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The Greco-Persian Wars, also called the Persian Wars, were a series of armed conflicts involving various Greek city-states and the Achaemenid Empire from 499 BC to 449 BC. The precipitating collision between the fractious political world of ancient Greece and the enormous empire of ancient Persia had begun when the Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered the Greek-inhabited region of Ionia in 547 BC. As they struggled to exert authority over the independent-minded Ionian cities, the Persians appointed Greek tyrants to rule each of them, though this would prove to be the source of much trouble for the Greeks and the Persians alike.
In 499 BC, the Greek tyrant Aristagoras of Miletus embarked on what would ultimately be a failed expedition to conquer Naxos with Persian support. Anticipating his dismissal, Aristagoras incited Greek city-states in Asia Minor to join him in deposing their Persian rulers, sparking the Ionian Revolt. Despite initially lacking support from mainland Greece, Aristagoras secured alliances with Athens and Eretria that helped him capture and raze Sardis in 498 BC. In response to the loss of his regional capital city, the Persian king Darius the Great vowed to exact revenge against the Athenians and the Eretrians. Both sides then effectively stalemated until 495 BC, but in 494 BC, the Persian army consolidated and launched a major assault at the heart of the Ionion Revolt in Miletus; Ionia suffered a decisive defeat in the Battle of Lade, which enabled the collapse of the rebellion over the course of the following year.
Seeking to protect the Achaemenid Empire from being threatened by further uprisings in Asia Minor, Darius embarked on a scheme to conquer the mainland Greeks themselves—both to prevent their political and military interference in Asia Minor and to fulfill his earlier vow to specifically punish Athens and Eretria for their role in the destruction of Sardis. In 492 BC, the first Persian invasion of Greece began under the command of Mardonius, who successfully re-subjugated Thrace and Macedon before several mishaps forced an early end to the rest of the campaign. In 490 BC, another Persian force was sent to Greece—this time across the Aegean Sea—under the command of Datis and Artaphernes, who successfully subjugated the Cyclades before razing Eretria. Before they could reach Athens itself, however, the Persians were defeated by the Athenians and the Plataeans in the Battle of Marathon.
Upon the death of Darius in 486 BC, his son Xerxes I took the throne and the responsibility for continuing the Achaemenid Empire's stalled conquest of Greece. In 480 BC, Xerxes initiated and personally led the second Persian invasion of Greece with one of the largest armies ever assembled in the ancient world. His victory over the Greek alliance in the Battle of Thermopylae allowed the Persian army to raze an evacuated Athens and occupy most of the Greek mainland. Subsequently seeking to destroy the combined Greek fleet, the Persians suffered a severe defeat in the Battle of Salamis. The following year, the confederated Greek forces initiated a joint offensive that decisively routed the Persian army in the Battle of Plataea, which granted independence to Attica and Boeotia.
The Greeks followed up on their success at Plataea by destroying the rest of the Persian fleet in the Battle of Mycale before expelling Persian garrisons from Sestos in 479 BC and from Byzantium in 478 BC. These consecutive losses would force Persian troops to eventually withdraw from Europe, allowing Macedonia and the Ionian city-states to again assert their independence. Tensions between Sparta and other Greek city-states, especially amidst the suspicion that the Spartan general Pausanias had conspired with Xerxes as well as due to Sparta's lack of interest in aiding the Greeks of Asia Minor, prompted the anti-Persian alliance to fall to Athenian hegemony under the Delian League. For the next three decades, the Wars of the Delian League focused on removing the Persian army from Greek territory in both Asia Minor and Cyprus. In 466 BC, the League achieved a double victory in the Battle of the Eurymedon, which completely liberated Ionia. By 460 BC, the Athenians led the League to militarily intervene in support of the Egyptian pharaoh Inaros II, who was rebelling against Artaxerxes I. Although the Greek–Egyptian alliance saw initial tactical success, the Persian army was able to secure a strategic advantage from Memphis and inflicted a disastrous defeat on the League, which was forced to suspend any further campaigns against the Achaemenid Empire, while Inaros was captured and executed by crucifixion in Susa. A Greek fleet was sent to Cyprus in 451 BC, but achieved little, drawing the Greco-Persian Wars to a quiet end shortly thereafter. Some contemporary and later Greek and Roman sources suggest that the conflict was formally resolved when Athens and the Achaemenid Empire signed the purported Peace of Callias.
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