PERSIANS CONQUER THE GREEKS
What were the Persian Wars?
The Persian Empire was the dominant political and military force in the period, and the Greeks were effectively small bit players in the whole drama. And [the Persian Wars] came about in a slightly messy way because the Greeks had participated in a revolt [in Asia Minor, the west coast of Turkey] in 499 BCE for five years. The reason why the Persian Wars were launched was effectively to kind of squash that. Athens had taken part in that revolt: they’d been asked for help and they’d sent a pathetic, measly 20 ships, and one other city had sent five ships, and they joined in the revolt. And that triggered the Persian king to seek his revenge. Herodotus [a famed Greek history writer from the time] describes those 20 ships as the beginning of evils for Greeks and Barbarians and sees that as the
