The Persian Wars

Hey guys, Mr. Klein here, and we are starting on our next chapter of Social Studies. The second part of our discussion about the Greeks, and we talk about the Greek world, or later, Greek history. We'll talk about the Greco-Persian Wars in this lesson, the Peloponnesian War, and the rivalry between Athens and Sparta. In the next lesson, the final lesson, will be a survey of Alexander the Great and the Hellenic world. So this lesson will be about the Greco-Persian Wars. And since we kind of talked about Greece already, it's time to talk about the other enemy. Or the enemy, rather, of the Greco-Persian Wars of the Greeks, and that was the Persians. In popular culture, the Greco-Persian Wars are pretty much dominated, especially in modern times, by the movie 300. Talking about that this is Sparta, and King Leonidas fighting King Darius, and all of this stuff. And the important thing to know is that 300 was based on a graphic novel, which is like a grown-up comic book, or a comic book for grown-ups. But it doesn't take history very literally. And around this time of the Greco-Persian Wars, we start to have the idea of history come into being. And in fact, what we know about the Greco-Persian Wars is down to pretty much history's first historian. And that's this dude, Herodotus. Herodotus was the first what we would call a professional historian, in that he gathered primary sources, and just wrote down what happened without literally picking good guys and bad guys. Now, he was still biased a little bit because he was Greek. And then also, he was known from time to time with some of his histories to take liberty with the facts. But overall, we could call him as one of the founders of history. Him, along with Thucydides, which we'll talk about in the next lesson, provide the foundation for a lot of what we know about Greek history, and also many of the things that we think of as good history. So, let's talk about the enemy of the Greeks, which are the Persians. The Persians lived in southwest Asia, in modern-day Iran, in this area right here. And their capital was based here at Persepolis. And as the Persian Empire grew, Persepolis grew even larger. And what we have right here are the actual ruins of Persepolis. And we can actually drop into Google Earth and see the three-dimensional model of Persepolis. It was a large walled city, fantastic palaces and things like that. And this is looking down on Persepolis. And this is the palace of Darius I, along with the actual ruins themselves. And Persepolis was home to the Persians. And the Persians grew an empire really quickly, especially within ancient times. And at its height, was considered the world's largest empire, and probably ruled more people as a percentage of all of humanity than any other empire in history. And the Persian king who led this was Cyrus II. And Cyrus II, and by the way, this is another picture of the ruins of Persepolis, with some of the things. And here is an image of Cyrus II. He won independence from a group called the Medes, which ruled in northern Iran. And he quickly spread the Persian Empire from there. And he had a well-organized army, and he was one of the first leaders to use cavalry, which are soldiers mounted on horses. So that allowed the Persian army to push quickly and attack in ways that soldiers on foot could not do. He mobilized a really large army, wiped out the Medes, and started pushing westward toward Europe. He knocked off the Babylonians, took over Babylon, knocked over the Chaldeans rather, and pushed into Asia Minor, which is modern-day Turkey. Now one of the things he did that was very different was that when he conquered people, he let them keep their customs. And in fact, many times he would let the kings, as long as they didn't rebel, stay in charge. As a result of this, people generally accepted the Persians, even though they might not have liked them, and few people rebelled, because Cyrus did his part to quell rebellion by just making sure they stayed along with him. And he would, of course, use taxes, and he would levy soldiers to fight in his army. His empire was so huge, he became known as Cyrus the Great. And with all of Asia, as it spread out to here, the Persian that sees Persepolis is here, Babylon is here, over here, and it was pushing into India, as we see, the Persian Empire was pushing into here, didn't find India too impressive, or Egypt, and it decided to set its sights toward the west, with the very wealthy Greek city-states. And they had actually taken over some city-states, especially after Cyrus's death, which his son Darius I took over, or Darius. And here is a picture of Darius I. And Darius took the kingdom and quickly organized it, because it was so huge, into 20 provinces, which he called satraps, ruled by a governor. And, like I said, it spread into the Indus River Valley, and then westward into southeastern Europe. And it started knocking on the door of the Greek city-states, and this is when trouble began, leading to 50 years of war. And, spoiler alert, with this guy Xerxes I, which I'll talk about in a second, led to the Persian Empire's eventual downfall, by the end of this chapter. Now, several Greek city-states rebelled against Persian rule in modern-day Turkey. These city-states were Greeks, and the Persians kind of let them be, but the Greeks didn't like the Persians knocking at their door with this huge empire, because they knew that the Persians would be next. And so the Greek city-states, if we go and we look over here, let's zoom out of Persepolis, and let's go over here, across the Mediterranean, we'll pass