Why did Xerxes failed at invading Greek city states?

> The Athenians had some silver mines in a part of Attica, called Laurium, the whole products and revenue of which used to be distributed among them. Themistocles had the courage to propose to the people, that they should abolish these distributions, and employ that money in building vessels with three benches of oars, in order to make war upon the people of Aegina, against whom he endeavored to inflame their ancient jealousy. No people are ever willing to sacrifice their private interests to the general utility of the public: for they seldom have so much generosity or public spirit, as to purchase the welfare or preservation of the state at their own expense. The Athenian people, however, did it upon this occasion: moved by the lively remonstrances of Themistocles, they consented that the money which arose from the product of the mines, should be employed in building a hundred galleys. Upon the arrival of Xerxes they doubled the number, and to that fleet Greece owed its preservation.

Thucydides

Wikipedia is perfectly fine.
>t. history major who got his degree thanks to it

he did invade athens

You can usually tell what needs more looking into and what can be taken as truth from wikipedia, only autists get wound up over using it.

>t. Another history major who ignored assigned reading and just wiki'd shit and got the degree easily.

Then scroll to the bottom of the wiki page and look for the citations. Wikipedia cites real sources and most historians at my University have actually come to like the website, albeit cautiously.

I haven't read up on the persian wars in a long, long time so correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I believe another, more minor cause was the massive use of mercenaries in the persian army, which of course weren't 100% loyal and prepared to die in battle like the Spartans for example were.

Discipline was almost certainly a factor. The Spartans literally spent their entire formative years learning to fight and remain loyal to one another.

It's why they were so gay for eachother.

Mein neger.

>tfw I'd just look up books on the topic, write the essay based on wikipedia, and then put the books in the bibliography without even bothering to check them out of the library

>Thucydides
Into the garbage it goes.

>History major
Enjoy working at Starbucks.

>The Spartans literally spent their entire formative years learning to fight and remain loyal to one another.
That isn't particularly unique in the ancient world even in that era of time. Also they got wrecked by literal homos from Thebes before and after despite that training and military obsessed inclination they have.

>falling for the high school "Wikipedia is bad" meme
Gotta be 18 to post here friendo

Why bother posting such an ass-blasted response?

You're trying to save face but really you just look like an idiot.

Herodotus says the Persians were on par with the Greeks, but the rest of the Archaemenid army-the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Lydians, etc.-were quite poor as fighters go, and prone to rout. The majority of the invasion force were made up of these elements, so its easy to see why the Greeks successfully defended their land.

The Spartans were unique in that their entire male population went through the Agoge.

There's no "trying to save" face here. Project harder, mate.

Phoenicians and Egyptians were used solely to give the Achaemenids their navy and operated only as sailors. Also correct me if I'm wrong here but weren't Lydians a Greek/Hellenistic people themselves?

The core of the Achaemeneid army was forced by Persians, Medes, and Scythians co opted into service.

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

discipline and armor

They were a Greek people, but Lydia was conquered by Cyrus, and King Croesus was made his advisor. They were still under Persian rule when Xerxes attacked Greece.

>Phoenicians and Egyptians were used solely... navy

In Herodotus Histories, Trans. Tom Holland, Book 9.32, Herodotus says Mardonius (Persian general) made the Egyptian marines disembark and fight at the battle of Plataea. Looks like I was wrong about the Phoenicians, as they aren't listed in the line up.

He also lists about 50,000 Greeks fighting for the Persians.

I also have a question. How did Macedonia, an irrelevant kingdom among irrelevant kingdoms, conquer Persia?

>How did Persia conquer Media?
>How did Arabia conquer Persia?
>How did the Ottomans conquer the Byzantines?
>How did the Han conquer the Qin?
>How did the Mughals conquer India?

Extremely doubtful the Persians had anywhere near that actual number of Greek/Ionian Greek auxiliaries in their forces.

Yeah, Herodotus numbers are pretty wacky. He lists 4 million as the invasion force (that includes the supply train as well), and 350,000 at the battle of Plataea against 110,000 Greeks.

I know he exaggerates I just meant in this specific case the fact that it was only a decade or two earlier that under Darius the Great the Persians put down a like 6-7 year long Ionian Revolt and apparently decimated several colonies of their populations that finding that many Greeks in their forces kind of goes beyond belief in anyway.

Though I do agree with another user who said the levies, whoever or whatever the races they were, formed awful troops and the invasion of Greece would've gone more smoothly if it was just revolved around Persian, Median, and Scythian troops.

>Herodotus
TOP KEK

>Implying Persia was ever irrelevant

It was just a small tributary state of the Median Empire.

No civilization except Rome conquered the land unsuitable for its mentality and too foreign to their native landscape. Most would barely know how to live and rule in countries so different, they'd usually just prefer some sort of vassal-state instead.

