The Last Persian War

Oxford First Ancient History

The Greeks were very worried about their women and children, the Persians were certainly going to come again, and when they did, there would be trouble. A long battle, later to be known as, "The Persian Wars"was being fought, the Persian kings were trying their very hardest to capture the small country of Greece. That being said, the Greeks hurried to evacuate Greece of all women and children in the area. Sure enough, after a very hard battle, the Persians took over the Parthenon. Sadly, while they had been waiting outside of the great temple, the Persians had wrecked and ruined ever other statue, building, monument, or temple that they could get their hands on. Soon, the Greeks were able to reclaim the Acropolis for their own, you may think that the Greeks would hurry to repair all of their buildings, but no! They purposely left ruins sitting around the city, in order to warn the people always, “be on your guard!” Themistocles, the general in charge, clearly saw that the Greeks stood no chance against the Persians; their enemy’s army was just to big. He saw that they could only succeed by craftiness, and trickery. In order to do this, he pretended that one of the Greek men was a traitor, he sent this man to king Xerxes’ palace, where he told the king that the Greeks would be at Salamis, and that if he was able to start off quickly, Xerxes might have a chance of beating the Grecians. Now, Salamis was really a narrow strait, in which only a few boats at a time could pass through, Themistocles hoped to beat the Persians by only attacking a few boats at a time, while the other boats were making their way down the narrow passage. This the Greeks did, and to the Persians’ great surprise, the Greeks completely defeated their enemies. In terror, king Xerxes fled, leaving his general, Mardonius, with only a few men, hoping that he could fight a successful battle in a few years. This battle was fought, and to no one’s great surprise, the Greeks drove out the last of the Persians, little did they know that from that year, 479 B.C, all the way to 431 B.C., there would peace for the Greeks.