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At Pasigade, in what is now southern Iran,
King Cyrus the Great defeated his grandfather in battle
to lay the foundation of the Archimenean or Persian Empire.
After this victory came rapid expansion.
In 547 BC, Cyrus defeated the Lydians
and present-day Turkey came under his power.
Eight years later, he conquered Babylon and its territories in Syria-Palestine.
And in 525 BC, his son Cambyses conquered Egypt.
To glorify the incredible power of the Persian Empire,
a new Persian king, Darius, began construction in 522 BC
of a magnificent ceremonial capital of Persepolis,
the city of the Persians.
On the far western extremities of this empire,
the people of Greece would have treated this as distant news.
This was to change in 512 BC, when King Darius defeated the Scythians
and captured the region of Thrace.
The Persians were now on the very doorstep of Greece.
Before long, the Greeks were fighting for their very survival.
In a series of battles, now known as the Persian Wars,
three waves of invasion were launched by Persia,
spanning 13 years in all.
At places which are still famous today, like Marathon and Thermopylae,
the Greeks earned their ultimate victory.
And in doing so, they set in place a major turning point in world history.
It seems strange that so much agony could have originated
in such a peaceful place.
But it was here, the city of Miletus,
where the troubles for Greece originated.
Miletus is in southwest Asia Minor,
or, as the ancient Greeks knew it, Ionia.
Ionia takes the name of the city of the Persians,
and the city of the Persians is the city of the Persians.
As the ancient Greeks knew it, Ionia.
Ionia takes its name from the people who lived in this region, the Ionians.
The Ionians were Greeks who had fled mainland Greece
several centuries earlier,
but they still maintained very strong contacts
with the rest of the Greek world.
Miletus was just one of the many Ionian cities
along the west coast of present-day Turkey,
or, as it is also known, Asia Minor.
This region had been ruled by the Lydian kings
from the city of Sardis,
the most famous of them being Croesus,
a king of legendary wealth.
The Ionian cities prospered under Croesus,
but in 547 BC he made the mistake of his life
and attacked the Persian Empire further to the east.
In a short time, Croesus lost his wealth,
the city of Sardis, and his kingdom,
and the people of Miletus and the other Ionian cities
woke to find themselves under a new master
and part of the Persian Empire.
Persian rule in Ionia was reasonably fair.
Within their empire they had many different nationalities,
and they'd learned how to deal with this diverse range of people.
While Persian rule was enlightened,
it was still not good enough for the freedom-loving people
who lived along the coast, the Greeks.
It was not too long before trouble started,
and in 499 BC a revolt against Persian rule
began at the city of Miletus.
The aim of this so-called Ionian revolt
was to gain independence from Persia,
and the Ionians of Asia Minor fully expected
the cities of mainland Greece to also see the danger,
and join their struggle against these barbarians from the east.
Taking their lead from Miletus,
city after city rose in revolt,
and Ionian appeal for help was sent to their kin on the Greek mainland,
and this was answered by two cities.
Athens was to send twenty ships,
and five came from the city of Eretria on the island of Evia.
Both Athens and Eretria had long-standing trade and cultural ties
with the Greek cities of Asia Minor,
a situation which was threatened by Persian expansion,
and this is perhaps why only they, of all the mainland cities,
answered the call for help.
After the men from Athens and Eretria had crossed the Aegean,
they joined with the Ionians and marched inland to capture Cydus,
now the capital of the Persian province of Asia Minor.
In the confusion of the attack,
a fire, started by accident, burnt Cydus to the ground.
The panic caused by the fire forced the Greeks to retreat
to the city of Ephesus on the coast,
and the Persians, after calling in reinforcements, were quick to follow.
Outside the gates of Ephesus, the Ionian forces,
still with men from Athens and Eretria in their ranks,
faced the Persian army,
and in a fierce battle the Ionians were defeated.
With the Ionian revolt doomed,
the ships from the mainland returned home.
Thousands of kilometres away, in his palace,
the king of Persia, Darius, heard of the Ionian revolt.
