Greco-Persian Wars

The Greco-Persian Wars, also called the Persian Wars, were a series of armed conflicts fought from 499 BC to 449 BC between various Greek city-states, led over time by Athens and Sparta, and the Achaemenid Persian Empire under Darius the Great and his son Xerxes I. The wars began with the Ionian Revolt of 499 BC and included the first Persian invasion of Greece, turned back at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, and a far larger second invasion in 480 BC, in which the Persian army broke through at Thermopylae and burned Athens before its fleet was destroyed at Salamis and its army routed the following year at Plataea. Further Greek campaigns over the following decades expelled Persian forces from the Aegean and Ionia, and the wars ended in a Greek victory.