History UsefulNotes / GrecoPersianWars

* EvilCounterpart: Mardonius and Themistocles were quite [[TheChessmaster alike]], but fought in different sides. Who is the EvilCounterpart of who depends on whose side you're on.

* GoodCounterpart: Mardonius and Themistocles were quite [[TheChessmaster alike]], but fought in different sides. Who is the GoodCounterpart of who depends on whose side you're on.

** When facing the Greeks, the Persians were used to face a slow-walking infantry square they could hit with a RainOfArrows until it broke, at which point they could choose if to have their cavalry mop up the enemy or let the survivors tell their city-state what happens fighting the Persians. At Marathon, the [[FourStarBadass general Miltiades]] launched every single Athenian hoplite in a downhill charge after deploying them with a four-ranks line at the centre and eight ranks at the sides, thus crossing the arrows killing zone before the Persians could inflict meaningful losses and then enacting an encirclement manouvre, resulting in both the first defeat of a Persian army at Greek hands ''and'' a CurbStompBattle.

* EvilCounterpart: Mardonius and Themistocles were [[FourStarBadass quite]] [[TheChessmaster alike]], but fought in different sides. Who is the EvilCounterpart of who depends on whose side you're on.

* FourStarBadass: Basically anyone in charge of an army. The most famous Greek ones being [[TheChessmaster Themistocles]], [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Leonidas]], while Persia had [[GeniusBruiser Mardonius]] and [[LadyOfWar Atemisia]].

* GoodCounterpart: Mardonius and Themistocles were [[FourStarBadass quite]] [[TheChessmaster alike]], but fought in different sides. Who is the GoodCounterpart of who depends on whose side you're on.

This is one of the most mythologized wars in the history of Western Civilization. The basis of the conflict was laid when UsefulNotes/CyrusTheGreat founded the Persian Empire, conquering several Greek colonies in Asia Minor in the process. Under Darius, a successor of Cyrus', several of these Greek [[LandOfOneCity cities]] rebelled and enlisted the help of kinsmen across the ocean, notably Athens. Annoyed at this, Darius mounted a campaign against Athens, but was defeated on the field of Marathon.

* ''300'' by Frank Miller, a BattleEpic of the Battle of Thermopylae from the Spartans' persective, based on the account given by Creator/{{Herodotus}}.

* ''Film/ThreeHundred'', the live action movie adaptation of Frank Miller's comic book.
** Its sequel, ''[[Film/ThreeHundredRiseOfAnEmpire 300: Rise of an Empire]]''.

* BiggerBad: From a Greek perspective, Mardonius was this. It was he who convinced Xerxes to invade Greece a second time and lay waste to Athens. His motivation varies from {{Greed}} to just plain HonorBeforeReason depending on the source you consult.

* UsefulNotes/HistoryOfNavalWarfare: The Battle of Salamis was, depending on how you measure such things, the largest naval battle ever fought. It also provides one of the crowning examples of Galley Combat.

** The Spartans are free, but not in all things. Their law is their master; they fear it more then your slaves fear you. (Demaratus to Xerxes). What is more [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome awesome]] is that he said those kind of things to a ruler prone to [[OffWithHisHead Bad Temper]]

* CrowningMomentOfAwesome: Lots of them.
** The tactic used at Marathon-the Athenians managed to close around the Persians like a pincer, encircling them and slaughtering them.
** On the Persian side, just ''getting'' to Greece took some CrazyAwesome feats of engineering, like carving a massive canal around a storm-prone mountain and building a pontoon bridge across the Hellespont. '''Twice.'''
** Thermopylae, of course.
** The Battle of Salamis, when it was up to a thousand Persian ships against 300 or so Greek ones. The Greeks backed into the narrow straits of Salamis and the Persians crashed into each other. Most of the damage to the Persians they did to themselves.

** When facing the Greeks, the Persians were used to face a slow-walking infantry square they could hit with a RainOfArrows until it broke, at which point they could choose if to have their cavalry mop up the enemy or let the survivors tell their city-state what happens fighting the Persians. At Marathon, the [[FourStarBadass general Miltiades]] launched every single Athenian hoplite in a downhill charge after deploying them with a four-ranks line at the centre and eight ranks at the sides, thus crossing the arrows killing zone before the Persians could inflict meaningful losses and then enacting an encirclement manouvre, resulting in both [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome the first defeat of a Persian army at Greek hands]] ''and'' a CurbStompBattle.

* TheDragon / TheLancer: Mardonius to Xerxes. Depending on which side you are talking about. While Xerxes was in charge,[[TheHeavy Mardonius was the main leader, strategist and battlefield commander of the army]]. Incidentally, Mardonius was also the FinalBoss of the campaign.