According to the Greek historian Herodotus,
Darius was not concerned about the Ionians,
as he knew they would be punished.
The involvement of the Athenians, however, was a different matter.
Darius asked who the Athenians were,
and then on being told, called for his bow.
He took it, set an arrow on the string,
shot it up into the air and cried,
Grant, O God, that I may punish the Athenians.
Then he commanded one of his servants to repeat to him the words,
Master, remember the Athenians,
three times, whenever he sat down to dinner.
The Ionian revolt, without outside help,
was to stumble on for a few more years,
until finally the Persians captured Miletus,
killed all the male inhabitants,
and sold the women and children into slavery.
This brought the Ionian revolt to an end.
With Ionia now under control,
the Persians planned their revenge on Greece.
So what could have been an internal conflict within the Persian Empire
was to become an international incident,
as Persian forces were assembled to invade and punish Greece.
Revenge was certainly a prime motive for the Persians,
especially for the burning of Sardis,
but other factors were also at work.
The provinces of Asia Minor generated enormous revenue for the Persians,
and the defeat of Greece would have made sure this region remained at peace,
without interference from meddling cities like Athens.
The Persians were probably overestimating the threat of Greece
to their empire and wellbeing,
but they were taking no chances.
Confident from recent conquests and with a genuine feeling
that it was Persia's destiny to expand,
what problem could Greece be?
In 492 BC, the Persian fleet layered anchor off this spot
at the base of the Athos peninsula in the Chalkidiki.
The little fishing village that you can see behind me
overlies the site of ancient Acanthus,
and it was here that the Persian army paused and collected itself together.
On the orders of Darius, king of the Persians,
and under the command of Mardoneus,
this Persian army was intent on teaching the cities of Athens and Eretria a lesson.
The first Persian invasion of Greece had begun.
From Acanthus, the Persian fleet attempted to round the Athos peninsula.
But before they got around, they were caught in a violent northerly gale,
which proved too much for the ships to cope with.
A great many of them were driven ashore and wrecked on Athos.
Indeed, reports say that something like 300 ships were lost with over 20,000 men.
The destruction of the Persian fleet off Athos forced them to retreat.
Two years later, in 490 BC,
they were ready to renew their conquest of Greece.
This second invasion force, however, to avoid the disaster of 492,
sailed straight across the Aegean, capturing islands as it went.
The Persian aim was the same, the destruction of the cities of Athens and Eretria,
and this time they came very close to realising their objective.
The Persian fleet made slow progress as it headed west across the Aegean towards Greece.
Rounding the southern tip of the island of Evia,
the Persian fleet was able to reach the Aegean coast.
Rounding the southern tip of the island of Evia, as it is known today,
the fleet headed north up the Evian Strait towards Eretria,
the first mainland city ever to feel the might of Persia.
Around about this point, the Persians dropped anchor
and they unloaded their horses and their men
as they prepared for their attack on the city of Eretria.
In 490 BC, Eretria was a rich and powerful city
which had a strong navy, and the Persians were here
to teach the Eretrians a lesson for sending those five ships to help in the Ionian revolt.
After six days of fighting, Eretria was defeated.
Its temples burnt as payback for the destruction of Sardis,
and its people enslaved,
carted off to begin new lives in a settlement on the Persian Gulf.
Thousands of kilometres away from their homeland.
Now it was Athens turn to feel the force of Persian anger.
The Persian plan was to force the Athenians to fight on Persian terms.
A nearby plain, the Plain of Marathon, was ideal,
as it was one of the few areas available which was large enough
to allow the Persian cavalry to operate at full strength.
After destroying Eretria, the Persian navy sailed around
and they pulled the triremes up onto the beaches
at the northern end of the Plain of Marathon.
The Persian decision to come here to Marathon
was made by the Athenian Hippias, son of Pisistratus.
Hippias had been the last Athenian tyrant,
and he had recently been thrown out of his position,
and the democracy reinstalled.
