Under Pericles leadership, Athens refused to back down and this war started. After 10 years of war, a truce cane in 421, but only lasted until 415. The last straw was when the Athenians launched a massive attack on Sicily. The expedition consisted of Athens, led by Alcibiades) attacking Sicily because they were the food providers for Sparta. Almost the whole Athenian army and navy was sent to cut off the supplies, however the plans backfired and Athens was greatly affected and barely recovered its military, finally in 405 the Spartan navy defeated Athenians in the battle of
Spartan military king who bravely led a small force of Greeks (the famous 300) against the much larger Persian army of Xerxes, at the pass of Thermopylae. During this battle, 480 B.C., the 300 small Greek army lead by Leonidas himself fought hard and delayed the Persians from pushing forward for a while. The small Greek army would decrease the size of the Persian army and hold them off until Persians found a route to outflank the Greek army. King Leonidas realizing this, commanded his army to retreat and him and a handful of loyal soldiers that wanted to stay with him willingly fought the Persian army. The number of Greeks left was around 300 all of which fell including Leonidas.
He then ordered a fresh wave of ten thousand infantry to advance against the Greeks. This time the Greeks did not stand and wait for the Persians to come to them but in a last attempt to take as many of the enemy with them as they could they advanced into the wider part of the path, meeting the Persians and fighting with them there. The struggle was brutal and vicious and despite the odds, it lasted for hours as the Greeks inflicted as much damage upon the Persian forces as they could. It was at this point, when the fighting was at its most bitter in which Leonidas was shot down by Persian archers and also that two of Xerxes’ own brothers were killed. As the immortals now had the Greeks surrounded, they withdrew on a hill not far behind the Phokian wall and made one last stand.
This led to constant warfare between the leagues formed by the Greek city-states and Macedon. Around 221 BCE, Phillip V of Macedon took power of the Macedonian throne. He was considered to be the last Greek ruler who was militaristically and politically capable of uniting all of Greece. However, in 218 BCE, he allied with Carthage, which was a big mistake to his plans. This led to the breakout of wars between Rome and Macedon in a series of skirmishes.
In the Odyssey, Odysseus is the leading Greek hero. He is King of Ithica, son of Laertes and Anticlea. Odysseus is also the husband of Penelope and father of Telemachus. Odysseus was sent to fight in the Trojan War in Troy by Menelaus. He spent many years fighting there and finally defeated them with the “wooden horse.” After the war, he set sail to return to his island, Ithica.
Well, the war's losses caused much distress which led to a group of antidemocratic citizens to overturn the democracy in 411 B.C. Other citizens were not fond of this so they restored the democratic government. Athens continued to fight on and the end came during the last ten years of the war. This is because the actions had moved to the east, along the western coast of Anatolia and its islands; this was known to be the western boundary of the Persian Empire. The Persian Empire had sent money to help the Spartans build a strong navy.
However, his dream of burning Athens to the ground would not be realized, and this lust for revenge would be passed down to his son Xerxes. In 480BC, Xerxes assembled the largest army the ancient world has ever seen. With around 300,000 men, he marched towards Greece with a navy following closely behind. As Xerxes marched toward Athens, they were met with a combined Greek force of 300 Spartans and 4000 free Greeks defending a narrow pass, nullifying the numerically superior Persian force. At the same time, the Persian navy attempted to sail behind the Greek forces and box them in.
However, the Persian were not finished. In 481 BC, Darius I's son, Xerxes, gathered together an army of some one hundred fifty thousand men and a navy of six hundred ships. He was determined that the whole of Greece would be conquered by Persia. A Sad Sequel The Battle of Marathon immortalized the name of Miltiades; but in a few years' time he fell from his high estate, for he failed in an expedition against the island of Pa'ros. The Greeks had no pity for failure.
We are in search of our real identities, our true selves. 3,000 years ago in Greece (like Hawaiian Islands) there was a king on an island (one king for every island) did not like Troy. Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey about the Trojan War which lasted for 10 years. The Trojan War was fought over sexual jealousy. An epic tells the values of society.
Odysseus was widely known to the ancient Greeks for helping defeat Troy with his idea of the Trojan horse to get King Menelaus’ wife, Helen, back from Paris, the prince of Troy. It took Odysseus ten years to win the war and ten years to reach his homeland, Ithaca, and return to his wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus. During these twenty years, Odysseus has chosen to make many bad decisions and choices yet he was blessed by the gods and helped by his mentor Athena and safely reached Ithaca but lost all his comrades and friends. Odysseus reached Ithaca to find his home occupied by ruthless, arrogant suitors! Aggravated, Odysseus carefully planned a trap with the help of two loyal men and killed all the suitors.