The Greek and Persian Wars 499-386 BC

by Philip de Souza

Overview

This book covers one of the defining periods of European history. The series of wars between the Classical Greeks and the Persian Empire produced the famous battles of Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis, as well as an ill-fated attempt to overthrow the Persian king in 400 BC, which helped to inspire the conquests of Alexander the Great.To tell the story of these momentous events, of the lives of great men and women, of the societies and cultures that produced them, and to explain how and why they came into conflict was the aim of Herodotus, 'the Father of History', whose account of the wars is our principal source and the first book to be called a 'history'.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472809865
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	06/06/2014
Series:	Guide to... , #36
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Dr Philip de Souza FRHistS studied History and Classics at Royal Holloway College, London. He is the author of Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge, 1999), plus numerous articles and essays on Greek and Roman history. He is a contributor to the Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare and is Lecturer in Classics at University College Dublin.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	7
	Chronology	8
	Background to war: The coming of the Persians	9
	Warring sides: Persia, Sparta and Athens	19
	Outbreak: Dareios sends an expedition to Greece	30
	The fighting: Xerxes' invasion of Greece	40
	Portrait of a soldier: Aristodemos the Spartan	75
	The world around war: Persian Architecture	80
	Portraits of civilians: Demokedes and Demaratos	83
	How the wars ended: The Greeks attack the Persian Empire	88
	Conclusion and consequences: The Peloponnesian War	90
	Further reading	93
	Index	94