"Battle of Thermopylae The Battle of Thermopylae ( ; Greek: , ""Máchē tōn Thermopylōn"") was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, led by King Leonidas of Sparta, and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I over the course of three days, during the second Persian invasion of Greece. It took place simultaneously with the naval battle at Artemisium, in August or September 480 BC, at the narrow coastal pass of Thermopylae (""The Hot Gates""). The Persian invasion was a delayed response to the defeat of the first Persian invasion of Greece, which had been ended by the Athenian victory at"
"Battle of Thermopylae (191 BC) The Battle of Thermopylae was fought in 191 BC between a Roman army led by consul Manius Acilius Glabrio and a Seleucid force led by King Antiochus III the Great. It was the first major battle of the Roman–Seleucid War. The Romans were victorious, and as a result, Antiochus was forced to flee from Greece. At the outbreak of the war in 192 BC, Antiochus crossed from Asia Minor to Greece with a small force, expecting the various states in the region to support him as a fellow Hellene in resistance to Roman hegemony. However,"
"a substantial force of hoplites had changed. Thespiae and Thebes were the only Boeotian cities to send a contingent to fight at Thermopylae, Thespiae sending a force of 700 hoplites who remained to fight beside the Spartans on the final day of the battle. In 1997, the Greek government dedicated a monument to the Thespians who fell alongside that of the Spartans. After the battle, Thebes was the final Boeotian state to side with the Persians, and in doing so they denounced both Plataea and Thespiae to Xerxes I as the only Boeotian states to side with the Greeks. After"
"Battle of Thermopylae (279 BC) The Battle of Thermopylae was fought in 279 BC between invading Gallic armies and a combined army of Greek Aetolians, Boeotians, Athenians, Phocians at Thermopylae. The Gauls under Brennus were victorious, and advanced further into the Greek peninsula where they attempted to sack Delphi but were completely defeated. Gallic groups, originating from the various La Tène chiefdoms, began a south-eastern movement into the Balkan peninsula from the 4th century BC. Although Gallic settlements were concentrated in the western half of the Carpathian basin, there were notable incursions, and settlements, within the Balkan peninsula itself. From"
"the defeat of Antiochus III at the Battle of Thermopylae (191 BC), Heraclea was besieged by the Roman consul Acilius Glabrio, who divided his army into four bodies, and directed his attacks upon four points at once; one body being stationed on the river Asopus, where was the gymnasium; the second near the citadel outside of the walls (""extra muros""), which was almost more thickly inhabited than the city itself; the third towards the Maliac Gulf; and the fourth on the river Melas, opposite the temple of Diana. The country around was marshy, and abounded in lofty trees. After a"
"the Greeks lay down their arms and surrender. This was at the onset of the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC). Instead, the Greeks held Thermopylae for three days. Although the Greek contingent was defeated, they inflicted serious damage on the Persian army. Most importantly, this delayed the Persians' progress to Athens, providing sufficient time for the city's evacuation to the island of Salamis. Though a tactical defeat, Thermopylae served as a strategic and moral victory, inspiring the Greek forces to crush the Persians at the Battle of Salamis later the same year and the Battle of Plataea one year later."
