III. PERIOD OF PERSIAN WARS AND MILITARY GLORY.—To this age the Greeks ever after looked back with pride, and from its history orators of every nation have drawn their favorite examples of valor and patriotism. The Persian invasion called forth the highest energies of the people, and gave an astonishing impulse to Grecian mind. The design of subjugating Greece originated in the ambition of Darius the Persian king, the second in succession from Cyrus the Great. He found a pretext and occasion for the attempt in a revolt of his Greek subjects in Asia Minor, in which Sardis, the capital of Lydia, was pillaged and burned. The war was carried on by three successive kings, Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes, but on neither of them did it confer any glory; while the battles of Marathon, Thermopylæ, Salamis, Mycale, and Platæa, secured immortal honor to the Greeks. A succession of splendid names adorns the history of Athens during this period. Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles, acted distinguished parts in the brilliant scene. Sparta also justly gloried in the self-sacrifice of Leonidas and his three hundred brave companions. The period of the Persian war was the age of the highest elevation of the national character of the Greeks. Before it, there existed little union comparatively between the different states, and it was not till Athens had alone and successfully resisted the strength of Persia at the battle of Marathon, that other states were aroused to effort against the common enemy. In the confederation which followed, Sparta was the nominal head, but the talents, which actually controlled the public affairs, were found in the statesmen of Athens. To Athens, therefore, the supremacy was necessarily transferred, and before the close of the war this state stood, as it were, the mistress of Greece.

Persia at this time was the chief power of the world, and, by the conquest of the Lydian kingdom, had become master of the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor. In 500 B. C. a general revolt of these Ionian cities took place, and the Athenians sent a force of ships and soldiers to help their kinsmen. The united Ionians and Athenians took and burned Sardis, the capital of Lydia, in 499, but, after a six years’ struggle, the power of Darius conquered the whole seaboard of Ionia, and left Persia free to punish the Athenians for interfering between the great Eastern empire and her revolted subjects. In 490 B. C. a great Persian force, under Datis and Artaphernes, was sent across the Ægean, and the fleet landed the Persian army near Marathon, on the east coast of Attica, with a view to an advance upon Athens.

THE FAMOUS BATTLE
OF MARATHON

The first and most important battle of the Persian War, and one of the most momentous in history, was that of Marathon. At the plain of Marathon, near Athens, a small Athenian force of about ten thousand men (with the help of six hundred men from Platæa), under the famous general Miltiades, routed a Persian army of perhaps one hundred and ten thousand, in 490 B. C. This memorable battle, resulting as it did in the defeat of the power which had conquered the greater part of the known world, first taught the Greeks their own strength and gave Athens a position in Greece which it had never yet held. The leading men in Athens at this time were Themistocles and Aristides.

The death of Darius, in 485 B. C., prevented him from renewing the Persian attack on Greek [377] liberties, and the task was bequeathed to his son Xerxes. The invasion of Greece by Xerxes took place ten years after the battle of Marathon with an immense force by sea and land (two million five hundred thousand men according to Herodotus).

STAND OF THE THREE HUNDRED
AT THERMOPYLAE

Then was fought the memorable battle of Thermopylæ (gates of the hot springs, from hot springs situated there), in which the Spartan Leonidas with a mere handful of men held the whole Persian army at bay in the narrow pass of Thermopylæ; but, a way around the pass being shown the Persians by a treacherous Greek, they were able to attack Leonidas in the rear. Part of the Greek forces retreated on learning of this movement of the Persians, but Leonidas with three hundred Spartans and seven hundred Thespians refused to retreat, and, advancing against the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, sold their lives as dearly as possible.

This little remnant of the Greeks, armed only with a few swords, stood a butt for the arrows, the javelins, and the stones of the enemy, which at length overwhelmed them. Where they fell they were afterwards buried.

GREEK VICTORY AT
SALAMIS

Xerxes, having taken the pass of Thermopylæ, moved towards Athens, when the inhabitants had fled, taking refuge in their ships, according to their interpretation of a decree of the oracle that they must seek safety in their “wooden walls.” The Persians burned Athens, and the fate of Greece was then decided by the naval battle of Salamis (480 B. C.), which resulted in a complete victory for the Greeks.