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The second Persian invasion of Greece (480–479 BC) occurred during the Greco-Persian Wars, as King Xerxes I of Persia sought to conquer all of Greece. The invasion was a direct, if delayed, response to the defeat of the first Persian invasion of Greece (492–490 BC) at the Battle of Marathon, which ended Darius I's attempts to subjugate Greece.
Xerxes is a central character of Aeschylus' play The Persians, first performed in Athens in 472 BC, only seven years after his invasion of Greece. The play presents him as an effeminate figure and his hubristic effort to bring both Asia and Europe under his control leads to the ruin of both himself and his kingdom.
In 480 BC, Xerxes personally led the second Persian invasion of Greece with one of the largest ancient armies ever assembled. Victory over the allied Greek states at the famous Battle of Thermopylae allowed the Persians to torch an evacuated Athens and overrun most of Greece.
The destruction of Athens, took place between 480 and 479 BCE, when Athens was captured and subsequently destroyed by the Achaemenid Empire.A prominent Greek city-state, it was attacked by the Persians in a two-phase offensive, amidst which the Persian king Xerxes the Great had issued an order calling for it to be torched.
The first Persian invasion of Greece took place from 492 BC to 490 BC, as part of the Greco-Persian Wars. It ended with a decisive Athenian -led victory over the Achaemenid Empire during the Battle of Marathon .
Fearing the Greeks might attack the bridges across the Hellespont and trap his army in Europe, Xerxes now retreated with much of the Persian army back to Asia, [128] though nearly all of them died of starvation and disease on the return voyage. [129] He left a hand-picked force, under Mardonius, to complete the conquest the following year. [130]
The Battle of Artemisium or Artemision was a series of naval engagements over three days during the second Persian invasion of Greece.The battle took place simultaneously with the land battle at Thermopylae, in August or September 480 BC, off the coast of Euboea and was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, including Sparta, Athens, Corinth and others, and the Persian Empire of ...
However, the Athenians did not have the manpower to fight on land and sea; and therefore combatting the Persians would require an alliance of Greek city states. In 481 BC, Xerxes sent ambassadors around Greece asking for earth and water, but made the very deliberate omission of Athens and Sparta. [23]