He was hoping that through the use of Persian power
that he would regain his position of privilege back at Athens,
and he was not the first Greek throughout the 5th century
to try to use Persian power to further their own ends here in Greece.
When the Athenians had heard that the Persians had arrived here at Marathon,
they came up from Athens and made their camp in the valley that you can see behind me.
This camp covered the main road between Marathon and Athens
and was a good 6 kilometres away from the Persian anchorage here.
After the Athenians had arrived, several days passed
as both sides waited for the other to make the first move.
Every morning the Persian army would leave its camp here
and march up towards the Athenians,
just in case the Athenians came down from the hills
and offered battle.
Tension mounted among the Athenian army.
Their camp, seen here in yellow, was well protected by the hills,
but the sight of so many Persians at the northern end of the plain
filled the soldiers with fear and uncertainty.
The Athenians knew that Spartan reinforcements would be delayed by a religious festival,
but they had been joined by every available man from the small city of Plataea.
They faced around 20,000 Persian troops.
Not a strong army by Persian standards, but even so,
the Athenians and Plataeans could only put half this number into the field.
The caution and superstition in the Athenian ranks made them wait for the appointed day
when General Miltides was to have supreme command.
From the beginning of the campaign, it had been Miltides who had urged the Athenians
to stop the Persians at Marathon,
and in this crisis the Athenians turned to him to save their city.
On the morning of the battle, the Athenians obtained favourable sacrifices
and the order to move out was given.
The Athenians, without cavalry or archers to support them,
sang their war cries and ran down to meet the Persians where they had formed up their lines,
which would have been about halfway between here and the sea.
The Persians thought that it was suicidal madness for the Athenians to attack with so few numbers
and prepared to meet their enemy.
However, as Herodotus says, when the lines met,
the Athenians fought in a way not to be forgotten.
They were the first Greeks, as far as I know, to charge at a run
and the first who dared look without flinching at Persian dress and the men who wore it,
for until that day came, no Greek could even hear a Persian word without terror.
They came face to face with their enemy, about where you can see the mound behind me,
which is the tumulus which was placed over the bodies of the dead Athenians after the war.
It was over there that the tactics of Miltides were to pay off.
As the lines advanced towards each other, here we see the Greeks in the foreground.
Miltides would have been praying that his strategy would hold.
He knew that the Persians put their best soldiers in the centre racks
and so his plan called for his own centre to be left intentionally weak
and the wings strengthened.
As the lines met, a long and bitterly fought battle commenced.
In the early stages, the Persian centre was successful in breaking the Greeks' line, forcing them back.
On the wings, however, the Greek troops, facing a storm of arrows,
advanced on the Persians and were able to push them back towards the centre.
With the Persians in retreat on both wings,
the Greek forces then pushed in and surrounded the Persian army.
For the Persians, the battle was now lost.
In their confusion, they became easy marks and they were cut down in their hundreds.
Over 6,000 Persians were killed in the crush.
The Greeks closing in on all sides.
The Persians now were in full flight as the Greeks pushed them back to this beach.
The Persian navy, which had been anchored further to the north of us here,
now realised what dire straits the army was in,
weighed anchor and headed south to this beach to pick up the remnants of the Persian army.
It's ironic that on board these ships was the one thing that could have saved the Persian army here at Marathon, their cavalry.
Earlier that morning, the Persian commander, Dardas, had ordered that the horses be put on board the ships
because he planned to bypass the Athenian army here and sail directly to Athens.
You can imagine how long it would have taken to unload all the horses from the ships
and so the Persian infantry here at Marathon had to face the Athenians alone.
As the Persian ships pulled into this beach to pick up the remnants of the army,
a bitter struggle raged as the Athenians tried to destroy the ships.
Here the chief Athenian general, Callimarchos, was killed
and the brother of Aeschylus, who later went on to write the play The Persians,
was killed when he tried to grab hold of a Persian trireme and had his hand cut off with an axe.
In the end, the Greeks were able to destroy seven of the Persian ships
before the Persians were able to get the remnants of their army aboard and set to sea.
