope of philosophy has come to be more narrowly defined as limited to more generic or abstract inquiries such as ethics and metaphysics, in which logic plays a major role, and as excluding the empirical study of the natural world by means of the scientific method. In contrast, in Aristotle's time and use, philosophy was taken to encompass all facets of intellectual inquiry.

In the larger sense of the word, Aristotle makes philosophy coextensive with reasoning, which he also called "science". Note, however, that his use of the term science carries a different meaning than that covered by the term "scientific method". For Aristotle, "all science (dianoia) is either practical, poetical or theoretical". By practical science he means ethics and politics; by poetical science, he means the study of poetry and the other fine arts; while by theoretical science he means physics, mathematics, and metaphysics.

If logic, or, as Aristotle calls it, Analytic, is regarded as a study preliminary to philosophy, the divisions of Aristotelian philosophy are: (1) Logic; (2) Theoretical Philosophy, including Metaphysics, Physics, Mathematics, (3) Practical Philosophy; and (4) Poetical Philosophy.

Aristotle's epistemology

Logic

For more details on this topic, see Non-Aristotelian logic.

Aristotle's conception of logic was the dominant form of logic up until the advances in mathematical logic in the 19th century. Kant stated in the Critique of Pure Reason that Aristotle's theory of logic had arrived at a complete account of the core of deductive inference.

History

Aristotle "says that 'on the subject of reasoning' he 'had nothing else on an earlier date to speak of'" (Bochenski, 1951). However, Plato reports that syntax was thought of before him, by Prodikos of Keos, who was concerned by the right use of words. Logic seems to have emerged from dialectics; the earlier philosophers used concepts like reductio ad absurdum as a rule when discussing, but never understood its logical implications. Even Plato had difficulties with logic.

Although he had the idea of constructing a system for deduction, he was never able to construct one. Instead, he relied on his dialectic, which was a confusion between different sciences and methods (Bochenski, 1951). Plato thought that deduction would simply follow from premises, so he focused on having good premises so that the conclusion would follow. Later on, Plato realized that a method for obtaining the conclusion would be beneficial. Plato never obtained such a method, but his best attempt was published in his book Sophist, where he introduced his division method (Rose, 1968).

Analytics and the Organon

What we today call Aristotelian logic, Aristotle himself would have labeled "analytics". The term "logic" he reserved to mean dialectics. Most of Aristotle's work is probably not in its original form, since it was most likely edited by students and later lecturers. The logical works of Aristotle were compiled into six books in about the early 1st century AD:

Categories

On Interpretation

Prior Analytics

Posterior Analytics

Topics

On Sophistical Refutations

The order of the books (or the teachings from which they are composed) is not certain, but this list was derived from analysis of Aristotle's writings. It goes from the basics, the analysis of simple terms in the Categories, to the study of more complex forms, namely, syllogisms (in the Analytics) and dialectics (in the Topics and Sophistical Refutations). There is one volume of Aristotle's concerning logic not found in the Organon, namely the fourth book of Metaphysics. (Bochenski, 1951).

Modal logic

Aristotle is also the creator of syllogisms with modalities (modal logic). The word modal refers to the word 'modes', explaining the fact that modal logic deals with the modes of truth. Aristotle introduced the qualification of 'necessary' and 'possible' premises. He constructed a logic which helped in the evaluation of truth but which was difficult to interpret. (Rose, 1968).

Science

In the period between his two stays in Athens, between his times at the Academy and the Lyceum, Aristotle conducted most of the scientific thinking and research for which he is now most renowned. In fact, most of Aristotle's life was devoted to the study of the objects of natural science. Aristotle’s Metaphysics contains observations on the nature of numbers but he made no original contributions to Mathematics. He did, however, perform original research in the natural sciences, including: botany, zoology, physics, astronomy, chemistry, meteorology, geometry and several other sciences.

Aristotle's writings on science are largely qualitative, not quantitative. Beginning in the sixteenth century, scientists began applying mathematics to the physical sciences, and Aristotle's work in this area was found to be hopelessly inadequate. His failings were largely due to lacking concepts like mass, velocity, force, and temperature. He had a notion of what speed and temperature was, but no quantitative understanding of them, which was partly due to not having basic experimental apparatus, like a clock or thermometer.

His writings provide an account of many scientific observations, but there are some curious errors. For example, in his History of Animals he claimed that human males have more teeth than females. In a similar vein, Galileo showed by simple experiments that Aristotle's theory that the heavier object falls faster than a lighter object is incorrect.

In places, Aristotle goes too far in deriving 'laws of the universe' from simple observation and over-stretched reason. Today's scientific method assumes that such thinking without sufficient facts is ineffective, and that discerning the validity of one's hypothesis requires far more rigorous experimentation than that which Aristotle used to support his laws.

