Consequences of ancient Persian Wars

Persian Wars were wars fought between the Persian Empire and Greek city states in the 5th century BCE. The Persian Empire under Darius was expanding westward into Europe, and had targeted the powerful Greek states, particularly Athens, in order to capture what was the major power in the region at the time. The Greeks were able to hold their territory, and as a result they were able to preserve their civilization.

The Persian Empire was probably the largest and most powerful at the time. The empire has spread across Asia Minor, Thrace and Macedonia, and was targeting peninsular Greece. The Persians led a cosmopolitan force, emblematic of their empire, which had religious freedom, tolerance, and incorporated many cultures. The Greeks, however, were a strong culture in their own right, and resisted the idea of subjugation by the Persians. Darius had requested that the Greeks submit to his rule, but Athens and Sparta agreed to work together to rebuff the Persians (Cartwright, 2016).

The Persians had numerical superiority, and had captured a number of Greek islands on their way to the mainland. However, their arrows were light, and largely ineffective against Greek armor. The Greeks held disciplined phalanx formations, and with superior spears and armor were able to win the in-close fighting as well. This allowed the Greeks to achieve several victories during the war, notably at Marathon. At Thermopylae, the Spartans held off the forces of King Xerxes, which allowed the Greeks time to prepare for a longer siege at the hands of the Persians.

After the Greeks won a naval battle at Salamis, and the Persians had sacked Athens, the final battle would come at Plataea (Nagle, 2013). The Greeks again won with ground superiority of the hoplites. This battle essentially ended Persian ambitions to take peninsular Greece, and Xerxes basically called of the invasions of Greece at this point (Cartwright, 2016).

The outcome of the Persian Wars was profound on Greece. First, the Greeks brought back the Ionian islands into their field of influence, but perhaps more important they targeted Byzantium as a key holding. So the Greeks were motivated to work with each other more than prior to the invasion, and this allowed for a few things. First, it allowed for a greater Hellenistic culture to emerge (Cartwright).

While many sources cite that a flowering of Greek art and culture followed the wars, and this is true, it also paints a one-sided view of the conflict's outcomes. Yes, Greece flourished after the wars, and this laid the foundations for many elements of Western civilization that can still be seen today, including the emergence of democracy as a governmental form. Most scholars take the view that these things would not have happened but for the Greek victory -- though the Romans may have introduced at least the artistic elements later on.

The Greek-centric view is largely due to the fact that the Greeks wrote the histories about the war, and there are no Persian records. But it is worth mentioning that the Achaemenid dynasty was characterized by religious tolerance and high levels of civil rights. There are two reasons why this is important. The first is that these concepts were unusual at the time, and really would not emerge in Western society until the Enlightenment. A peaceful Greece under the Persians may not have had art or democracy, but those things may well have developed over time anyway. Further, a strong Persia -- and Greece would have made Persia much stronger because the Persians incorporated conquered peoples well into their empire -- could have lasted much longer. Its ideals could have spread more. It was a weak Persia that submitted to the spread of Islam, as opposed to the multi-religious strong Persia that could have resisted. The world today might look a little different if Persia had won, but it is ethnocentric for scholars to argue that Greek victory assured a positive result for civilization. All told, the Greek victory strengthened Greece as a more unified territory, and allowed for that culture to flourish.

References

Cartwright, M. (2016). Persian wars. Ancient History Encyclopedia. Retrieved February 5, 2017 from http://www.ancient.eu/Persian_Wars/

McCollum, D. (2017). The Greco-Persian wars: Causes, effects and events. Study.com. Retrieved February 5, 2017 from http://study.com/academy/lesson/the-greco-persian-wars-causes-effects-events.html

Nagle, D. (2013) The Ancient World (8th Edition) Pearson. 89-96.