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Thermopylae - Grand Overview (480 BC)

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Title
Thermopylae - Grand Overview (480 BC)
Description
King Xerxes desired to punish the Athenians for his father’s defeat at Marathon and their support for Ionian revolts. He planned a second invasion of Greece in 480 BC and amassed a huge to extend the Persian Empire …
Publisher
Date
-480
Scenario#
605
Scenario Description
King Xerxes desired to punish the Athenians for his father’s defeat at Marathon and their support for Ionian revolts. He planned a second invasion of Greece in 480 BC and amassed a huge to extend the Persian Empire into Europe. Several Greek city-states gathered around Athens and Sparta, and decided to slow the Persian advance at the narrow pass of Thermopylae. The Oracle at Delphi had announced that Sparta would either be destroyed or lose a King. Leonidas, one of the two Kings, chose the latter, leading 300 Spartans and other Greeks to one of history’s most famous last stands. Xerxes waited four days for the small Greek force to leave. Then, for two and a half days he unleashed his, wave after wave, against the Greek Hoplites who stood firm. The Persians did not prevail until Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks by revealing a goat path that led behind their lines. Dismissing the rest of the, Leonidas fought to the death with his Spartans. Their epitaph reads: “Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie”. While a tactical victory, the heavy losses and the delay, inflicted by just a few hundred Greeks, was a significant blow to the Persian morale.
Location
Thermopylae, Greece
Battle Name
Battle Narrative
The Battle of Thermopylae was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, led by King Leonidas I of Sparta, and the Achaemenid Empire of Xerxes I over the course of three days, during the second Persian invasion of Greece. It took place simultaneously with the naval battle at Artemisium, in August or September 480 BC, at the narrow coastal pass of Thermopylae. The Persian invasion was a delayed response to the defeat of the first Persian invasion of Greece, which had been ended by the Athenian victory at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. By 480 BC Xerxes had amassed a massive army and navy, and set out to conquer all of Greece. The Athenian politician and general Themistocles had proposed that the allied Greeks block the advance of the Persian army at the pass of Thermopylae, and simultaneously block the Persian navy at the Straits of Artemisium.
Narrative Source
Combatants
Persian
Greek
Additional Information
Greco Persian Wars

Geolocation