"of a series of naval encounters, was up to that point a stalemate; however, when news of Thermopylae reached them, the Greeks also retreated, since holding the straits was now a moot point. Following Thermopylae, the Persian army proceeded to burn and sack the Boeotian cities that had not surrendered, Plataea and Thespiae, before taking possession of the now-evacuated city of Athens. The Allied army, meanwhile, prepared to defend the Isthmus of Corinth. Xerxes wished for a final crushing defeat of the Allies to finish the conquest of Greece in that campaigning season; conversely, the Allies sought a decisive victory"
"Battle of Thermopylae (323 BC) The Battle of Thermopylae was fought in 323 BC between the Macedonians and a coalition of armies including Athens and the Aetolian League in the pass of Thermopylae during the Lamian War. After Antipater received news of the outbreak of the war, he sent messengers to Craterus and Philotas who were in Asia with an army of over 10,000 soldiers, to come to his aid. But receiving news of the progress of the war and realizing that he couldn't wait for his reinforcements to arrive, he marched south to Thessaly with 13,000 foot soldiers and"
"Demophilus of Thespiae Demophilus ( ""Demophilos""), according to Herodotus, was the commander of a contingent of 700 Thespians at the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC). His father was Diadromes (). Demophilus and his men fought at the battle and at the end they stood along with the 300 Spartans at the last stand, all were killed. The ancient Greek traveler and geographer Pausanias also wrote about the stay of the Thespians at Thermopylae together with the Spartans. After the Battle of Thermopylae, the Persian army burned down the city of Thespiae. The citizens had fled to the Peloponnese. Later, the"
"of Thermopylae and Salamis (480 BCE), Plataea (479 BCE,) and the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BCE) where the forces of the Macedonian King Philip II commanded, in part, by his son Alexander, defeated the Greek forces and unified the Greek city-states. After Philip's death, Alexander conquered the world of his day, becoming Alexander the Great. His campaigns brought Greek culture, language and civilization to the world and, after his death, left the legacy that came to be known as the Hellenistic World. Brown University's Committee of Modern Greek Studies sponsors the Department Of Classics Language instruction began in 1972. Instruction"
"army, defeated Bolgius and repelled the invading Gauls. In the second Gaulish invasion of Greece (278 BC), the Gauls, led by Brennos, suffered heavy losses while facing the Greek coalition army at Thermopylae, but helped by the Heracleans they followed the mountain path around Thermopylae to encircle the Greek army in the same way that the Persian army had done at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, but this time deafeating the whole of the Greek army. After passing Thermopylae the Gauls headed for the rich treasury at Delphi, where they were defeated by the re-assembled Greek army. This"
"a stalemate; however, when news of Thermopylae reached them, they also retreated, since holding the straits of Artemisium was now a moot point. Following Thermopylae, the Persian army had proceeded to burn and sack the Boeotian cities which had not surrendered, Plataea and Thespiae, before taking possession of the now-evacuated city of Athens. The allied army, meanwhile, prepared to defend the Isthmus of Corinth. Xerxes wished for a final crushing defeat of the Allies to finish the conquest of Greece in that campaigning season; conversely the allies sought a decisive victory over the Persian navy that would guarantee the security"
"troops, most of which were engaged in Asia or in transit to or from that continent. He set out against the Athenians with an initial force of some 13,000 troops, with messages sent to various commanders to bring reinforcements. The Thessalians originally sided with Antipater, but were quickly persuaded to join the Athenians as allies. Together, they defeated Antipater at Thermopylae. The defeated Macedonians fled to the fortified city of Lamia, where they were besieged by the Athenians as Antipater waited for reinforcements to arrive from Asia. The Athenians and their allies, despite their early successes, were bogged down in"
"and since it no longer needed to defend the flank of Thermopylae, they retreated from Artemisium to the island of Salamis. Victory at Thermopylae meant that all Boeotia fell to Xerxes; the two cities that had resisted him, Thespiae and Plataea, were captured and razed. Attica was also left open to invasion, and the remaining population of Athens was thus evacuated, with the aid of the Allied fleet, to Salamis. The Peloponnesian Allies began to prepare a defensive line across the Isthmus of Corinth, building a wall, and demolishing the road from Megara, thereby abandoning Athens to the Persians. Athens"
"The Allied fleet had also withstood two days of Persian attacks at the Battle of Artemisium, but when news reached them of the disaster at Thermopylae, they withdrew to Salamis. After Thermopylae, all of Euboea, Phocis, Boeotia and Attica fell to the Persian army, which captured and burnt Athens. However, a larger Allied army fortified the narrow Isthmus of Corinth, protecting the Peloponnesus from Persian conquest. Both sides thus sought a naval victory that might decisively alter the course of the war. The Athenian general Themistocles succeeded in luring the Persian navy into the narrow Straits of Salamis, where the"
