الأحد، 30 أكتوبر 2016

A Summary Of The Historical Greek Persian Wars

By Brenda Moore


History back in the BC eras was an amazing thing. Reading about them seemed like a matter of fiction. The development of the civilization of mankind was in itself always an interesting read. Geographical differences made up for different cultures and humans were eventually able to grow into a species that became exceedingly territorial. Wars were a matter of obtaining land and power from one empire to another.

Wars are prevalent in the ancient world since fighting for territory is one way to know who has always been more powerful. Mankind has always had the tendency of greed for power. This too has been documented in so many ancient literary works. One of the greatest wars fought was the Greek Persian Wars. All of it starting with the Persians invading Ionia, a state in Greece.

Persia, now called Iran, has been conquering so many nations during this era and has reached Greece. They were starting to invade Ionia and with the leader being Cyrus the Great, a notable conqueror of empires. After Ionia, they proceeded to Anatolia, which unfortunately for the invaders, decided to have an uprising. The revolt was not a success but prompted the people from Athens and Eretria to prepare.

One notable thing about Persia as a military force is how they focus more on numbers. This does not mean they necessarily won those battles. During an encounter in Plataea Greece had to face Persia and only suffered 192 losses over the 6,400 from the larger army.

10 years later, the Persians returned to avenge their momentary defeat and were lead by Xerxes. This time their forces was much larger. You can guess that they believed in the strength in numbers than in actual strategy. This part of the war is very notable since there was blockbuster hit made for this part of history.

The Greeks from Sparta revolved around a military based culture which became huge advantage to their success as a nation during this war. Their methods were very next level and they have been trained in combat since they were small boys. Quality in this case trumps quantity.

One battle was done somewhere near the sea and its geographical structure encouraged a surprise attack towards the Greek fleet. Greece received forewarning about this and was able to avoid the attack and went for the main Persian fleet. There was a storm coming but the Greeks knew this an they were already all on the shore when the storm strike. The Persians were not intuitive about the possibility of a storm at sea and lost a squadron due to this.

In the film 300, they highlighted the battle of Thermopylae where a traitor gave the invaders important intel about the where abouts and strategy of the Spartan soldiers. This gave their position away but luckily Spartan General Leonidas was able to send many troops to the south for safety. This left the best of Spartan soldiers to fight in the ambush.

Northern Greeks joined Xerxes army marched south after their fleet attacked the Greek navy. They then proceeded to burn Athens at around September. Thankfully, the city was evacuated on time. During this time, there was still a battle going on in the Strait of Salamis. A strategy was devised by a Themistocles that lured the opponent army into the Strait. Persia lost since their opponent had better strategy and eventually retreating to Asia leaving many of their soldiers behind.




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