Misunderstood Moments in History - Why the Persians Failed to Conquer Greece

the greco-persian wars are one of the most popular subjects of ancient history and rightfully so however with such attention comes misunderstanding as people try to boil down the complex history behind the Greek victory into a simple narrative taking the movie 300 for example you'd think that the Greeks won the war simply because they had the stronger warriors fighting for the better values even more in-depth coverage from people like Dan Carlin would have you believed that victory was owed to the Greek superiority in arms and equipment but even this seemingly more nuanced perspective is still flawed today we'll be exploring the real reasons for why the Persians failed to conquer Greece this will include answering such questions as why were the Persians and Greeks fighting how did the greco-persian Wars start what was the Persian objective in Greece anyways to what extent were the Persians successful and finally where the Greek forces truly superior to the Persian ones it's gonna be a long video so definitely feel free to use the timestamps here and below at your convenience this video was sponsored by Babel Isle of learning about the past and getting to travel to new places to get immersed in their rich history therefore it's always helpful for me to have a resource for learning new languages quickly and reliably babble is a subscription-based learning app which has become my go-to solution for these sorts of problems they offer 14 different languages with professionalized courses that take into account your native tongue lessons are bite-sized for on-the-go learning which you can actually customize to meet your specific learning preference or desired results be it for business travel food or more the app works across multiple devices which has been excellent as I swap between script writing on my desktop or going on a walk with my phone start learning a new language today by signing up for Babel click the links in the description below to get an additional three months free on a three month subscription hope you enjoy in order to contextualize this discussion let's begin with a macro overview of how the Persians came to be interested in Greece well from a high level the you minted Persian Empire had been following a trajectory of outward expansion which through its success and never really brought it to the borders of Europe Cyrus the Great had first kicked things off by revolting against and then taking over the previous modeun Empire in the 550's BC in doing so he inherited several border wars with the northern Lydians and the western Babylonians at the same time the transfer of power presented an opportunity for many former subjects and tributaries to break away thus Cyrus the Great Scott quests were mostly aimed at bringing these various entities back into the fold when the King died fighting in Central Asia his successor came by seize the second ended up spending much of his time establishing new dominions in Egypt and North Africa later King derives the first known to history as the great added additional lands in Cyrene the Caucasus the Indus and Sathya one of his campaigns actually involved sending an army around the western Black Sea to strike at the evasive step nomads from the rear and to establish a fortified hold on this frontier as a result the Persians ended up seizing goldrich Thrace and eventually making a vassal of Macedon throughout the period the Greeks were a known entity to the Persians as sailors traders engineers even longtime subjects when it came to the Greek cities of Anatolia however from the Persian perspective these Western people were just one of many communities that made up a part of their world spanning sphere of influence yes they were aware of the Greeks but did not necessarily prioritize them as a point of concern above the myriad of other events taking place after all revolts and wars across the empire were quite common and distracting it's only when the Greeks get themselves involved in a particularly noisy uprising of their own that they came into the spotlight of Persian attention let's now talk about this event which would ultimately precipitate the greco-persian Wars basically what happened is that the Greek cities of Western Anatolia had come under Persian rule during the conquests of Lydia under Cyrus for several decades now they had paid a regular tribute of gold men and ships to the local satrap in addition they were ruled over by specially appointed Greek tyrants such a form of government was not too uncommon the period but there tended to be more abuse of power in this case since these tyrants could ultimately call on Persian help to crush dissent rather than simply being ousted by an angry mob as a result there is no real release valve for discontent and resentment amongst the Anatolian Greeks simply built up more and more the spark which ultimately lit this powder keg would be the actions of the tyrant Aristagoras of my lettuce in 499 BC he botched an invasion of noxus and rather than risk punishment from his bosses chose to throw them under the bus by directing public anger against the Persians his efforts actually ended up inciting a massive uprising which became known as the Ionian revolt meanwhile across the Aegean the mainland Greeks were asked to participate many such as the Spartans refused and it was ultimately just the Athenians and the eretrians who committed men and ships to the cause thus the Ionian Greeks managed to seize the initiative in the short term marching on and burning the exposed areas of the Persian capital at Sardis however on the return they were set upon and defeated by the Persians at the Battle of a thesis from then on the Greeks would be on the defensive as the Persians launched a multi-pronged campaign of reprisal and Anatolia however the going was tough as the revolt had actually spread to other regions like Cyprus which now too had to be dealt with and further stretched Persian resources over the following years