Episode 8 - The Persian Wars

Hi, my name is Clayton Mills. Welcome to ‘A Short Walk through our Long History’ - a podcast where we look at the events of history, and try to see how those events shaped our modern world.

Welcome to Episode 8 - The Persian Wars. We’re talking today about the ancient wars between Greece and Persia. I’ve mentioned that Greece has had an important impact on the western world, but did you know that ancient Greece was almost wiped out? A couple of times? Greece was a small country, but they tangled with the biggest empire of their time: The Persians. The battles between these two countries will become legendary, and will give us a couple of the best quotes of all time. Also, Pheidippides! And his famous last words. Lots of good quotes in this episode.

We’ve mentioned the days of the Mycenaeans, and the Greek dark ages, and how the beginning of the end of the Greek dark ages was when Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey, which was sometime around 800 BC.

Now we’re getting to the real beginning of recorded history, and from this point on, we can almost always date what one culture says is going on against the records of other cultures. In other words, we’re finally at the point where we have a unified timeline, and we can fit events to very specific dates on the timeline. Before this, we always had to say ‘sometime around 800 BC,’ but after this, we’re getting to the point where we can say ‘on September 27th, 480 BC, this happened.’ That’s the date, by the way, of the Battle of Salamis, which was the Ancient Greek version of the Battle of Midway. Well, with less dive-bombers.

So, around 550 BC (ok, I’m still using ‘around’ in a few places). Around 550 BC, the Persians, who were a tribe from what is now Iran, began to expand. They conquered the Medes, who had been the biggest kingdom in the region, and then continued to expand. Their king was Darius, and he built up the largest empire the world had seen to that point.

The Persian empire stretched from the Persian gulf in the south, to what is now Kazahkstan in the east, up to the middle of the Black Sea in the north, and in the west, they began to expand into Greek-held lands in what is now Turkey. This area of Turkey was called Ionia, and at first the Ionian cities did not resist the Persians. They didn’t have the strength. But in 499 BC, the Ionians tried to rebel. They were supported by two cities from mainland Greece, Eritria and Athens. Together, they destroyed a Persian city, Sardis, and then the Eritrians and Athenians went back home. Well of course the Persians quickly came back and re-conquered Ionia. And the Persians did not forget that the Athenians and Eritreans had helped in the revolt. So the Persians are thinking about the cities of Eritrea and Athens. And they aren’t happy. This set up 50 years of fighting, known to the Greeks as the Persian Wars.

Ok, now we are getting to one of the most famous battles of all time, the battle of Marathon. This battle is carefully recorded by the Greek historian, Herodotus, who wrote about it only 50 years after it happened. In 490 BC, Darius came back to Greece with a massive army and a massive navy. He landed first at Eritrea, and destroyed the city. Darius and the army then got back in their boats, and sailed to Marathon, a small town just northeast of Athens. The Athenians sent their best messenger, a runner, a guy named Pheidippides, to run to Sparta, and ask for help. It’s about 150 miles from Athen to Sparta. Lots of hills. Herodotus mentions our friend Pheidippides. Supposedly, Pheidippides ran that 150 miles just in 2 days. For scale, that’s about the distance from Houston to Austin. The MS 150 is a BICYCLE race from Houston to Austin, and it takes 2 days. Supposedly Phidippedes ran that whole thing, and then asked the Spartans for help.

Normally the Spartans would have been all over this request, since they were maybe the most war-loving city in all of history. But they were in the midst of an important city festival, and the elders said they couldn’t come fight until the festival was over. No, we can’t come defend Greece. We have this party, see? It’s kind of a big deal, so we’ll come when the party is over. OK? So Pheidippides ran back to Athens with the bad news. And then the Athenians sent him on to the front at Marathon with army.