up Cyprus, and over here, the Greeks knew they would be next, because the Persian Empire had started moving into northern Greece right here. And so, in order to beat the Persians to the punch, the Greek city-states got together and caused city-states, the Ionian city-states right here, to rebel against the Persians. Nine years after this revolt, the Persian Wars began. The first major battle was at Marathon, where the Greeks won due to better weapons and armor. And we'll go to Marathon right here. Let's hop into Google Earth, and let's go to the Battle of Marathon. And Marathon, at Marathon, the Persian army was stopped, and you can actually see what Marathon looked like. It was actually this plain right here. And the Persian army was stopped here by the Greeks, because the Persians were trying to push into Athens, which was further over. And, as you can see right here, with Athens right here, and Marathon right here. So, what had happened was, a soldier named Philippides ran from Marathon to Athens, about 25 miles to warn the Athenians that the Persian army was there. And when he got there, he died. And this distance, yes, is where we got the idea of the Marathon from. And so the Athenian army and the Greek armies were able to get over here and meet the Persians and attack and defeat them before they could get to Athens. And this kind of ended the first phase of the Greco-Persian Wars. So, ten years after Marathon, Xerxes I, this guy, this is probably what he more looked like than the bald, shaved head, tattooed, and rapidly pierced dude in 300, gathered together an army into Greece. And he caught the Greeks by surprise. And the Greek city-states, which we'll talk about in the next lesson, how they all had a rivalry with each other. They actually united, whereas becoming patriots of more than just their city-state, but as Greeks, they united to fight the Persians. And the Spartans held the Persians heroically, yes, at Thermopylae, which was probably the most important battle of the Greco-Persian Wars. And Thermopylae is right here. Thermopylae, as we zoom in, is in this area. And over here was where the Persian army, before there's reclaimed land right here. So at the time, the water was right here. And Thermopylae was a really hilly side, which if we zoom in, you'll see what I'm talking about. If we go, all of this used to be water. And so this road and this path right here was all that was there. And so what happened was the Spartans were able to pin down the Persians and not let them pass. And the sacrifice of those 300 Spartans, and there was more or less 300, probably most likely way more than that. But regardless, it was a really small army. And this allowed the Persians to get held up, which allowed the rest of the Greek city-states to rapidly move up in order to stop the Persians later on. But the real turning point was actually at the first major naval battle in history, which was right outside of Athens. And it was at the Battle of Salamis, where you had the first major naval battle, like I said. So let's go over here and let's go ahead and let's look at that. Salamis was important, like I said, because it was the first major naval battle. And the Persians had a large army that they were trying to sail into Athens. And so the Greek navy, which was led by the Athenians, stopped them and defeated them decisively and sank several of the ships, a large number of the ships of the Persian navy, and pushed them back. And so since we already talked about it, this is what the Thermopylae site looks like. So this is probably the area where the battle took place, where the road, like I said, is reclaimed land. There's a closer view of Marathon. And this is actually what a naval battle would look like at Salamis, where the boats, what they would do is they wouldn't have guns or anything. Rather, they would crash up into each other, and infantry would jump on and fight, much like what we would think of with pirates fighting when they kind of get on the ship. And this is a Greek trireme, which had oars paddled by men using the oars by arms, and they also had sailboats. And they had battering rams, and the soldiers would sit here at the bow or the front of the ship. And what would happen is the idea is that the bow would ram into the ship, the soldiers would jump off and fight, and you have this melee. So that's kind of the lesson here. The important thing to know is this, is that the largest land empire in history at the time was the Persian Empire. They were from around Iran, modern-day Iran, and their capital was in Persepolis. And through a series of rulers, including Cyrus the Great, Darius I, and Xerxes I, pushed into southern Europe, southeastern Europe, where they met the Greeks head-on. The Greeks didn't want to be ruled. They were fiercely independent. And so what led to 50 years of war is called the Persian Wars. The Greeks won three major battles. The first was at Marathon, where the Greeks won due to better weapons. The Persians came back, and the Spartans held off the Persian army at Thermopylae until the rest of the Greek city-states could come back and fight. And then finally, the war was turned in their favor at Salamis, which was the first major naval battle in history. And over time, the Persians were pushed back into Asia Minor. And it'll take a while, which we'll get to at the end of the chapter, but the Greeks would get their revenge for the Greco-Persian Wars once and for all with Alexander the Great. So there you go. That's the lesson. Thanks for watching. And as always, if you have any questions, please let me know. And there you go.