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The Persian Wars,

The Persian Wars, fought between 512 and 479 B.C., represent the most westward expansion attempt by the great Middle Eastern civilizations prior to the Islamic era. During the course of these several wars, forces of the "Asiatic" Persian Empire made incursions into peninsular Greece, attempting an enforced subjugation of the "European" city-states long-established there. Technically, these were very separate affairs, having different motivations for each and a change of Persian monarchs in mid-stream. The underlying conflict remained unchanged: a clash of civilizations, each seeking dominance over the same domain of the Levantine Mediterranean coast. That the Persians far outnumbered the Greeks does not change the root cause. That the overpowering Persians should fail in each attempt is a matter for interest. It will be the concern of this study to overview the Persian Wars and analyze the factors that led to the failure of the Persian adventure.

Persian failure was not an inevitable conclusion. At the time of the first incursions into the Greek mainland, the vitality of the Persian warrior-king Cyrus the Great (ruled 549-530 B.C.) had pushed the empire he was building to the edge of the Bosporus Straits separating mainland Greece from the Ionian Greek colonies founded centuries earlier. Ionian Greeks, like their mainland cousins, were a divisive lot, given to forming-fighting-and-reforming themselves into alliances of independent, competitive city-states. Cyrus' conquest of those cities was neither difficult nor prolonged. Nor of all that much interest to him: a greater prize was the heartland of the Middle East, the "Fertile Crescent" between and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

Moreover, before Persian conquest, the Ionian Greeks had already surrendered their independence - to the Lydian kingdom of the famed Croesus (ruled 560-546 B.C). Still, to Greek minds Lydia was considered "civilized"; the Persians, who we...

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The Persian Wars,. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 17:53, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1701171.html