* WeHaveReserves: The Persian's chief asset according Greek sources. As it was, this was Zig-Zagged and perhaps DoubleSubverted. The core of the Persian army was drawn from the Iranic citizenry of the empire who not only vastly outnumbered the forces even a united Greece could field, but were trained and well equipped for battle. Unfortunately, [[WrongGenreSavvy they were armed and trained for a different kind of warfare than the Greeks]], and when the latter could force them to do battle on Greek terms the result tended to be crushing.

** When facing the Greeks, the Persians were used to face a slow-walking infantry square they could hit with a RainOfArrows until it broke, at which point they could choose if to have their cavalry mop up the enemy or let the survivors tell their city-state what happens fighting the Persians. At Marathon, the GenreSavvy [[FourStarBadass general Miltiades]] launched every single Athenian hoplite in a downhill charge after deploying them with a four-ranks line at the centre and eight ranks at the sides, thus crossing the arrows killing zone before the Persians could inflict meaningful losses and then enacting an encirclement manouvre, resulting in both [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome the first defeat of a Persian army at Greek hands]] ''and'' a CurbStompBattle.

* LadyOfWar: Queen Artimisia. She was also a MagnificentBitch. Ramming her rival convinced the Greeks she was on their side and allowed her to escape, while also convincing Xerxes she was the only competent commander in the fleet since triremes tended to look alike at a distance.

* GodEmperor: Xerxes, from the Greek point of view. In reality he was a member of {{Zoroastrianism}}. Of course, the Greeks didn't exactly understand this, since while the Persian Zoroastrians were monotheists, the Greeks took some of their rituals of (secular) allegiance to the Emperor as being forms of worship.

* ''Litertaure/{{Creation}} by Creator/GoreVidal presents a rare Persian perspective of these events.

* LesCollaborateurs: It is possible that as many Greeks fought on the Persian side as on the anti-Persian side. Later when Athens banished Themistocles, he went to Persia and became a governor of a province under the command of Artaxerxes, the son of Xerxes. Those who wanted to offer the Persians earth and water were called 'Medizers', after the Median people of the Achaemenid empire.

* TheEmpire: Persia. At least from the Greek's viewpoint. Cyrus had actually done some very impressive things in the field of human rights such as emancipating the Jews from Babylon and establishing freedom of religion, making it more of a HegemonicEmpire. The Persians also forbade slavery and had a code of law prescribing human rights, unlike the Greeks.

* MyFriendsAndZoidberg: The Three Hundred Spartans...and the Four Thousand Thespians. And the Unrecorded Number of Helot Slaves. Doesn't have quite the same ring to it...

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Herodotus' account is not very reliable. To be fair, he got a lot of it right, but quite lot was simply made up for him due RuleOfDrama or faulty information accidentally propagated. Case in point: The numerous mentions of Persian slaves. Slavery was outlawed in Persia since before Cyrus' time (Zoroastranism, the Empire's religion, was explicetly against slavery).

* FinalBoss: Mardonius was the last Persian commander (all others either retreated back to Persia or died beforehand), and his death essentially ended the conflict.

* LesCollaborateurs: It is possible that as many Greeks fought on the Persian side as on the anti-Persian side. Later when Athens banished Themistocles, he went to Persia and became a governor of a province under the command of Artaxerxes, the son of Xerxes.

* WonTheWarLostThePeace: Greek won, but it soon fell in a violent civil war amongst themselves.

* EvilVirtues: King Darius is portrayed as ambitious and ruthless in his pursuit of power as well as despotic and arbitrary in his judgments. However, Herodotus also acknowledges his shrewd intelligence, administrative skills, the magnanimity he shows to many of his defeated opponents, his openness towards other cultures, and his willingness to provide shelter to various Greek exiles.

* BiggerBad: From a Greek perspective, Mardonius was this. It was he who convinced Xerxes to invade Greece a second time and lay waste to Athens. His motivation varies from {{Greed}} to just plain HonorBeforeReason depending on the source you consult.

* HeroOfAnotherStory / OvershadowedByAwesome: Themistocles and the Athenian Navy during the Battle of Thermopylae. In pop culture at least, the Badassery of the Spartans tends to overshadow the vital role the Athenians played in keeping the Persian fleet bottled up in the bay, so that their troops had nowhere to land ''but'' in front of the Spartan meat grinder.

* GalleySlave: Averted; rowing a trieme was to tricky of work to trust to slaves.

* HistoryOfNavalWarfare: The Battle of Salamis was, depending on how you measure such things, the largest naval battle ever fought. It also provides one of the crowning examples of Galley Combat.

* TheEmpire: Persia. At least from the Greek's viewpoint. Cyrus had actually done some very impressive things in the field of human rights such as emancipating the Jews from Babylon and establishing freedom of religion, making it more of a HegemonicEmpire.