The Persian fleet then sailed south towards the city of Athens,
which they thought they would easily capture.
Realising the danger their city faced, the Athenians at Marathon quickly marched over land
the 42 kilometres back to their city.
When the Persians arrived at Athens, they found the Athenians waiting for them
and the city well defended.
Not prepared to wage a long siege, the Persians turned their fleet around and sailed for home
and the second Persian invasion of Greece came to an end.
Back on the plain of Marathon, the Athenians gave their dead the unique privilege
of being buried where they fought.
The 192 Athenians who'd been killed in battle were now heroes
and Athens could rightly say that its soldiers had almost single-handedly saved Greece.
On the day after the battle, the Spartan army arrived at Athens,
but nevertheless it journeyed here to Marathon so that it could see what Persians,
even dead ones, actually looked like.
After congratulating the Athenians, they returned home.
For the moment, Greece was safe, but a far greater threat was yet to come.
It is now ten years after the Battle of Marathon in the year 480 BC
and we are standing on the shores of the Hellespont, the dividing line between Asia and Europe.
By this stage, Darius, king of the Persians, is dead and in his place is Xerxes.
While the kings may have changed, the Persian desire for revenge against Greece was as strong as ever.
In May of 480 BC, on the other side in Asia Minor,
the Persians had assembled the largest force yet mustered up until this time,
something like a quarter of a million men and 75,000 pack animals
and they were preparing to invade Greece for a third time.
This time, nothing was to be left to chance.
Xerxes had ordered two bridges to be built to span the Hellespont.
They stretched from the headland that you can see behind me here
all the way across the waters to the headland here on the far shore.
Just as the army was about to cross these bridges, a violent storm blew up which destroyed them.
Xerxes was furious. He ordered that the Hellespont itself be whipped 300 times
and for the executioner to say the words, you salt and bitter stream,
your master lays this punishment upon you for injuring him.
The unfortunate engineers who had constructed these bridges were beheaded
and two new bridges constructed made up of ships lashed together.
For seven days and seven nights, the vast army of the Persians poured across these bridges
on their way to the conquest of Greece.
Xerxes had decided to hold a review of his army.
On a rise of ground nearby, a throne of white marble had already been prepared for his use.
So the king took his seat upon it and looking down to the shore
was able to see the whole army and navy in a single view.
And when he saw the whole Hellespont hidden by ships and the plains filled with men,
he congratulated himself and the moment after burst into tears.
I was thinking, Xerxes said, and it came to my mind how pitifully short human life is.
For all these thousands of men, not one will be alive in a hundred years' time.
As the Persian army and navy left northern Asia Minor and made their way to the west,
emergency preparations had already taken place in Greece.
The year before, representatives from many Greek cities had met near Corinth
to discuss their plans to resist the Persians.
They voted that both Sparta and Athens should have leadership of the Greek forces
and that security be tightened.
So great was the threat that this meeting was one of the few times
that the Greeks formed anything like a national league.
At Athens, one of the leaders of the people was Themistocles.
He made efforts to protect the city because he knew that it would bear the brunt of Persian revenge.
To strengthen the city, he instituted a number of political and military reforms.
One of these, which displays Themistocles' foresight,
was to convince his fellow citizens to build 200 new battleships or triremes
and to fortify the harbor of Athens, Piraeus,
an innovation which was to have repercussions far beyond the Persian walls.
With these measures in place, the Greeks waited anxiously
as the Persian forces advanced through northern Greece.
In 492 BC, the first Persian invasion of Greece under Darius
failed when the Persian fleet was caught in a wild storm and destroyed
as it tried to round the end of the Athos peninsula behind me here.
The Turks, trying to avoid this disaster, ordered that a canal be cut
across the narrow isthmus at the base of the Athos peninsula
so that his warships could safely pass to the west
without having to make the dangerous journey around the end of the Athos peninsula.
You'll have to bear with me here, but just remember that this canal was cut
over two and a half thousand years ago,
and it's filled in considerably since when it was new.