armies of thousands and fleets of hundreds traded blows on both sides while dozens of cities were put to siege eventually through the slow attrition of Persian campaigns the rebellion was stamped out by 493 BC in the end the city of Miletus was heavily punished as the chief instigator of the uprising by all accounts though the rest of the Ionian Greeks were treated on quite fair terms tributary obligations were not raised and the defeated were allowed to keep their democracies rather than returning to the previous system of ruled by tyrants it's this conciliatory policy of King Darius which would actually help the Persians sway many to their cause in the years ahead however there were some exceptions to this leniency the King of Kings would not forget the role of athens and eretria and supporting the revolt nor the threat that mainland greece posed to the stability of his western territories therefore he made ready for war the following year in the short term the persian objective was to punish athens and eretria in the long term the objective was to quell and incorporate greece into the empire let's talk a bit more about how both of these were planned on paper before diving into how things actually played out so for the punitive campaign de rious planned on a combined land and sea assault that would sweep up across the Hellespont and across the lands into Attica such a path would allow his forces under general Mardonius to risa cure the domains of Thrace and Macedonia knopf Persian influence during the Ionian revolt the expedition was to advance on its goals defeating any soft or hard targets which got in the way cruelty or clemency would be applied as needed once victory was achieved the next steps included one preventing further uprisings and two incorporating the territory into the Empire step one would generally include the establishment of local garrison forces to keep an eye on things depending on the underlying factors behind unrest further steps might also include a change in government or even religious or cultural suppression but as with the Romans so long as these did not threaten the peace there would be a quite lenient and open policy of acceptance it's important to note however this was not out of some higher idea of human rights but rather the Persians realpolitik understanding that compromises had to be made in managing such a large Empire as we saw in the case study of the Ionian revolt populations might be exterminated or granted Democratic self-governance depending on the situation step two would have the new subject incorporated into the administrative system of the Empire this involved adding it to a hierarchy of satrapies with viceroys of the great king ruling each province and paying their tributary dues of money and men the exact structure is still debated but what interpretation looks something like this here you can see the Persian Empire of 490 BC with its seven great satraps these are then further broken down into major satraps which further break down into minor sat traps there'd be a pretty big amount of local autonomy by the individual regions which were each kept in check by a web of royal administrators and a system of independent military forces and Garrison's answerable to the great king it's a pretty logical and efficient system whose management benefits stood the test of time and were definitely appreciated by the peoples of the West like Alexander the Great who changed almost nothing structurally following his own conquests years later it's also worth noting that you can find a lot of parallels between the persian system and that of many other large successful empires like the Roman one with its provincial system with this understanding of the plan let's now consider how things actually turned out the first stages were actually quite successful in 492 BC the Persian general Mardonius swept around the coast cleaning up the Ionian revolt securing the Aegean islands and eventually re subjugating Thrace before reaching Macedon and incorporating the former vassal into the Empire both territories now began the two-step process we mentioned previously as the newly formed satrapy of scootera however it's at this point that things took a turn for the worst the Persian fleet got caught out in a storm whilst operating around Mount Athos and suffered crippling losses Herodotus puts this at around 300 ships and 20,000 men though we shouldn't necessarily take these numbers at face value the event certainly would have significantly disrupted Persian operations this was made worse by a Thracian night raid which struck the land army around the same time and inflicted heavy losses the tribe was defeated shortly thereafter but these twin blows in quick succession knocked the Persians off-balance enough that general Mardonius decided to conclude his operations for the year ultimately the intended punitive mission had not been achieved yet but the groundwork had been laid for future follow-up operations by securing a northern land passage the following year of 491 BC was spent on preparations for a renewed campaign by the Persians and Greece at this point it was obvious to all what was coming there for der is used this time to try diplomacy ambassadors were sent out across the Greek world to negotiate terms of submission often this came in the form of a symbolic request for earth and water for many Greeks the overwhelming threat of force combined with the lenient terms of immediate surrender were quite convincing and many bent the knee or declared neutrality athens and eretria however feared the fate of my Letus and opted to take a stand they sealed their decision in blood by executing the persian ambassadors sparta too would opt to reject the persian terms famously throwing their envoy down a well others particularly in the south also turned down persian offers but were not quite so provocative in their rejections the next year the persians launched their long-awaited follow-up expedition but rather than take the circuitous northern route they chose to eyelid