Aristotle also had some scientific blind spots, the largest being his inability to see the application of mathematics to physics. Aristotle held that physics was about changing objects with a reality of their own, whereas mathematics was about unchanging objects without a reality of their own. In this philosophy, he could not imagine that there was a relationship between them.

He also posited a flawed cosmology that we may discern in selections of the Metaphysics, which was widely accepted up until the 1500s. From the 3rd century to the 1500s, the dominant view held that the Earth was the center of the universe (geocentrism). This scientific concept, as proposed by Aristotle and Plato was later adopted as dogma by the Roman Catholic Church because it placed mankind at the center of the universe, and scientists who disagreed, such as Galileo, were considered heretics. This erroneous concept was eventually rejected.

Aristotle's scientific shortcomings should not mislead one into forgetting the immense advances that he made in the many fields of science. For instance, he founded logic as a formal science and created foundations to biology that were not superseded (in the West) for two millennia.

Also, he introduced the fundamental notion that nature is composed of things that change and that studying such changes can provide useful knowledge. This made the study of physics, and all other sciences, respectable. This observation, though, goes beyond physics and is really the subject matter of metaphysics.

Aristotle's metaphysics

Aristotle defines metaphysics as "the knowledge of immaterial being", or of "being in the highest degree of abstraction". He calls metaphysics "first philosophy", and also "the theologic science".

Causality

The Material Cause is that from which a thing comes into existence as from its parts, constituents, substratum or materials. This reduces the explanation of causes to the parts (factors, elements, constituents, ingredients) forming the whole (system, structure, compound, complex, composite, or combination) (the part-whole causation). An example of a material cause might be the marble in a carved statue.

The Formal Cause tells us what a thing is, that any thing is determined by the definition, form, pattern, essence, whole, synthesis, or archetype. It embraces the account of causes in terms of fundamental principles or general laws, as the whole (macrostructure) is the cause of its parts (the whole-part causation). An example of a formal cause might be the sketches or plans of the carved statue.

The Efficient Cause is that from which the change or the ending of the change first starts. It identifies 'what makes of what is made and what causes change of what is changed' and so suggests all sorts of agents, nonliving or living, acting as the sources of change or movement or rest. Representing the current understanding of causality as the relation of cause and effect, this covers the modern definitions of "cause" as either the agent or agency or particular events or states of affairs. An example of an efficient cause might be the artist who carved the statue.

The Final Cause is that for the sake of which a thing exists or is done, including both purposeful and instrumental actions and activities. The final cause or telos is the purpose or end that something is supposed to serve, or it is that from which and that to which the change is. This also covers modern ideas of mental causation involving such psychological causes as volition, need, motivation, or motives, rational, irrational, ethical, all that gives purpose to behavior. The final cause of the artist might be the statue itself. (teleology)

Additionally, things can be causes of one another, causing each other reciprocally, as hard work causes fitness and vice versa, although not in the same way or function, the one is as the beginning of change, the other as the goal. [Thus Aristotle first suggested a reciprocal or circular causality as a relation of mutual dependence or action or influence of cause and effect.] Also, Aristotle indicated that the same thing can be the cause of contrary effects, its presence and absence may result in different outcomes.

Aristotle marked two modes of causation: proper (prior) causation and accidental (chance) causation. All causes, proper and incidental, can be spoken as potential or as actual, particular or generic. The same language refers to the effects of causes, so that generic effects assigned to generic causes, particular effects to particular causes, operating causes to actual effects. Essentially, causality does not suggest a temporal relation between the cause and the effect.

All further investigations of causality will consist of imposing the favorite hierarchies on the order causes, such as final > efficient> material > formal (Thomas Aquinas), or of restricting all causality to the material and efficient causes or to the efficient causality (deterministic or chance) or just to regular sequences and correlations of natural phenomena (the natural sciences describing how things happen instead of explaining the whys and wherefores).

Chance and spontaneity

Spontaneity and chance are causes of effects. Chance as an incidental cause lies in the realm of accidental things. It is "from what is spontaneous" (but note that what is spontaneous does not come from chance). For a better understanding of Aristotle's conception of "chance" it might be better to think of "coincidence": Something takes place by chance if a person sets out with the intent of having one thing take place, but with the result of another thing (not intended) taking place.

For example: A person seeks donations. That person may find another person willing to donate a substantial sum. However, if the person seeking the donations met the person donating, not for the purpose of collecting donations, but for some other purpose, Aristotle would call the collecting of the donation by that particular donator a result of chance. It must be unusual that something happens by chance. In other words, if something happens all or most of the time, we cannot say that it is by chance.

However, chance can only apply to human beings, it is in the sphere of moral actions. According to Aristotle, chance must involve choice (and thus deliberation), and only humans are capable of deliberation and choice. "What is not capable of action cannot do anything by chance" (Physics, 2.6).