But to get a general idea of where this canal ran,
it basically came down where you can see the road in front of us
before it swung around and came through this cutting below me
where it entered the sea to the west.
To get a better idea of what this canal looked like,
let's go down and have a look at it closer.
Two and a half thousand years ago, I would have been standing in the middle of the canal,
and you can still make out the general contours of the original construction.
Herodotus questions the motives of Xerxes in having this canal dug when he writes,
Thinking it over, I cannot but conclude that it was mere ostentation
that made Xerxes have the canal dug.
He wanted to show his power and to leave something to be remembered by.
There would have been no difficulty in getting the ships hauled across the isthmus on land,
yet he ordered the construction of a channel for the sea,
broad enough for two warships to be rowed abreast.
While not much remains of the canal today,
Xerxes is still remembered for this feat of engineering.
It's several kilometres long and over 70 metres wide,
and it was the wonder of its day.
As the Persian warships passed down this canal on their way to the west,
the Greeks prepared to meet their enemy.
They chose an ideal location to offer the first line of resistance
against the attacking Persians, the pass at Thermopylae.
Below me is the modern memorial built to commemorate the Battle of Thermopylae,
which took place in 480 BC.
Such is the impact of this battle that even after two and a half thousand years,
we are still building memorials to commemorate it.
In order to understand this battle,
we've got to try to imagine what this area looked like in 480 BC.
In those days, Thermopylae was a narrow path,
which any army coming from the north to the south had to negotiate.
We can see by the modern road here that it's still a very important thoroughfare.
This is the national highway linking Athens to the north,
and it's still one of the few places that you can get a road through in this region.
In 480 BC, however, it looked quite different.
The sea then came right into about where you can see the road,
leaving a very narrow gap between the mountains and the sea,
sometimes as narrow as four metres, just wide enough for a cart to get through.
The path was the narrowest at the west gate,
which is where you can see the spur of mountains coming down to the road in the middle distance.
However, the hills there are easily crossed, and it wasn't the best defensive position.
As you came into the path of Thermopylae,
it opened up in this area that you can see below me,
where there are still some hot springs that give Thermopylae its name.
After you come through this area, you come to the middle pass where I'm now standing.
Now, this is the best defensive position,
because on one side you have very high cliffs, on the other side the sea,
and it was here that the local people of the area, the Phokeans,
had built a wall in order to protect the path of Thermopylae.
It was to this wall that the Spartans came to offer their resistance to the Persians.
The decision to send the Spartans to Thermopylae
was part of a united land and sea blockade to halt the Persian advance.
With the Greek army in position at Thermopylae,
the combined Greek navy also gathered at Artemisium.
A line had been drawn across central Greece,
a line far enough north to convince the Greek coalition that the major cities of the Peloponnese
were interested in the defence of all Greece, not just the south.
To Thermopylae, a core group of 300 Spartans,
under the leadership of their king, Leonidas, had been sent,
although total troop numbers on the Greek side were closer to 6,000.
This was meant to be an advance guard,
but reinforcements did not arrive before the battle,
and it is possible they were being held in reserve for the final defence of Greece.
On the morning of the battle, the Greeks, seen here in yellow,
moved from their camp and took their places in front of the wall which protected the middle pass.
At the same time, the Persians advanced south from their camp
through the west pass towards the Greek army.
In the narrow confines of the plain of Thermopylae,
with no room for cavalry or outflanking manoeuvres, the two armies faced each other.
As the Persians attacked from the north,
the Spartans and their allies took their stand around here in front of the wall.
For two days, the Persians attacked with everything they had,
and the Greeks resisted with all their might.
As Herodotus says, the Persian army had many men, but only a few soldiers.
The Greeks, with their superior training, longer spears,
and the determination of those defending their homeland,
withstood everything the Persians could throw at them.
Then, like so many other times throughout the Persian wars, treachery struck.
A local man, in search of a rich reward,
sought the advantage of helping the Persians against his fellow Greeks.
