Greek War Vs Persian War Analysis

During the fifth century, Greek has direct conflict with the Persian Empire, the struggle known as the Persian Wars (500 – 479 B.C). In 480 B.C, ten years after Darius’s defeat, his successor Xerxes sent a big naval and military force to subdue Greece. After being famously delayed by Spartan troops under the leadership of king Leonidas at the Thermopylae, the Persian army succeeded in capturing and burning Athens, but the Greek fleet lead by Athenians defeated the Persian navy at the battle of Salamis. Greeks and Persian continued to have intermittent conflicts for more than a century, although never to a full scale war (Bentley & Ziegler, 2011).

After the Persian Wars, in 477 B.C., the Greek poleis crated an alliance of Greek city-states known as the Delian League, to discourage further Persian interference in Greece. Athens became the leader of the alliance because of its superior fleet and supplied the league’s military force while the other poleis contributed financially. The Delian League did not turned out to be just a defensive measure. Although the league was created to help the Greeks defend themselves against foreign threats, fairly soon after the Greeks started to aggressively attack the Persians. The league seemed to follow the idea that attack is the best form of defence. From around 477 BC onwards the states involved in the Delian League began to launch attacks on Persian-held …show more content…
It was also successful in making Athens powerful and prosperous. But later on, the conflicts and disagreements with other members caused a civil war, which divided and weakened the empire. This also resulted in the rise of Macedonian empire later in the century and the defeat of the Greek forces by Philip II of Macedon in 338 BC. Many historians view this as an era of Greek self-destruction, which led to the Macedonian takeover (Jones & Cargill,