Substance, potentiality and actuality

Aristotle examines the concept of substance (ousia) in his Metaphysics, Book VII and he concludes that a particular substance is a combination of both matter and form. As he proceeds to the book VIII, he concludes that the matter of the substance is the substratum or the stuff of which it is composed e.g. the matter of the house are the bricks, stones, timbers etc., or whatever constitutes the potential house.

While the form of the substance, is the actual house, namely ‘covering for bodies and chattels’ or any other differentia (see also predicables). The formula that gives the components is the account of the matter, and the formula that gives the differentia is the account of the form (Metaphysics VIII, 1043a 10-30).

With regard to the change (kinesis) and its causes now, as he defines in his Physics and On Generation and Corruption 319b-320a, he distinguishes the coming to be from 1. growth and diminution, which is change in quantity 2. locomotion, which is change in space and 3. alteration, which is change in quality.

The coming to be is a change where nothing persists of which the resultant is property. In that particular change he introduces the concept of potentiality (dynamis) and actuality (entelecheia) in association with the matter and the form.

Referring to potentiality, this is what a thing is capable of doing, or being acted upon, if it is not prevented from something else. For example, a seed of a plant in the soil is potentially (dynamei) plant, and if is not prevented by something, it will become a plant. Potentially beings can either 'act' (poiein) or 'be acted upon' (paschein), as well as can be either innate or come by practice or learning.

For example, the eyes possess the potentiality of sight (innate - being acted upon), while the capability of playing the flute can be possessed by learning (exercise - acting).

Referring now to actuality, this is the fulfillment of the end of the potentiality. Because the end (telos) is the principle of every change, and for the sake of the end exists potentiality, therefore actuality is the end. Referring then to our previous example, we could say that actuality is when the seed of the plant becomes a plant.

“ For that for the sake of which a thing is, is its principle, and the becoming is for the sake of the end; and the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potentiality is acquired. For animals do not see in order that they may have sight, but they have sight that they may see.” (Aristotle, Metaphysics IX 1050a 5-10).

In conclusion, the matter of the house is its potentiality and the form is its actuality. The Formal Cause (aitia) then of that change from potential to actual house, is the reason (logos) of the house builder and the Final Cause is the end, namely the house itself. Then Aristotle proceeds and concludes that the actuality is prior to potentiality in formula, in time and in substantiality.

With this definition of the particular substance (matter and form) Aristotle tries to solve the problem of the unity of the beings; e.g., what is that makes the man one? Since, according to Plato there are two Ideas: animal and biped, how then is man a unity? However, according to Aristotle, the potential being (matter) and the actual one (form) are one and the same thing. (Aristotle, Metaphysics VIII 1045a-b).

The five elements

Fire, which is hot and dry.

Earth, which is cold and dry.

Air, which is hot and wet.

Water, which is cold and wet.

Aether, which is the divine substance that makes up the heavenly spheres and heavenly bodies (stars and planets).

Each of the four earthly elements has its natural place; the earth at the centre of the universe, then water, then air, then fire. When they are out of their natural place they have natural motion, requiring no external cause, which is towards that place; so bodies sink in water, air bubbles up, rain falls, flame rises in air. The heavenly element has perpetual circular motion.

Criticism

Aristotle has been criticized on several grounds. Since he was perhaps the philosopher most respected by European thinkers during and after the Renaissance, these thinkers often took Aristotle's erroneous positions as given, which held back science in this epoch.

His analysis of procreation is frequently criticized on the grounds that it presupposes an active, ensouling masculine element bringing life to an inert, passive, lumpen female element; it is on these grounds that some feminist critics refer to Aristotle as a misogynist.

His assertion that objects of different mass fall at different speeds under gravity, which was later refuted by John Philoponus (credit is often given to Galileo, even though Philoponus lived centuries earlier).

His refutation of Democritus's claim that the Milky Way was made up of a multitude of stars.

His refutation of the claim that the stars visible in the night sky were just like the Earth's Sun; he calculated that they would have to be millions of times farther away from the Earth than the Sun, and thus these claims were dismissed for hundreds of years.

His theory of the natural slave was used by thinkers such as Juan Gines de Sepulveda to justify European domination of the Native Americans.

Legacy

It is the opinion of many that Aristotle's system of thought remains the most marvellous and influential one ever put together by any single mind. According to historian Will Durant, no other philosopher has contributed so much to the enlightenment of the world.[5] He single-handedly founded the sciences of Logic, Biology and Psychology.

Aristotle is referred to as "The Philosopher" by Scholastic thinkers like Thomas Aquinas. See Summa Theologica, Part I, Question 3, etc. These thinkers blended Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity, bringing the thought of Ancient Greece into the Middle Ages. It required a repudiation of some Aristotelian principles for the sciences and the arts to