On the second night of fighting, he led the best of the Persian troops,
the so-called immortals, along a mountain track behind Thermopylae.
This breakthrough enabled the Persians to begin a plan to surround the Greek forces,
both from the north and the south.
Leonidas, having warning of this move,
dismissed most of the allied troops as they had lost their will to fight,
but he and the 300 Spartans, along with the Thespians, who refused to retreat,
and some Thebans, who were held here as hostages very much against their will,
remained to hold off the Persians.
A bitter battle was to follow, with the Greeks not giving an inch
and the Persian troops being whipped from behind to keep them fighting.
Leonidas fell, and a brutal struggle raged over his body.
Four times the Greeks had to drive off their enemy before they could retrieve the body.
By now the spears of the Greeks were broken,
and they fought the Persians with their swords, never surrendering.
The Persians now came down the mountain track and started to attack from the south.
The Greeks were surrounded and in a hopeless position,
yet because the Spartans would never surrender, they kept on fighting.
Many of the invaders fell, and many fell into the sea and were drowned,
and still more were trampled to death by their friends.
The Greeks, who knew that death was inevitable,
put forth all their strength and fought with fury and determination.
With the Persians attacking both from the front and the rear,
the Greeks fell back through the gates of the wall and took their last stand on this low hill.
Here they fought back to back with their swords if they had them,
with their hands and teeth if they did not.
Finally the sheer numbers of the Persians overwhelmed the Greeks and they fell to a man.
The battle was over, and across the innumerable corpses a silence descended.
After the battle, the Greeks built a monument here on the site of the last stand
to commemorate those soldiers who had fallen in the battle.
That monument has long since vanished, and this one here is much more recent,
but on the original monument were the words,
Stranger, go tell the Spartans, we took their orders and now we are dead.
This melancholy lament epitomises the Spartan attitude to military duty,
which was to echo throughout the ages.
As these events unfolded at Thermopylae, the Greek navy assembled on the beaches of Artemisium
at the northern tip of the island of Evia.
The Greeks had chosen this spot wisely.
As Xerxes and the Persian army were forming up outside the pass at Thermopylae,
the Persian fleet was sailing to their support from the north.
If the Persian navy had been able to pass down the strait of Evia here,
the Greek forces at Thermopylae, which lies to our west, would have been completely cut off.
Therefore the Greek navy was here to prevent such an occurrence happening.
When the Persian fleet realised that the Greeks were here,
they in their turn made their base on the beaches of the mainland opposite us.
Facing the Persians were 271 Greek triremes, each with over 170 rowers,
something like 46,000 men on the Greek side alone.
The commander of this fleet was a Spartan,
although nearly half the ships at Artemisium were Athenian,
many of them newly built under the reforms of Themistocles.
It was also serving in the Greek navy here.
The first encounter between the Greeks and the Persians took place just in the straits out here
and resulted in a small victory for the Greeks.
The way in which this battle was fought is a classic example of naval tactics of the day.
Here, I'll show you what I mean.
If we make this the beach here at Artemisium where the Greeks had their fleet,
and over here the beaches of the mainland where the Persians had their fleet,
and in between is the Strait of Evia,
when the Greeks put out from their beach,
they first of all formed their boats up into a diamond formation.
The Persians, superior in numbers and confident because of this,
formed a ring of ships around the Greeks, hoping to push them together and destroy them.
The Greeks, however, had very good training.
On one trumpet blast, all the boats were able to back into each other
so that the fronts of the boats were pointing outwards and all the backs were clustered in,
and they formed a circle in the centre.
Then, on another trumpet blast, each individual ship shot out,
attacking the Persian ships in the ring around it.
This resulted in a victory for the Greeks and quite a shock for the Persians.
A couple of days later, about the same time as the Spartans were making their last stand at Thermopylae,
a second naval engagement was fought here.
This time, the Greek forces lined their triremes up just off the shore here
and the Persians came across from the mainland to attack them.
This time, there was no clear victor and both fleets received a severe mauling.
