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World history
Course: World history > Unit 2
Lesson 2: Classical Greece- Classical Greece
- The Greek polis
- The Greek polis
- State-building: the Greek polis
- Greco Persian Wars
- Second Persian Invasion
- Classical Greek Society and Culture
- Philosophy: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
- Classical Greek society
- Classical Greek culture
- Classical Greek society
- Classical Greek culture and society
- Classical Greece
- Prelude to the Peloponnesian War
- The Peloponnesian War
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Second Persian Invasion
Xerxes launches an attack on Greece by land and by sea, culminating in the Battle of Thermopylae.
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- How do the Persians get around places so fast? Aren't the ships sort of like rowboats? How do they bring so much food?(20 votes)
- When we combine all the above evidence we find that under favorable wind conditions, ancient vessels averaged between 4 and 6 knots over open water, and 3 to 4 knots while working through islands or along coasts.(4 votes)
- During the Persian wars why were the Greek able to unite?(11 votes)
- Have you ever heard the expression, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"? Greeks could unite in the face of a common enemy.(17 votes)
- Is Artemisium named after the Greek goddess Artemis?(13 votes)
- Artemisium off the eastern coast of Greece was named for a local temple of the goddess ARTEMIS.(5 votes)
- Why was there not any accounts on the Persian side? Were all of the Persians dead? What happened to them? Anyone think the King may have had a journal but it's not been found?(7 votes)
- The persians did not write down history unlike the Greeks because the writing of history started in Greece. Also the Persians did have writing there have just not been findings of written records about these wars and they also probably did not want to write about it since they lost.(3 votes)
- This doesn't say it, but Herodotus says in his History that Xerxes built of bridge of boats to cross the Hellespont from Asia to Thrace (also controlled by Persia).(7 votes)
- Thank you, I was wonderin how they did that, know I know.(2 votes)
- how did one of the ships get destroyed ?(1 vote)
- Greek ships also had an extension at the front (sorry I'm forgetting what it's called) that could ram holes into the sides of enemy ships. They sank many this way.(3 votes)
- What did the Persians think about the Greeks’ governance style of democracy?(4 votes)
- I'm not sure what Herodotus said is true. I'm not sure there were all those storms damaging Persia's ships.
Just in case Herodotus' accounts are biased, what are the probable causes that led the Greeks to win the battles against the Persians, since they were outnumbered?
I read here on Khan Academy that Athens found silver near its polis, but I'm not sure if this was before or after the Greek-Persian Wars. Did silver influence these wars?
Could it be that Persia didn't really attack the Greeks? From my point of view, there is no economic reason for Persia to invade the Greek poleis, because they are somewhat far from the Persian Empire and Persia wouldn't benefit from this invasion. Sure, they could have wanted revenge, but probably there were more profitable places to invade during that time. Could it be that Herodotus just made this all up?(4 votes)- This comment is 2 years old but since I had the same question so I am going to post what I found from Wikipedia
" However, since the 19th century, his [Herodotus's] reputation has been dramatically rehabilitated by archaeological finds that have repeatedly confirmed his version of events. The prevailing modern view is that Herodotus did a remarkable job in his Historia, but that some of his specific details (particularly troop numbers and dates) should be viewed with skepticism. Nevertheless, there are still some historians who believe Herodotus made up much of his story."(1 vote)
- Is there a direct connection between the lost of Greco-Persian war and the assassination of Xerxes(4 votes)
- AtWhen Athens is evacuated, who and what are sent to Salamis? 6:30(1 vote)
- For Athens to be evacuated means that nearly all of the Athenian people, probably with as much as they could carry, went to Salamis where the terrain was better suited for defense against the Persian fleet. This included the military as well as the whole population of Athens. They left Athens to the Persians, for the most part. The city was conquered and burned by the Persians when they got there.(3 votes)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] In the last videos, we saw a dominant Persia
have to put down a rebellion by the Ionians in the Anatolian Peninsula, and they were really, really mad that these Ionians were
helped by the Athenians and the Eretrians, and so Darius, the King of Kings goes off to try to conquer and put down the Athenians and the Eretrians. The first time he sends
a fleet in 492 BCE, it's destroyed by a storm. And we'll see this is not the last time that at least part of a Persian fleet is destroyed by a storm. Then in 490, he sends a fleet again, and then he is defeated by the Athenians at Marathon, and we saw that right over there. Let me do that in color
you can actually see. But as I mentioned in the last video, the Persians were not done. Darius would not live to see another round with the Greeks, but his successor, Xerxes, would not only try another attempt, but he
would amass a huge, huge force against the Greeks to, in his
mind, finally take them over, and he wants it done so badly that he leads the forces himself. And so we are now 10 years after, 10 years after the first Persian invasion. We are now at 480 BCE, where Xerxes is going to try to invade
Greece by land and by sea, but as we will see, he is also
not going to be successful. But this second invasion
is the stuff of legend, and once again, the