The Greek army had about 10,000 soldiers. Kind Darius and the Persians had at least 30,000. Some estimates are higher. When they began the battle, the Greeks intentionally let the center of their line collapse, and then the phalanxes on the Greek wings turned in and crushed the Persians. We’ll talk more about the Phalanxes and what they are in a separate episode. The Persians, sensing that they were being beaten, fell apart and ran, and the Greeks chased them and cut them down, chasing them all the way to their ships. The Persians lost as many as half of their men, which was a stunning defeat. The ones who survived sailed back across the Aegean Sea to regroup.

Back on the field at Marathon, the Greeks sent our runnin’ friend Phidippedes to run back to Athens, and tell then what had happened. The distance from Marathon to Athens is just about 25 miles, which is where we get the distance for a modern marathons. Phidippedes runs up to Athens, and says to the elders, ‘Nicómen!’, which means, ‘We won!’. And then he died, right there, right in front of the elders. As last words go, though, those are pretty good. Right?

So we have a historic victory for the Greeks, and and a heroic effort from Phidippedes, and the Persians retreating across the Aegean Sea to Ionia and points farther east.

Not long after that, King Darius dies, but the memory of what happened in Greece does not. Darius’s son, Xerxes (one of the cooler names in all of history, btw), succeeds him. Xerxes wants to out-do his father, and wants to expand the Persian empire even farther. So he decides he’s going to bring an even bigger army to Greece, and show them what’s what.

So in 480 BC, 10 years after Marathon, he sets out, with an army of between 150 thousand and million men. Accounts vary on the size, Herodotus says a million, but it’s quite probable this was the biggest army ever, up to this point in history. Xerxes also has a huge navy, to try to fight the Greek navy, and keep them from sailing up the coast and flanking his army.

But instead of sailing most of his army to Greece, he marches them. There’s a stretch of water they have to cross, in what is now Istanbul, called the Hellespont. Xerxes has his engineers build a bridge there, using 600 ships, which is an enormous number of ships, by the way, and planks and even dirt on the planks, so his army can march on a road. It apparently took the army seven days to cross, the army was so large. Once they were across, they had to march over to the main part of the Greek peninsula. And they had to march through some mountains to get to the peninsula.

But there waiting for them in the mountain pass, near the town of Thermopylae, was a group of about 7000 Greeks, including 300 Spartans led by their king, Leonidas. You know where this is going, don’t you? The battle at Thermopylae is one of the most famous battles in all of history. Leonidas and the Greeks had the advantage of good position, but Xerxes had almost unlimited men. So sometime in late July or early August of 480 BC (see, we’re getting more specific. I told you we would), Xerxes begins to attack the Greeks.

Leonidas and the Greeks held the pass for 7 days, including 3 full days of fighting, against the vastly larger Persian army. Now we’re getting to the great quotes from this battle. When the Persians sent an envoy to tell the Greeks that they should surrender, the Greeks refused. The envoy said, ‘We will darken the sky with our arrows!’ Which they could easily do, with that many men. But A Greek soldier, named Dienekes, reportedly said, ‘Good. Then we will fight in the shade.’ That, is one of the best battle quotes of all time. But the best is still to come. The Persian envoy rather forcefully told King Leonidas to surrender all his weapons. And Leonidas said, ‘Come and get them.’ In all the history of battle quotes, that, is the most bad-ass. ‘Come and get them.’

So the Persians eventually attacked, and the Greeks held them off for 3 days, until a local resident told Xerxes about a small mountain pass and led some of the Persians back behind the Greek lines. Leonidas, realizing what was happening, let most of the Greeks go, to head back to Athens. The 300 Spartans, and maybe 700 other Greeks stayed to hold the pass. Almost all of the Greeks who stayed to hold off the main Persian army ended up fighting to the death.

The Battle of Thermopylae was technically a Greek defeat, but it wasn’t really a Persian victory. The Greek and Spartan warriors had bought the rest of Greece more than a week to prepare, and they had badly dented the morale of the Persians. But the Persians did eventually break through the mountain pass at Thermopylae, and marched on to Athens. But when they got there, they found the city deserted.