"delayed by Leonidas I, the Spartan king of the Agiad Dynasty, at the Battle of Thermopylae (a battle made famous by the 300 Spartans who faced the entire Persian army), Xerxes advanced into Attica, and captured and burned Athens. The subsequent Battle of Artemisium resulted in the capture of Euboea, bringing most of mainland Greece north of the Isthmus of Corinth under Persian control. However, the Athenians had evacuated the city of Athens by sea before Thermopylae, and under the command of Themistocles, they defeated the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis. In 483 BC, during the period of"
"the barbarians came from you."""" Following Thermopylae, the Persian army burned and sacked the Boeotian cities that had not submitted to them—Plataea and Thespiae—and then marched on the now evacuated city of Athens. Meanwhile, the Allies (for the most part Peloponnesian) prepared to defend the Isthmus of Corinth, demolishing the single road that led through it, and building a wall across it. As at Thermopylae, to make this an effective strategy required the Allied navy to stage a simultaneous blockade, barring the passage of the Persian navy across the Saronic Gulf, so that troops could not be landed directly on"
"and 700 men from Boeotian Thespiae at the Battle of Thermopylae. The Persians left Greece in 479 BC after their defeat at Plataea. Plataea was the final battle of Xerxes' invasion of Greece. After this, the Persians never again tried to invade Greece. With the disappearance of this external threat, cracks appeared in the united front of the Hellenic League. In 477, Athens became the recognised leader of a coalition of city-states that did not include Sparta. This coalition met and formalized their relationship at the holy city of Delos. Thus, the League took the name ""Delian League"". Its formal"
"the women and children of Athens had been evacuated ""en masse"" to the Peloponnesian city of Troezen. Famously, the much smaller Greek army held the pass of Thermopylae against the Persians for three days before being outflanked by a mountain path. Much of the Greek army retreated, before the Spartans and Thespians who had continued to block the pass were surrounded and killed. The simultaneous Battle of Artemisium was up to that point a stalemate; however, when news of Thermopylae reached them, the Allied fleet also retreated, since holding the straits of Artemisium was now a moot point. The Allied"
"only the Aetolian League actually joined forces with Antiochus; other states either remained neutral or sided with the Romans. Antiochus managed to capture some cities in Greece, but was unable to obtain reinforcements from Asia before in 191 BC a large Roman army under the consul Manius Acilius Glabrio crossed from Italy and advanced on his position. Knowing he was outnumbered around 2:1 by the approaching Roman army, Antiochus hoped to use the narrow pass at Thermopylae to his advantage, taking inspiration from the earlier Greek city-states' stand against the much larger Persian army at the Battle of Thermopylae (480"
"Battle of Thermopylae (254) The Battle of Thermopylae in 254 was the successful defense of the pass of Thermopylae by local Greek militia under Marianus, the Roman proconsul of Achaea, during an invasion of the Balkans by the Goths. In 254 the Goths invaded and plundered Thrace and Macedonia. In 1979, Herwig Wolfram regarded 254 as the date, while Mallan and Davenport in 2015 suggested 262. Goltz and Hartmann estimated 254 as the date. David Potter in 2016 rejected Mallan and Davenport's estimate and dated it to either 253 or 259. The Goths attempted to storm Thessalonica with close order"
"to hold the narrow passageway of Thermopylae against the 100,000–250,000 army of Xerxes, during which time Leonidas and 300 other Spartan elites were killed. Simultaneously the Athenians led an indecisive naval battle off Artemisium. However, this delaying action was not enough to discourage the Persian advance which soon marched through Boeotia, setting up Thebes as their base of operations, and entered southern Greece. This forced the Athenians to evacuate Athens, which was taken by the Persians, and seek the protection of their fleet. Subsequently, the Athenians and their allies, led by Themistocles, defeated the Persian navy at sea in the"
"with the decisive Athenian victory at the Battle of Marathon. Between the two invasions, Darius died, and responsibility for the war passed to his son Xerxes I. Xerxes then led the second invasion personally in 480 BC, taking an enormous (although oft-exaggerated) army and navy to Greece. Those Greeks who chose to resist (the 'Allies') were defeated in the twin battles of Thermopylae and Artemisium on land and at sea respectively. All of Greece except the Peloponnesus thus fell into Persian hands, but then seeking to finally destroy the Allied navy, the Persians suffered a decisive defeat at the Battle"
"the flank of Thermopylae, the Allies retreated from Artemisium to the island of Salamis. Victory at Thermopylae meant that all Boeotia fell to Xerxes; Attica was then open to invasion. The remaining population of Athens was evacuated, with the aid of the Allied fleet, to Salamis. The Peloponnesian Allies began to prepare a defensive line across the Isthmus of Corinth, building a wall, and demolishing the road from Megara, abandoning Athens to the Persians. Athens thus fell to the Persians; the small number of Athenians who had barricaded themselves on the Acropolis were eventually defeated, and Xerxes then ordered Athens"