The Athenians alone had damaged about 90 of their ships.
When the Greeks here heard that Thermopylae had fallen,
they realised that there was no point in them lingering in the north,
so they piled all their goods aboard their ships and headed off back down the Evian Strait to Athens,
where greater glories awaited them.
After their victories at Thermopylae and Artemisium, the Persians continued their southern advance.
Athens, one of the Greek jewels, now lay unprotected in their path,
forsaken by the cities of the Peloponnese who'd moved their troops further south
to the Isthmus at Corinth, which they saw as the next line of defence.
Themistocles, showing courage in his strategy, urged the Athenians to abandon their city
and to trust their luck in a naval engagement which was sure to come.
As Athens was not yet fully protected by defensive walls,
many Athenians saw the wisdom of Themistocles' advice and voted to leave.
Packing their provisions and driving their animals before them,
almost the entire population left the city and headed for the safety of the nearby island of Salamis.
Those who stayed took their positions on the Acropolis and waited.
When the Persian forces arrived, they found an almost deserted city.
After taking care of the defenders on the Acropolis,
the Persians then had their revenge for Sardis and Marathon,
and black smoke from burning homes and temples filled the air.
The destruction of Athens spread fear throughout the Peloponnese.
The Spartans and Corinthians immediately began work to fortify the Isthmus at Corinth,
and their naval commanders were eager to move the Greek fleet,
now stationed at Salamis, to positions further south.
With their families and possessions on Salamis, just to the west of Athens,
the Athenians would not budge, and as their ships formed the majority of the Greek navy,
the other commanders had to bend to their wishes.
As the Greeks argued strategy, the Persian navy had moved to beaches near Athens,
only a few kilometres from the Greek forces.
In this situation, the Persians could not simply bypass the Greek fleet and attack the Peloponnese,
as this would have left hostile forces behind them as they moved to the south.
The advantage was with the Greeks, as they could decide where they wanted the battle to take place,
and it was up to the Persians to come in and dislodge them.
The Greek fleet had drawn itself up onto the beaches of Salamis, on the other side of the strait.
They'd chosen this spot wisely.
Not only did they know the local area well, but the narrowness of the strait
meant that the superior numbers and skill of the Persian fleet could not be used to full advantage.
On the morning of the battle, the Persian fleet sailed up from Athens towards Salamis.
It entered the straits, just here, below us.
The Greeks put out from their beaches, and the main battle was fought in the water that you can see behind me.
In this battle, the Greeks were to win a decisive victory.
The Persian fleet became hopelessly crammed in the narrow straits,
and the Greeks, using their local knowledge, were able to pick off the Persian ships almost at will.
Xerxes had a grandstand view of the moorling of his fleet from up here.
At times, he would jump to his feet in excitement as a Greek ship was rammed and sunk,
only to slump back into his chair as another Persian ship buckled under the pressure of the Greeks.
At the end of the day, Xerxes must have been a very disappointed man.
The waters here were littered with the wreckage of his fleet,
and the Greeks, showing no mercy, clubbed to death with their oars
any of the Persian survivors that they came across.
The young Athenian navy, forming the backbone of the Greek fleet here at Salamis,
had proved itself to be the saviour of Greece.
While the Greeks had won the day at Salamis, the Persians were not a spent force.
Xerxes, who'd only expected a short campaign, returned to Persia,
leaving Madonius, his son-in-law, in command of the army.
As the Persian army retreated into northern Greece for winter,
their fleet returned to Asia Minor,
just in case the Ionians took too much courage from recent Persian misfortunes.
In the spring of the next year, in 479 BC,
the Persian army again moved south towards the town of Plataea in central Greece.
I'm now walking past about all that remains of the city walls of Plataea.
The final battle of the Persian wars occurred just beyond the city here,
but before we go on and have a look at this battle,
let's first remember the role that this relatively small city
had played throughout the Persian wars.
At Marathon, they had sent a thousand troops,
nearly every available man, to help the Athenians.
