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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.
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.
Xerxes' presentation in Greek and Roman sources is largely negative and this set the tone for most subsequent depictions of him within the western tradition. 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 ...
The military history of Greece between the end of the second Persian invasion of Greece and the Peloponnesian War (479–431 BC) is not well supported by surviving ancient sources. This period, sometimes referred to as the pentekontaetia ( πεντηκονταετία , the Fifty Years ) by ancient writers, was a period of relative peace and ...
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]
In 481 BC, Xerxes sent ambassadors around Greece requesting "earth and water" but very deliberately omitting Athens and Sparta. [42] Support thus began to coalesce around these two leading cities. A congress met at Corinth in late autumn of 481 BC, [ 43 ] and a confederate alliance of Greek city-states was formed.
The Battle of Plataea was the final land battle during the second Persian invasion of Greece.It took place in 479 BC near the city of Plataea in Boeotia, and was fought between an alliance of the Greek city-states (including Sparta, Athens, Corinth and Megara), and the Achaemenid Empire of Xerxes I (allied with Greek states including Boeotia, Thessalia, and Macedon).
The allies of Athens were not released from their obligations to provide either money or ships, despite the cessation of hostilities. [63] In Greece, the First Peloponnesian War between the power-blocs of Athens and Sparta, which had continued on and off since 460 BC, finally ended in 445 BC, with the agreement of a thirty-year truce. [115]