During the Persian Wars, the Greeks, fighting in their own territory and knowing the different characteristics of it, used the different physical characteristics of it in their favor. An example of this is the Battle of Thermopylae, where a small group of Greek soldiers used a narrow gorge as a defensive point, nullifying the vast military capacity of the Persians and forcing them to fight on equal terms.
Explanation:
The Persian Wars were wars between the Greek city-states and the Persian Empire from 499 to 448 BC.
The wars began with the Ionian uprising in 499 BC. Athens and Eretria sent aid to the rebels and in 498 BC. and the Greeks destroyed Sardis, the capital of the province of Lydia. In 494 BC. however, the Persians defeated the Greek navies and took back Ionia.
In 492 BC. the Persian general Mardonios made a vengeance on Greece and conquered Macedonia and Thrace. In 490 BC. Darius I attacked Attica by sea, but the Athenians led by Miltiade succeeded in defeating the Persians in the Battle of Marathon. Athens had asked for help from its famous warrior neighbors, Sparta, but for religious reasons, the Spartans had not been able to set off in time and were late for battle.
Vengeful, Xerxes I, the son of Darius I, left in 480 BC. with a huge army in earnest to defeat the Greeks. According to Herodotus, the strength of the Persians was 1.7 million men, but this figure is suspected. Even if it were true, the actual combat strength would probably have been considerably lower because the figure includes a large number of maintenance and other support troops. A so-called Hellenic alliance was formed against the Persians, led by Sparta and Athens. However, many Greek cities, like Thebes, sided with the Persians, who were considered the sure winners of the war.
The Greek alliance tried to stop the progress of the Persians in the gorge of Thermopylae, which was the only easy route from northern Greece to central Greece. The Battle of Thermopylae was led by King Leonidas I of Sparta, who had three hundred Spartan warriors under his command, as well as a few thousand allies. The battle went well until a Persian division circled the Greeks, after which the Greek resistance broke.
Athens was then evacuated and the Greek navy retreated to the island of Salamis while the armies retreated to the Corinthian isthmus. Contrary to expectations, the Greeks managed to defeat the overwhelming Persian navy in Salami in naval battle. After losing his fleet, Xerxes returned to Persia, but left his ground troops led by Mardonius to Greece for the winter. The following year, an alliance led by Sparta and Athens defeated these forces in the Battle of Plataia. This battle is considered the decisive and last great battle of the Persian wars. According to tradition, the Greek navy destroyed the remnants of the Persian navy on the exact same day at the Battle of Mykale.
As a kind of continuation of the Persian Wars, one can see the war expedition started by Alexander the Great about 150 years later, in which the Persians were completely defeated.
