From the Ionian Revolt to the Battles That Stopped Persia

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The Greco-Persian Wars were a series of conflicts fought between the Greek city-states and the Achaemenid Persian Empire from the Ionian Revolt of 499 BCE through the failed Persian invasions of the Greek mainland led by Darius I in 490 BCE and by his son Xerxes I in 480 to 479 BCE. The mainland coalition was led chiefly by Athens and Sparta, whose forces met the invading Persian army and navy at a series of decisive engagements across a single crowded decade of campaigning. Xerxes's campaign brought the defense of the pass at Thermopylae, the evacuation and burning of Athens, the decisive Greek naval victory at Salamis, and the land victory at Plataea the following year.

Persia withdrew from the Greek mainland after Salamis and Plataea, though the wider war continued at sea and in Asia Minor for several more decades before ending in Greek favor around 449 BCE. Herodotus's Histories, written a generation later, is the principal connected narrative for the wars and the source for most of what is known about them, including the oracles the Greek states consulted before and during them.