historical accounts come to us primarily from Herodotus, who was Greek, and who was not a direct observer of this. So you might want to take all
of this with a grain of salt, because it does make the
Greeks look awfully good. But we do think that
most of this happened, but obviously Herodotus probably added a little bit of bias there. We are likely to never know. So let's think about, or let's see what Xerxes attempts to do. So we see this magenta line. This is the line of
attack of Xerxes in 480, and you can see, there's one magenta line that is going by sea, and one magenta line that
is going by sea here, and another magenta line
that is going by land. And let's zoom in a little bit more. I have another map here. So let's zoom in to
this map right over here to give us a clearer picture
of what's about to happen in this next Persian invasion. So just to reorient ourselves, here are the land forces, and according to Herodotus
and historians of that time, they numbered this force in potentially millions of soldiers, modern historians think it
was closer to 50 thousand to 300 thousand, we really don't know, but we think it's in the
approximately hundred thousand, or a few hundred thousands, not millions, but by any measure, that is a huge, a huge military force. So this is hundreds of
thousands right over here. So hundreds of thousands. Or let me write this. Hundreds of thousands, maybe
between 50 and 300 thousand. They're coming this
way, the Persian forces. And they also have a fleet
of approximately 1,200 ships. Now the Persians really
are not having good luck with weather whenever
they try to attack Greece. They face a storm, and about a third of their fleet is destroyed. And so up here they are left with about, and these are all approximate, remember this happened
over 2,000 years ago, roughly 2,500 years ago, so it's amazing that we know
anything about it at all, and obviously we have to rely on Herodotus and whatever historical
accounts we can find. So the Persians are
invading by land and sea, and the Greeks have a strategy of let's try to stop them
by land at Thermopylae, and stop them by sea at
the Straight of Artemisium right over here. And there is some historical debate of was this a big, grand
strategy to eventually try to defeat the Persians at Salamis, which eventually happens, or were they generally
trying to stop them there, and because they couldn't, they had to retreat back to Salamis. As we'll see, that second narrative is what actually happens. Well I guess in some level,
both of those narratives happen. That they are able to at
least slow down the Persians at both of these places, and the Persians are eventually defeated at
the Straight of Salamis. Now Thermopylae is the stuff of legends. It is, if you've ever seen the movie 300, it is about the 300 Spartan soldiers led by King Leonitus, along with roughly 7,000 other Greeks that
they're able to collect to stop the Persians at Thermopylae. And Thermopylae, you're
in this coastal area where there's a very limited area for this massive Persian army
to be funneled through, and the Greeks are trying to stop them at the Pass of Thermopylae. And you can see that right over there. And, by Herodotus's accounts, they are actually quite successful because they are funneling
that Persian army into a very narrow space, the Spartans along with the other Greeks are able to push back. And this is a massive outnumbering. Roughly 7,000 versus many
tens or hundreds of thousands, but as Herodotus's accounts go, there was a traitor amongst the Greeks who would go to the Persians and show them another way around, and show them another way around. And so the Persians are
essentially able to, not only get around the Greeks, but by surrounding them, are
able to defeat the Greeks at Thermopylae and continue their march. And remember, they were able
to get to Eretria before, 10 years before, but
they really want to seek their revenge on Athens. And they are able to go to go Athens, but by the time they go there, they see that the town has been, for the most part, evacuated. That the Athenians, when they saw that the Persians were coming, they went to Salamis right over here. So even though Athens
was sacked and destroyed, the Athenian people were not destroyed. Now simultaneous with Thermopylae, you had a naval battle happen
in the Straight of Artemisium. And once again, even
though there was about 600 Persian ships that
were in this battle, there was on the order of
about 200 or 300 Greek ships, so the Greeks were once again outnumbered, and they were able to
slow down the Persians, but not stop them. And the Persians kept having bad luck, especially with these storms, because even we had these
first ships get destroyed, they sent some 200 ships around Euboea, I'm probably not pronouncing
it perfectly right here, but then they get destroyed by a storm. So now you have the ships that engaged the Greeks in
the Straight of Artemisium, the Greeks pull back because
they know they're outnumbered, and they essentially go in retreat, or what the Persians think are retreat, so the Persians follow the Greek fleet all the way back to the
Straight of Salamis. And it's over there that
the Greek fleet is able to plan a defeat of the Persian fleet. So you have the Persian fleet gets destroyed decisively at Salamis, you have the Persian army still in Athens is able to destroy Athens, but the Athenian people
have not been destroyed, and so there's a question for Xerxes, what to do at this point. This is all in 480 BCE, and what Xerxes decides to do, he says hey I don't want
to get stranded in Europe at the edge of my empire, and so Xerxes heads back, but he leaves some of
his ground forces there, and they eventually face a
decisive defeat at Plataea, right over here. And so that is the last significant threat of the Persians against the Greeks. From then there the
Greco-Persian wars continue for the next several decades, for the next 20 or 30 years, but at that point it's more of
the Greeks on the offensive, and this really is the beginning of the Golden Age of
the Greek civilization.