Persian Wars

The Persian Wars were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire and the Aegean Greeks, mainly consisting of expeditions from Asia against Greece during the first decades of the fifth century bce. The traditional articulation distinguishes between a first war, waged in response to the Ionian Revolt, and a second, much larger invasion. Both conflicts were won by those Greek communities which had refused to submit to the Great Kings. Despite internal divisions and deeply diverging memories among the Greeks, these wars helped to shape the idea of panhellenism and to set the conditions for the rise of Athens.