"his country by telling the Persians of another pass around the mountains. At Artemisium, large storms had destroyed ships from the Greek side and so the battle stopped prematurely as the Greeks received news of the defeat at Thermopylae and retreated. After Thermopylae, Athens was captured. Most of the Athenians had abandoned the city and fled to the island of Salamis before Xerxes arrived. A small group attempted to defend the Athenian Acropolis, but they were defeated. Xerxes burnt the city; leaving an archaeologically attested destruction layer, known as the Perserschutt. The Persians thus gained control of all of mainland"
"fleet, and helped the rebellion of the Ionian cities against Persian rule. In the ensuing Greco-Persian Wars Athens, together with Sparta, led the coalition of Greek states that would eventually repel the Persians, defeating them decisively at Marathon in 490 BC, and crucially at Salamis in 480 BC. However, this did not prevent Athens from being captured and sacked twice by the Persians within one year, after a heroic resistance at Thermopylae by Spartans and other Greeks led by King Leonidas, after both Boeotia and Attica fell to the Persians. The decades that followed became known as the Golden Age"
"600 horsemen, while he left Sippas in command of Macedon. But the Thessalians, who initially supported Macedon, changed sides to the Athenian alliance and joined the Athenian general Leosthenes' forces in occupying the passes of Thermopylae, significantly outnumbering the Macedonians. Antipater was defeated in the ensuing battle and since he could not retreat because the Athenian coalitions' forces were stronger than his forces, he shut himself in the city of Lamia where he was subsequently besieged by Leosthenes' forces. Battle of Thermopylae (323 BC) The Battle of Thermopylae was fought in 323 BC between the Macedonians and a coalition of"
"to southern Greece. Thus, in August 480 BC, after hearing of Xerxes's approach, a small Allied army led by the Spartan king Leonidas I blocked the Pass of Thermopylae, whilst an Athenian-dominated navy sailed to the Straits of Artemisium. Famously, the vastly outnumbered Greek army held Thermopylae against the Persians army for six days in total, before being outflanked by a mountain path. Although much of the Greek army retreated, the rearguard, formed of the Spartan and Thespian contingents, was surrounded and annihilated. The simultaneous Battle of Artemisium, consisting of a series of naval encounters, was up to that point"
"Thermopylae later that year and razing Athens. However, the loss of the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis gave command of the sea to the Greeks, and Xerxes retreated back to Asia. The following year (479 BC) the Greeks won a decisive land victory at Platea in which Mardonius was also killed, followed by another naval victory at Mycale. Greece then went on the offensive, capturing Byzantium and Sestos and thus controlling the Hellespont. Following these Persian reverses, the Greek cities of Asia Minor again rebelled. The focus of the war now moved to the Aegean islands with the"
"Battle of Thermopylae in popular culture The Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BCE has long been the topic of cultural motivation, as it is perhaps the most famous military last stand of all time. This ""against all odds"" story is passed to us from the writings of the Greek Herodotus, who was not present at the battle himself. He relates the story of 300 Spartans and 700 Thespians defending the Pass of Thermopylae against almost ""2 million"" Persians on the third day of the battle. (For the first two days, the Greek force had numbered somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000.)"
"Thermopylae against the massive Persian army, inflicting very high casualties on the Persian forces before finally being encircled. The superior weaponry, strategy, and bronze armour of the Greek hoplites and their phalanx again proved their worth one year later when Sparta assembled at full strength and led a Greek alliance against the Persians at the battle of Plataea. The decisive Greek victory at Plataea put an end to the Greco-Persian War along with Persian ambition of expanding into Europe. Even though this war was won by a pan-Greek army, credit was given to Sparta, who besides being the protagonist at"
"culture (see Sparta in popular culture), particularly the Battle of Thermopylae (see Battle of Thermopylae in popular culture). Sparta Sparta (Doric Greek: Σπάρτα, ""Spártā""; Attic Greek: Σπάρτη, ""Spártē"") was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece. In antiquity the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (, ), while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement on the banks of the Eurotas River in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. Around 650 BC, it rose to become the dominant military land-power in ancient Greece. Given its military pre-eminence, Sparta was recognized as the leading force of the unified Greek military during the Greco-Persian Wars."
"was launched by Darius' son Xerxes. The city-states of northern and central Greece submitted to the Persian forces without resistance, but a coalition of 31 Greek city states, including Athens and Sparta, determined to resist the Persian invaders. At the same time, Greek Sicily was invaded by a Carthaginian force. In 480 BC, the first major battle of the invasion was fought at Thermopylae, where a small force of Greeks, led by three hundred Spartans, held a crucial pass into the heart of Greece for several days; at the same time Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse, defeated the Carthaginian invasion at"