* TheRepublic: Athens invented the word "democracy". And yes they did have [[MadeASlave slaves]] and FeudingFamilies, etc. You have to start somewhere.

* BadassArmy: The Spartans.
** The Persians too. Until Marathon, no Greek army had ever ''survived'' a battle with the Persians.

** The Spartans are free, but not in all things. Their law is their master; they fear it more then your slaves fear you. (Demaratus to Xerxes)
*** What is more [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome awesome]] is that he said those kind of things to a ruler prone to [[OffWithHisHead Bad Temper]]

* ConservationOfNinjitsu: For some reason, Persians seemed less formidable as their numbers grew.
** This was because their army became ridiculously cumbersome. It took them something like 5 months to get from the Hellespont to Greece, and at that point, the war season was nearly over and they were running out of supplies. Oops.
* CurbStompBattle: The entire first invasion (before Marathon) and the first half of the second one can be succintly summed up as "The Persians trounce everything Greek in their path".

** On the Persian side, just ''getting'' to Greece took some CrazyAwesome feats of engineering, like carving a massive canal around a storm-prone mountain and building a pontoon bridge across the Hellespont. '''Twice.'''
** Persia also deserves credit for curbstomping Greece for most of the first and second war (one of the reasons Marathon and Salamis are so memorable is because it broke their winning streak, essentially. The Persian Empire almost every other engagement).

*** The Greeks claim the moral victory, though. Stories of courageous yet doomed men have always inspired people, and Thermopylae was one of the oldest true examples of this. VindicatedByHistory, perhaps?

* DavidVersusGoliath
** The people weren't worried about the Persians, however. Only Themistocles was.

* DecapitatedArmy: Fun fact: The Persians were ''steamrolling'' the Greeks in Plataea, until General Mardonius fell in battle, causing the Persians to fall in disarray and giving the Greeks the chance to strike back.

* TheDragon / TheLancer: Mardonius to Xerxes. Depending on which side you are talking about.
** TheHeavy: Xerxes was in charge, but Mardonius was the main leader, strategist and battlefield commander of the army. Incidentally, Mardonius was also the FinalBoss of the campaign.
* DidntSeeThatComing: The one reason the Greeks won: the Persians ''never'' saw their tactics coming:

** At the time, naval battles were fought by boarding the enemy ships, a kind of warfare in which the larger Persian ships had the advantage thanks to their more numerous and experienced crews. The Athenians had recently invented the naval spur, and used their ships to [[RammingAlwaysWorks sink the Persian ships with ramming]]. Furthermore, their troops were ''hoplites'', whose heavy armour granted them a decisive advantage in melee combat against the relatively unarmoured Persian troops, and, [[IgnoredExpert as the Persians had been warned but chosen to ignore]], the wind of the area of Salamis gave the advantage to the Greek ships, made heavier and more stable by the armour of the embarked troops. The end result? ''Another CurbStompBattle''.

* TheEmpire: Persia. At least from the Greek's viewpoint. Cyrus had actually done some very impressive things in the field of human rights such as emancipating the Jews from Babylon and establishing freedom of religion.
** Too bad Cyrus was long dead by the time Persia invaded Greece.

* GodEmperor: Xerxes, but only in fiction. In reality he was a member of {{Zoroastrianism}}. Of course, the Greeks didn't exactly understand this, since while the Persian Zoroastrians were monotheists, the Greeks took some of their rituals of (secular) allegiance to the Emperor as being forms of worship.

* HonorBeforeReason: Madness!... [[Film/ThreeHundred This! Is! Sparta!!]]
** Mardonius had a bad case of it, as well. He sternly refused to bribe any politicians with gold, seeking to finish the war via honorable methods (either diplomacy or war). [[{{Deconstruction}} This proved to be his undoing]]. If he had resorted to bribes, it's likely he'd have won in the end.

* LadyOfWar: Queen Artimisia.
** She was also a MagnificentBastard. Oh yeah wasn't she ever! Ramming her rival convinced the Greeks she was on their side and allowed her to escape, while also convincing Xerxes she was the only competent commander in the fleet since triremes tended to look alike at a distance.

* LastStand: Thermopylae.
** It could also count as YouShallNotPass except for the fact that they actually did pass.

** {{Justified}}, as Leonidas, by killing the Persian ambassadors, had broken SacredHospitality.

* VillainousValor: Herodotus is always just as quick to mention the bravery and skill of the Persian soldiers as he is the Greek defenders.
** It helps that his city was on the Persian side under Queen Artimisia.

** Quite likely fictional as well. Does make for a great narrative, though. Note that there was no such thing as Persian engineers - any engineers employed by Xerxes were likely Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Anatolians or Greeks.