hop across the Aegean so as to secure additional intermediate targets along the way for these purposes modern historians estimate king darius race between twenty to sixty thousand infantry with several thousand more cavalry these would have been ferried by a fleet with hundreds of transports and triremes the persian expedition succeeded in securing the Cyclades islands through their tried-and-true mix of severity and clemency they then landed in Euboea ravaging the lands and ultimately besieging then sacking the eretrians who had retreated to their city having checked this box off their to-do list the Persians then proceeded down towards Athens a large contingent made a landing at the nearby bay of Marathon while the fleet prepared to continue on towards the enemy port in this way the invaders would be able to attack Athens in a pincer move from both the land and sea however the Athenians and a small force from Plataea actually sallied out to bottle up the enemy at the beachhead were flanking marshes and high ground could negate the enemy's advantage in mobility history tells us that for several days the two faced off until the Greeks decided to launch an assault a bold charge which overpowered the flanks and collapsed onto the enemy center resulted in a great victory though much of the details are lost to the fog of history if you want to learn more about the Battle of Marathon I can pass you over to Griffin from the armchair historian channel to share some insight about the subject hey and Victor although the Battle of Marathon did take place the truth of what happened there is shrouded in uncertainty propaganda and myth for one thing all accounts we have of the battle come from Greek sources and as we know history as written by the victor is not always wholly accurate adding to the confusion Athenians used marathon heavily in propaganda exaggerating events to claim that they saved Greece and elevate themselves in the process for these reasons and more the truth about the Battle of Marathon is hard to parse out over on my channel we attempt to unravel the web of uncertainty surrounding the battle and tell the story of Marathon as objectively as possible after the battle at marathon the Athenians managed to quickly return to defend their city and thwarted the enemy's naval assault seeing this the Persians turned back and returned to Asia Minor while the withdrawal was cheered as a major victory for Athens from the Persian perspective it was but a minor setback to the tail end of a campaign which had otherwise continued to check the boxes of their larger objectives meanwhile other internal issues such as a massive revolt in Egypt prevented an immediate follow-up when King Darius died it would be up to his son Xerxes to ascend to the throne and deal with unfinished business in short order he crushed the Egyptian revolt and concluded the preparations for a second invasion of Greece this included raising a large fleet and army constructing a pontoon bridge across the Hellespont carving a canal across the peninsula of mount athos and stockpiling supplies along the planned route the expedition set out in the spring of 480 BC with a modern estimate of around 80 220,000 soldiers and several hundred ships in tow as they approached Greek cities declared their submission or opposition whilst others tried desperately to walk the fine line of neutrality no serious resistance was given until a stand was made by land at Thermopylae and by sea at Art Museum the Greeks at both positions head out for several days until the hot gates were overrun and the Allied fleet withdrew much is said in history about the triumphal Last Stand at the hot gates however while it may have served as a small morale boosting tale of bravery it was a little more than a speed bump for the Persians who could now claim victory in the field and defeat of an enemy King as a result many more Greek cities now surrendered to Xerxes and for the remainder of the campaigning season the Persians exacted revenge on opposition within their reach this included the long awaited and overdue sack of Athens another box on their list of objectives checked but again I want to note that it wasn't all mindless slaughter the doctrine of severity and clemency was present as always meanwhile the roughly thirty allied Greek city-states who remained unassailed or who had fled now established new defensive positions on land at the isthmus of corinth and at sea in the ceramic gulf the next decisive clash would take place at the Battle of Salamis where roughly three hundred and eighty Greek triremes faced off against an estimated 500 or so Persian triremes with many additional smaller vessels taking part in the action though outnumbered the Greeks guided by Themistocles managed to use their positioning and the terrain to improve their odds the funneling of the Persian fleet through the Straits succeeded in not only narrowing their effective combat front but also causing a mess of things as their greater numbers led to more confusion and collisions in the tight quarters meanwhile the stationary Greeks could more readily pick their moment to engage and did so with great skill a massive chaotic brawl ensued which saw the Persians defeated this victory for the Greeks proved pivotal in checking the Persian advance historically this would be the high-water mark of the ekam ended in Greece the people at the time however obviously did not know this and to all involved the future is still very much hung in the balance after all the Persians still controlled huge swaths of territory with a pretty much intact our for now these troops would be left in the capable hands of general Mardonius with orders to complete the mission while King Xerxes chose to return home with a portion of his forces enough had already been achieved to complete his duties as a ruler of a vast empire and his attention turned to other matters meanwhile back in Greece Mardonius used the time leading up to the next campaigning season seeking to break apart the Allied coalition with