Now we get to the real victory, and the battle that just doesn’t get as much attention as Marathon or Thermopylae, even though it’s the one that really matters. Salamis.

Salamis is an island off the coast of Greece, and it was the site of one of the largest naval battles in all of history. Again, the Greeks were outnumbered, but again, the Greeks were better sailors than the Persians, and had the advantage of location. According to Herodotus, there were about 370 Greek ships, against about 1200 Persian ships. That’s more than 3 to 1. But the Greeks lured the Persians into a narrow straight between two islands, where the huge number of Persian ships actually worked against them, as they were too crowded and couldn’t maneuver. The Greeks thoroughly routed the Persian navy, and killed their admiral, who was one of Xerxes’ brothers. Xerxes himself supposedly watched the battle from a mountainside near the shore, and realized that the Persian fleet had been destroyed.

Xerxes took most of his army and marched back to Asia. He left behind a sizable force, though, under one of his generals, Mardonius. Eventually, in 479 BC, the Greeks defeated Mardonius and the Persians at the battle of Plataea, ending the wars between the Greeks and the Persians. The Persians never came back and attacked the Greeks.

Eventually though the Greeks will grow strong enough to attack the Persians, but that won’t happen until Alexander the Great comes on the scene. The Greeks were still a bit bitter about all these attacks, and wanted a bit of revenge.

But the defeat of the Persians in 479 BC begins what is known as the Golden Age of Greece, which is one of the most intellectually productive times in western history. We’ll look at this in upcoming episodes.

So how do these battles between the Greeks and the Persians influence our modern world? Well, as I’ve said, Greece is one of the most influential cultures in the history of the western world, and it wouldn’t have been that if it had been beaten by the Persians. Maybe we would then be talking about how influential Persia was on western history, but hey, Thermopolyae. Salamis. Greece won.

The most influential thinkers in Greece show up soon after these battles. Because the Greeks had bought themselves some time and some peace, they had a time of prosperity, where they were not spending their time fighting external enemies. And in that time they developed some of the greatest thinkers the world has seen. We’ll look at those guys in upcoming episodes.

Another way that these battles influenced the modern world is that the western world, and especially western military units, have essentially inherited some of the values of the ancient Greeks who strove to defend their homelands. Courage in the face of overwhelming odds, self-sacrifice, teamwork, leaders who are part of the battle, the importance of choosing your battleground, and the right to defend yourself against tyrants - all of these are important values in the western world. In the end, this is what the Greek defense against Persia was all about - the Greeks were defending their right to rule themselves, rather than to be ruled by Persia. And they were willing to take up arms and fight to the death, rather than let someone else rule them against their will.

There are echoes of this spirit in the American Revolution, in the American Civil War, in the Reformation, in the English Civil war, The Scots fighting against the invading British, the Zulus fighting against the invading British, OK, anyone fighting against the invading British, and in many of the great battles of western history. The idea that some foreign power can come in and take over your land, then tell you to pay tribute to them - that is tyranny. And though some people have said, ‘ok, we’ll submit, that’s better than fighting, don’t hurt us,’ other peoples have said instead, ‘no, I’m not going to lie down and let that happen.’ That’s the spirit of Patrick Henry’s famous quote, ‘Give me Liberty, or give me death.’

One last thought on how that matters in our modern world. It might just be that our current world is moving in the direction of tyranny again. The history of the world is an ongoing struggle between tyrants who want to control everything, and people defending their rights to self-determination and liberty. When a government begins to curtail the rights of its people to determine their own destiny, whether it is your own government or the government of a country that wants to take yours over, the time comes when people must choose to either submit, or to fight back. History does not remember those who submitted. History remembers those who have said, ‘come and take them.’

History remembers those who have said, “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” We’ll look at that document in a much later episode.

In the next episode we will look at the development of Athenian democracy, something that clearly had a big effect on the western world. But before that episode, we will take another quick side episode, to look at something that I find fascinating - Greek military and naval advancements, and how it was that they won these amazing battles against much larger forces.