PolledHistory: 18-25 Aug: The Greco Persian Wars

 Hello! After a week of polling with a surprisingly high vote amount, one topic has won by quite a lot - the history of the Greco Persian wars.

Let's begin!

The Greco-Persian wars were a series of famous conflicts between the Achaenemid Persian empire we covered in our very first post and the coalition of city states in Greece working together to defeat a larger threat - Persia.

It begins with the Achaenemid conquest of Asia Minor, especially Turkey. They took the Greek Ionian cities. When the Ionians rebelled against Persia, Athens, among the most powerful Greek city states, sent aid to the rebels. King Darius of Persia as greatly angered at this, and he began the Greco-Persian Wars circa 500 BC.

The first major action in the war was the campaign by Persia against Macedon and Thrace under the commander Kardomius. Mardonius tried to sail for southern Greece, but his fleet was wrecked in a storm. Darius then tried to force Greece to surrender, but the city states of Athens and Sparta disgreed, executinf the messengers.

Darius sent another campaign, taking the Greek archipelagos and islands and finally reached Southern Greece, in the peninsula where Athens is situated, Attica, landing in a place called Marathon. The small Athenian army won a great, decisive victory against them in the Battle of Marathon. 

The Battle of Marathon is the namesake of the running term "Marathon", as a Greek messenger ran 26 miles to Athens to deliver the news of victory, but he had died shortly after arriving in Athens. Persia had failed already twice to attack Greece. Soon, Darius died.

After Darius' death, his son Xerxes, whose attacks were much stronger and more violent, lead the second Persian invasion of Greece, beginning in 480 AD. Xerxes crossed the Hellespont, the small strait near modern day Istanbul (then Byzantium), and his armu crossed into mainland Grece.

The Persian force was large, with different esrimates but it was gigantic. This time, the Greek alliance was large, most of the Greek city states were involved, though Athens and Sparta were the main players of the war. 

The Persian army began the campaign in Northern Greece, taking Macedonia, Thrace, and Thessaly. Now, the Persians had to cross through a very narrow strait called Thermopylae. Themistocles, the Greek admiral, saw this as a very strategic spot for the Greeks to take to hold back the incoming Persian armies.

Themistocles also wanted to block the naval strait of Artemisium, trying to desperately hold the Persians back and disable them from entering Greece. Now, King Leonidas of Sparta with some men (about six thousand with three hundred of his personal bodyguard) met Xerxes in the pass of Thermopylae.

The Greeks had a huge numerical disadvantage, but an enviromental advantage. Though they held out for a very impressice time, the Persian numbers were too big, and the land forces were defeated. Meanwhile, in the naval frontier, the Persians, just before battle in Artemisium, was caught in a great windstorm and many of their ships were lost. The naval battle at Artemisium was a stalemate, and the fleet of the Greeks fled to the island of Salamis. 

Since the Persians won out in Thermopylae, Xerxes quickly crushed the lands of Southern Greece, and eventually the Persians reached  Athens, destroying the temples and monuments of Athens. Xerxes had captured most of Greece, but his expectation of an Easy greek conquest was broken. 

Back in the naval frontier, the Allied Ships were off the coast of Salamis, and the Persian fleet went there to face the Greeks in battle. The Persian quantity of ships were very big and this became a disadvantage for the Persians, as they were less mobile. The Greek fleet scored a decisive victory because of said disadvantage.

Mardonius then met the Greeks in a battle at Plataea. Here, the Greeks made a great decisive victory, and lager at Mycals, another decisive Greek victory was scored. With two major Greek victories at Plataea and Mycale, great Greek resistance in Salamis, and though a defeat, impressive defence at Thermopylae, Xerxes had to end his campaign. 

About one hundred and fifty years after this, King Alexander III the Great of Macedon initiated a campaign against the Persian Empire, ending it and starting an era of Hellenism (Hellas is the greek word for Greece) that would last until the fall of the Ptolemaic Empire with the reign of Augustus. 

That's all! The poll:

https://forms.gle/LvrKXwGzGi7hm5o69

Poll Theme: Diseases

Why did I choose this theme?

Every week's history poll, we have a common theme in the topics. For example, today's theme is war, all the three topics are about war (the one that won is about the Greco-Persian wars). Today's theme is historical diseases / plagues. This is because there's more to deadly pandemics than Covid-19, the pandemic of the century that, though huge, pales in comparison with diseases of the past.