Ten years later, at the Battle of Artemisium,
they had again insisted on helping the Athenians aboard their ships,
although, as Herodotus says, they knew next to nothing about naval matters.
They'd missed out on the Battle of Salamis,
because their troops had returned home here to evacuate their wives and children,
because they knew that their city had been earmarked by the Persians for destruction
due to the role they'd played at Marathon.
Now, as the Greek and Persian armies formed up on the plains beneath their city,
again a sizeable contingent of troops was sent by Plataea to fight on the Greek side.
The loyalty of Plataea to the Greek cause
was in stark contrast to the attitude of many other Greek cities.
Those in central and northern Greece openly urged the Persians on,
and the southern cities of the Peloponnese were still loath to move forces out of their neighbourhood.
As the Persians had just occupied and burned Athens for a second time
before moving on to Plataea,
the Athenians were insistent that the Greek coalition reform
under the leadership of the Spartan general, Pausanias,
to resist the Persians on the plains of Plataea.
Luckily for Greece, the Athenians again got their way.
Unlike the other battles that we've looked at,
the battle here at Plataea was an extremely spread out affair.
The Greek lines alone stretched for over six kilometres on the plains behind me here.
It was a very confusing battle,
and ancient historians today still have problems
accurately pinpointing the positions of the main engagements.
One thing was for certain, however, that Greeks were exceedingly lucky.
In the days leading up to the battle,
there was a lot of manoeuvring for position,
as both sides jockeyed with the other to get the most advantage.
When we pick up the story, however,
the Persians occupied the high ground that you can see behind me
with their men facing this way,
while the Greeks were closer to us on the plains below the city.
In these days leading up to the battle,
the Greeks were consistently out-generalled by the Persian commander, Mardonius.
The Greeks were forced to undergo a tactical withdrawal,
and they had to bring their men back from the plain,
the Athenians towards the city of Plataea,
and the Spartans along the ridge that you can see behind me.
When the Persians saw the Greeks retreating in some confusion, they attacked.
This was their only mistake.
Due to the bravery of the Spartans,
the Persian attack was not only stopped, but it was turned around,
and the Greeks started to push the Persians back towards their camp.
When Mardonius was killed, Persian resistance collapsed,
and the Greeks entered the Persian camp, and a great massacre followed.
Once the wooden palisade of the Persian camp had been crossed,
the Persians no longer kept together as an organised force.
Soldierly virtues were forgotten, chaos prevailed,
and huddled in thousands within that confined space,
all of them were half dead with fright.
To the Greeks, they were such an easy prey
that of the 300,000 men, not 3,000 survived.
The Spartan loss in the battle amounted to 91 killed, the Athenians 52.
When the overall commander of the Greek forces here at Plataea,
the Spartan Pausanias, entered the Persian camp,
he was amazed at the wealth that he found there.
Herodotus preserves a lovely story of when Pausanias goes into the tent of Mardonius
and asks the cooks there if they have any food,
and the Greek soldiers say,
of when Pausanias goes into the tent of Mardonius and asks the cooks there
to prepare the typical Persian meal that they would have prepared for Mardonius himself.
As a joke, Pausanias asks his own servants to prepare the typical Spartan meal.
When both the meals are bought out, the difference is astounding.
There is the sumptuous Persian feast,
while the Spartan one was most probably a bit of black bread and some onions.
Laughingly, Pausanias calls in the other commanders from the Greek cities
and says to them,
gentlemen, I have called you here to show you the folly of the Persians,
who, living in this style, came to rob us Greeks of our poverty.
Well might the Greeks now laugh and relax,
because they had turned back one of the most serious threats ever to face their country.
Three times the Persians had invaded, and three times they had been turned back.
The Persian threat was now over.
With the Persians in full retreat,
the cities of Greece were able to maintain their cultural identities,
identities which were to develop to form the foundation of Western civilization.
The Persian wars were a crucial turning point,
which helped to define Europe, both in geographical and philosophical terms.
How different the history of Europe would be
had the Persians succeeded in their invasion of Greece.
Thank you.