diplomacy this was a strategy that had worked well in the past and would work wonders in the future but yielded few results on this occasion despite the alliance showing some signs of fracture over the winter the smart dounia's returned to the ways of war and actually sacked athens a second time after it had been reoccupied by the victors of Salamis this prompted a response from the allied Greeks who finally took the offensive to do so they raised the largest force yet mustered and advanced to meet the Persians in battle this encounter would take place near Plataea but was far from a traditional set-piece encounter a multi-day standoff ensued with the Allies occupying the high ground and their enemies the plains the Persians managed to undermine creeks supply lines and access to water to the point that they were forced to reposition this overnight retreat proved disorderly and prompted the Persians to pounce at what they perceived to be a rout ironically this lured them into yielding their advantageous position and resulted in a fragmented engagement which turned against them when mardonius was killed the battle was soon followed up by a Greek victory at mica lay these twin blows eliminated the remaining Persian army and navy groups in the theater of war opening a new phase of the conflict the Greeks now counter-attacked undoing all of the Persian gains until peace was finally settled in 449 BC after nearly fifty years of warfare I should note however that this did not bring Persia to its knees rather the Empire would survive for another century and would continue to meddle in Greek affairs however they learned that the best way to neutralize their neighbours was to keep them divided rather than galvanizing them into unity through battle thus as the Greek got out their knives to divide up the cake of victory it was easy enough to involed and those who thought they were getting an unfair slice to take those same knives and stab each other in the back in this way within a decade the former Greek Allies proceeded to beat themselves into a bloody mess during the ruinous Peloponnesian War which saw Persia as a financial backer to both sides alright so that concludes our overall context on the greco-persian wars as you saw the persians actually accomplished a lot of their objectives which gets overlooked in most narratives and it was only quite late in the game that the whole thing unraveled on them in victory the Greeks were then able to write the history of things it is exclusively from this perspective specifically that of Herodotus as history's that we learned about the conflict this inherently introduces some bias with this in mind let's now finally turn to discussing the factors behind why the Persians failed to conquer Greece the most popular way to answer this seems to be to frame the mystery as a classic case of quantity versus quality the Greeks small yet strong the Persians vast yet weak as for which is superior these proponents would have us look at the battles of Marathon Thermopylae and Plataea to conclude that the Greek side of the equation was unquestionably superior therefore the Persians ultimately failed because the defensive Greek strategy forced them into fighting battles that they stood no hope of winning however this explanation is overly simplistic and relies too heavily on a myopic view of the conflict from the surviving Greek perspective alone let's now conduct a more accurate comparison of the Greek and Persian forces this will be done by looking at the following categories troop quantity troop quality and battle performance all right troop quantity let's address the Persian side first and then the Greeks so in theory the Persian Empire had access to a manpower pool which eclipsed that of the Greek city-states if you read Herodotus this materialized in the form of millions of soldiers which descended upon the Hellenistic world yet it should be quite obvious that these figures are greatly exaggerated not all of Persia's vast resources could be frig all at once or for an extended period of time given the strain on ancient logistics and the need to maintain forces across the wider Empire to keep order that being said the Empire's force projection capability was still amongst the greatest of its time and certainly could overwhelm many foes the Greeks for instance risks falling into this category however due to economic and demographic growth in the century leading up to Xerxes invasion they crucially managed to close the numerical gap what basically happened is that from the 6th to the 5th century Greece saw a gradual shift in power from the rich to the poor particularly in the form of land redistribution the reforms of Solon and Athens and the laws of Lycurgus and Sparta are some examples of this trend over the years as a result we see vast estates replaced by small farms increased trade new city development and a rise in democracy all of this meant that when it came time for war the more recently empowered pool of citizens can now take up arms in their respective hoplite levy or perhaps their fleet therefore the size of Greek armies and fleets in relation to their total population was huge and allowed them to punch above their weight class add to this the natural advantage of local recruitment and logistics on top of force multiplier benefits of chokepoint terrain and you start to get a sense for where the Greeks were not as hopelessly outnumbered as might be expected in some cases like at Plataea that might even have matched or exceeded the size of their Persian opponents ok so now that we've addressed troop quantity let's talk about troop of quality we'll start with the Greeks since we know a lot more about them basically all armies were mix of light infantry heavy infantry and cavalry the ratio would vary depending on the situation but usually like in cases such as Pattaya you can expect a very low Calvary count with maybe a 1 to 1 ratio of light to heavy infantry at this point in time however the heavy infantry was really the most important element and