Battle of Plataea

Battle · 479 BCE · in Europe

The Greek allies under the Spartan Pausanias destroyed the Persian army Xerxes had left in Greece under Mardonius, ending the Persian invasions of Greece.

See it played out step by step in Battle View: Battle of Plataea.

Related

• Battle of Salamis (480 BCE): Decisive naval victory of the Greek fleet under Themistocles over the Persian fleet of Xerxes in the straits of Salamis.
• Battle of Thermopylae (480 BCE): A small Greek force led by King Leonidas I of Sparta held the pass of Thermopylae for three days against the army of Xerxes I before being overwhelmed.
• Xerxes’ invasion of Greece (480–479 BCE): Xerxes I led a vast Persian army from Sardis across the Hellespont into Greece, won at Thermopylae and burned Athens, but was defeated at sea at Salamis (480 BCE) and on land at Plataea (479 BCE).
• Delian League (478–404 BCE): Athens and its allies formed this alliance of Greek city-states in 478 BCE to continue the war against Persia, keeping its treasury on Delos. Athens moved the treasury to Athens in 454 BCE and turned the league into an empire, which ended with its defeat in 404 BCE.
• Herodotus (c. 484 BCE – 425 BCE): Greek historian from Halicarnassus, called the father of history, whose Histories recount the Greco-Persian Wars.
• Socrates (c. 470 BCE – 399 BCE): Athenian philosopher who examined ethics through questioning dialogue; he was sentenced to death by drinking hemlock in 399 BCE.
• Battle of Marathon (490 BCE): Athenians and Plataeans defeated the first Persian invasion of Greece, sent by Darius I, on the plain of Marathon.
• Pericles (c. 495 BCE – 429 BCE): Leading Athenian statesman of the city's golden age, who promoted democracy, Athenian naval power and the building programme on the Acropolis.
• Sophocles (c. 497 BCE – 406 BCE): Athenian tragedian, author of Oedipus Rex and Antigone, one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays survive.
• Hippocrates (c. 460 BCE – 370 BCE): Physician from Kos, called the father of medicine, whose school treated disease as having natural rather than supernatural causes.

Around the same time and place

• Athenian democracy (508 BCE): The reforms of Cleisthenes in 508/507 BCE created a system in which male citizens voted directly on laws, the earliest well-documented democracy.
• Parthenon (447 BCE): Temple of Athena on the Athenian Acropolis, built 447–432 BCE under Pericles; the supreme monument of classical Greek architecture.
• Carthage (c. 814–146 BCE): Traditionally founded by Phoenician settlers from Tyre, Carthage grew into the capital of a maritime empire that dominated the western Mediterranean until Rome destroyed it.
• Founding of the Roman Republic (509 BCE): The Romans expelled their last king, Tarquin the Proud, and established a republic governed by elected magistrates and the Senate.
• Parthenon Marbles (438 BCE): Frieze, metopes and pediment sculptures of the Parthenon, made under Phidias; about half were removed by agents of Lord Elgin in 1801–1812 and are now in the British Museum, the rest in the Acropolis Museum.
• Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE): War between Athens and its empire and the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta, ending in Athens' defeat; chronicled by Thucydides.
• Tyre (2,750–501 BCE): Capital of Phoenicia (1150 BCE–501 BCE).
• Hallstatt culture (c. 1,200–450 BCE): Late Bronze and Early Iron Age culture of Central Europe, named after the rich cemetery by the salt mines of Hallstatt, Austria.

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