The Persian Wars 490-479 BCE - TCE Ancient History (Tasmania)
“Analyse the causes, course and consequences of the Greco-Persian Wars, 490-479 BCE”
You need to explain why the Persian Empire invaded Greece, how a loose alliance of Greek city-states led by Athens and Sparta defeated it at Marathon (490 BCE), Thermopylae and Salamis (480 BCE) and Plataea (479 BCE), and how the victory reshaped Greek politics and identity, including the rise of Athenian power.
What this dot point is asking
The wars grew out of the expansion of the Persian Empire under the Achaemenid kings. By the late sixth century BCE Persia controlled the Greek cities of Ionia on the coast of Asia Minor. When these cities rose in the Ionian Revolt (499 to 494 BCE), Athens and Eretria sent help, and the revolt was crushed, with Miletus sacked in 494 BCE. The Persian king Darius I then resolved to punish the mainland cities that had interfered. According to the historian Herodotus, our main source, Darius had a servant remind him daily to remember the Athenians.
The first invasion came in 490 BCE. A Persian force landed on the plain of Marathon in Attica. The Athenians, with a small contingent from Plataea and led by the general Miltiades, charged the larger Persian army and won a decisive victory. Herodotus reports around 6,400 Persian dead against 192 Athenians, figures that may be exaggerated but capture the scale of the upset. Marathon became central to Athenian pride and the legend of the runner who carried news of victory to Athens.
Before the second invasion the Athenian statesman Themistocles persuaded Athens to use silver from the mines at Laurion to build a fleet of around 200 triremes. He interpreted the Delphic oracle's promise of safety behind wooden walls as meaning ships, not a wall. This fleet won the decisive naval Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE and laid the foundation of later Athenian naval power.
The second invasion, led by Darius's son Xerxes I in 480 BCE, was far larger. Herodotus gives wildly high numbers, but modern estimates suggest a Persian army of perhaps 100,000 or more, with a great fleet. A combined Greek force, organised through the Hellenic League and led on land by Sparta, made a famous stand at the pass of Thermopylae. King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans, with allies, held the pass for several days before being outflanked by a mountain path and destroyed. The delay was a moral victory, but Athens itself was captured and burned. The turning point came at sea: in the narrow straits of Salamis the Greek fleet, partly through the cunning of Themistocles, destroyed much of the Persian navy.
The following year, 479 BCE, the Greeks won the decisive land battle at Plataea under the Spartan regent Pausanias, and tradition links it with a naval victory at Mycale on the same day, which freed the Ionian cities. The Persian threat to the mainland was over. The consequences were enormous. The victory gave the Greeks, and especially Athens, a powerful sense of having defended freedom against tyranny, a theme repeated in art, drama and oratory. Athens used its fleet to lead the Delian League from 478 BCE, an alliance that gradually became an Athenian empire and funded the cultural golden age of the fifth century.
A TASC answer on the Persian Wars should organise the material into the three parts the dot point names. Use this routine.
Step 1: Causes
Trace the chain: Persian expansion under the Achaemenids absorbed the Ionian Greek cities; the Ionian Revolt (499 to 494 BCE), helped by Athens and Eretria, was crushed; and Darius I resolved to punish the mainland cities that had interfered.
Step 2: Course
Sequence the key battles with dates: Marathon (490 BCE, Athenian victory under Miltiades); the second invasion under Xerxes in 480 BCE, with the stand at Thermopylae, the burning of Athens, and the decisive naval victory at Salamis; then Plataea on land and Mycale at sea in 479 BCE.
Step 3: Consequences
Explain the results: the Persian threat to the mainland ended, the Greeks gained a powerful sense of having defended freedom against tyranny, and Athens used its fleet to lead the Delian League from 478 BCE, which became an empire funding the cultural golden age.
Step 4: Weigh the evidence as you go
At each stage flag that Herodotus is the main source, invaluable but written a generation later with patriotic bias and inflated Persian numbers, and corroborate with Aeschylus, inscriptions and archaeology. This keeps the answer analytical rather than a retelling.
A common error is to describe the wars as Greece versus Persia, as if Greece were one country. The Greek world was a patchwork of independent city-states, many of which stayed neutral or sided with Persia. The alliance was fragile, temporary and led by rival powers, Athens and Sparta, whose later quarrel produced the Peloponnesian War. Stress the contingency and disunity, not a national crusade.
The evidence centres on Herodotus, writing a generation later, who is invaluable but mixes oral tradition, anecdote and patriotic bias, and who gives implausible Persian numbers. Other sources include the play The Persians by Aeschylus, who fought at Salamis, inscriptions, and archaeology of the battle sites. For a TASC response, treat Herodotus critically as a source whose reliability varies, and explain the wars as a turning point that both saved the independent city-states and set Athens on the path to empire.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of TASC exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
Practice20 marks"The ancient past relies on the interpretation of evidence to provide understanding of an ancient site, significant event, development or an era." Describe and assess how the primary and secondary sources have contributed to the interpretation and understanding of the historical context and representations of one (1) ancient site, significant event, development or era that you have studied.Show worked answer →
Section A essay (Criteria 3, 4 and 5). The Greco-Persian Wars are ideal, because our understanding rests heavily on interpreting one main source, Herodotus, against other evidence.
Open with a thesis: our picture of the wars is an interpretation built from limited and partisan evidence, above all Herodotus, checked against drama, inscriptions and archaeology. Then organise the body around the kinds of evidence and what each contributes.
Describe and assess each: Herodotus, writing a generation later, gives the narrative but mixes oral tradition, anecdote and patriotic bias and gives implausible Persian numbers; Aeschylus' play The Persians is a contemporary Greek representation by a man who fought at Salamis; inscriptions and battle-site archaeology corroborate locations and scale. Conclude by judging how far the combined evidence supports a confident understanding, secure on the outcomes but contestable on numbers and motives.
Practice18 marksAnalyse how historical context, as well as one (1) or more of the core elements, impacted at least one (1) key feature of an ancient society you have studied. Use both primary and secondary evidence to support your argument. Core elements: political, social, economic, cultural. Key features include arts and architecture, weapons and warfare, technology and engineering, women and family, and beliefs, rituals and funerary practices.Show worked answer →
Section B essay (Criteria 3, 4 and 6). The Persian Wars let you argue how historical context shaped the key feature of weapons and warfare, and of beliefs and identity, in the Greek world.
Set the historical context: the expansion of the Achaemenid empire, the Ionian Revolt, and the threat of invasion. Then argue the causal link. The need to face Persia shaped the key feature of warfare directly: Themistocles used the Laurion silver to build a fleet of around 200 triremes, turning Athens into a naval power, while the hoplite phalanx proved decisive on land at Marathon and Plataea.
Support with primary evidence (Herodotus on the wooden walls and the battles, Aeschylus' Persians) and assess its patriotic bias and inflated numbers. Conclude by judging how decisively the context of the Persian threat reshaped Greek warfare and the sense of Greek identity against the barbarian.