it wouldn't be until Alexander the Great the Hellenistic armies truly perfected the combined arms approach to warfare these hoplite troops were pretty well equipped for the period for defense they had a large bronze coated shield a bronze helmet alone and curious and often arm and leg guards for offense they sported a two-sided Dori spear with a secondary sword as backup not bad but we shouldn't assume uniformity across the army or that all could afford to wear the best kit in terms of training these soldiers were levies who mustered in times of war without regular training even the Spartans should not be considered super soldiers or professionals in the modern sense as pop culture would have you believe yes the Greeks could field solid heavy infantry troops but they were not the only ones to do so let's now cover the Persians for perspective the Persian army also sported a mix of light infantry heavy infantry and cavalry unfortunately we have very few data points to accurately determine their preferred troop ratio but the evidence does seem to point to heavier reliance on light ranged infantry and cavalry these contingents could come from across the Empire as part of satrap obligations or as mercenary recruits all of which would have been armed in their native style here is an impressive relief which shows the breadth of diversity in question it seems that royal armies often employed a large variety of nationalities meant to show off the strength of the Empire but that each force was built up around a more reliable core of troops like the famed Immortals given this variety in Persian units it's actually quite hard to compare their quality to the Greeks in a broader sense but I think for our purposes it will be useful to address the idea that hoplites were superior to anything the Persians could field this is definitely false since the Persians made frequent use of Greeks in their own forces but it's not just that the Persians also drew from amongst other communities who could field heavy troops yes some certainly fought shield lists or employed tall wicker shields which may have left them more exposed than the Greeks with their hop line but Herodotus for instance explicitly tells us of Persian groups equipped with gear quote like that of the Greeks of soldiers with iron scale armor and of a cavalry man so well protected that the Greeks can figure out how to kill him even after falling off his horse we should therefore be wary of concluding that the Persians were all simply shaft troops who melted upon first contact in close quarters this will be refuted in our next section on battle performance all right now let's finally see where the rubber meets the road usually people use as data points the battles of marathon Thermopylae and Plataea to judge the greco-persian interactions at war however they leave out of their analysis a consideration for the previous Ionian revolt which saw the Persians beat the Greeks in numerous pitched battles and sieges this string of victories is extended even through the early stages of the greco-persian war with the conquests of the Cyclades and the invasion of Euboea while modern audiences may not be aware of these the Greeks at the time certainly were in fact it's this reputation of Persian strength which leads Herodotus to express amazement that the Athenians even mustered the courage to take a stand at marathon at all in that same battle the Persians were able to defeat the Greek hoplites in the center before being thrown into flight when their flanks collapsed later at Plataea we hear of the Persians holding their own against the Spartans ultimately only breaking when their commander is killed and even then the bodyguard unit fights to the death thus I think we've shown that when comparing the Greeks and the Persians the gaps between the quantity and quality of troops was not as large as is commonly depicted and battles were not as one-sided as some would describe them so if the playing field is more leveled than we initially first assumed then why did the Persians fail well unfortunately with history like this it's just going to be the case that simple definitive answers are almost impossible to come by I don't necessarily want you to leave this video with a nihilistic view that we can't know anything and so it's pointless and said I'd like to impart a greater appreciation for the grey nature of history that often defies a black-and-white explanation the Persian failure was not a sure thing and resulted from many factors we've covered throughout the video such as the difficulty of maintaining a large invasion force oversees the defensible nature of Greece the defenders advantage in recruitment and morale key Greek strategic decisions Persian blenders and perhaps most important of all chance like the multiple storms at sea for instance which killed more invaders than the Greeks did it's this last factor which I think we have the hardest time accepting and which throughout history has actually played a greater part in shaping our destiny then we feel comfortable admitting to think that chaos is at the root of where we stand today can be scary anyways somebody to think about a huge thanks again to our sponsor Babel and to our patrons who funded this video another thanks is owed to the fantastic researchers writers and artists who made this episode possible we hope you enjoy see in the next one

Channel: Invicta

Views: 1,234,167

Rating: 4.7705517 out of 5

Keywords: greco persian wars, greco persian wars documentary, greco persian wars khan academy, battle of thermopylae documentary, battle of thermopylae 300, battle of marathon documentary, battle of marathon decisive battles, why the persians failed, immortals, 300 movie, battle of salamis decisive battles, battle of salamis documentary, battle of marathon, battle of thermopylae, hoplite, greek army, ancient athens, athens, sparta, moments in history, misunderstood moments in history

Id: ZlwIKh2Qk14

Length: 29min 31sec (1771 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 22 2019