Rome was special, they were inclusive and not having religion per se probably helped. Our definition of 'Roman' is wrong anyway, at that time it meant something like 'civilized' more than anything, a lot of people within the Empire didn't even care for anything past the local government and the perks of so organized society. It was literally a brand and the only way to make things work then, thats why it lasted for so long.

Dumb question: How did persians called Persepolis?

Parša (read Parsha)

See
Commonly referred to as Takhte Jamshid as well

Mr Xerxes I'm the council of Athens.

You don't get to bring chariots.

Absolute horseshit. When the Romans conquered most of Britain and the entirety of Gaul, they destroyed ancient shrine sites and told the occupied Gaulic and Celtic peoples they had to become like them. Hence why there are so many Roman style temples in France and England.

Romans were very insistent on pushing their civilization on others and made use of this by expanding settled ex-soldiers and officers in Colonias in newly annexed lands.

Takhte Jamshid is the modern Persian name for Persepolis. Parsa was just the region where the Achaemenid tribe of Iran called their nation. We aren't exactly sure what the native ancient name for Persepolis was.

While that is true, they also adopted various gods from Ilyria, Hispania, Egypt, Gaul sometimes mixing them with Roman deities, sometimes with each others, sometimes legions would straight out adopt them in provinces. As much later, their 'religion' was strategic and political tool.
They would often claim territory, intimidate locals to resettle elsewhere, enslave them or kill them destroying their settlements and building their own on top of those or on satisfying strategic points. Following this procedure, either a legionary camp or a town would be build and always following the same pattern, which includes Roman temples.

After that, Romans would be brought there to settle after being granted land. Farmers, merchants, whores and so on. They would trade and mix with the ex-local population and that would always achieve: 1) Romanization of less advanced locals which would make them want to be like Romans out of necessity, respect, fear or whatever, especially considering the fact that Romans would claim the best land, naturally 2) integrating locals into Roman society primarly through military service, enslavement, producing the next generation of half-Romans etc. 3) Locals giving something back in terms of culture, usually new gods, among other things

>implying Romans pushed the personal beliefs of everyone
>implying paying your respects to the gods went any further than paying your respects to the state through necessary rituals concerning old traditions
>implying that should concern anyone but the high ranking Romans only, certainly not some peasant in Hispania

>Roman style temples
I mean, you literally have the Roman style temples for the most absurd gods in all provinces, its just the style

Man, it must suck of Hollywood to turn you into a gay evil black guy

>implying
Their motto was literally "be like us or we will enslave and wipe you out." That exists even today as "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

You should elaborate a bit more on this, because Ive presented arguments that are valid and proven. This major oversimplification of romanization that you claim just isn't the truth.

This battle was undoubtedly one of the most metal events of antiquity
>persians thrown into the water and beaten to death with oars, like tuna fish

>Hollywood
read a book please
specifically 300

Are you an idiot?

The fact that Roman Britain required a constant large garrison of several legions despite the now disputed claims of it being relatively "pacified" is proof enough that the tribals in Britain did not want to be like Romans.

Unlike the Gauls who gladly assimilated after Vercingetorix. Even Iberia wasn't fully conquered until 20 BC and they still had to have legions stationed there afterwards.

>Doesn't accept THE primary source for anything that happened in that era

wew lad

That doesn't remotely dispute the fact that modern British historians are now revising claims with archaelogical evidence from sites at London and central England that show that the Romans maintained multiple war level strengthen legions within Hadrian's wall in Southern England that the tribals refused to be pacified and constantly revolted more often then in Hispania.

Dig sites and other evidence like burial site of six dead Celtic men who were decapitated execution style dating back to the 2nd century which is omitted by Tacticus is now putting the torch to the Roman narrative of how the Romans were treated in the Isles and the situation with their invasion.

>based information on the Persian Wars from second and third hand accounts
>reliable
wew lad

It's certainly more reliable than anything else you can pull out of your ass.

Yep, constant flare ups of revolts and uprisings well into Octavian's period even after he became Augustus. I think Agrippa himself had to be sent there to personally handle the situation.

I think what he's getting at is that a lot of more recent historical finds at notable archaeological sites in England is revealing that Roman Britain even after Boudica's failed revolt was not exactly a "peaceful province".

Some theories are that the unusually large number of legions and Roman soldiers situated well away from Hadrian's Wall implies that Rome's control of Britain was a lot more teneous and weaker then thought. Other academics are still postulating claims like Professor Guy that the legions there were stationed within multiple sub-provinces to avoid future fiascos like the Gallic Empire under Posthumus, to avoid other governors from accumulating too much money and power.

>you can pull out of your ass
I think you need to work on your reading comprehension. Thucydides is well known for being biased in his writings and the fact his entire knowledge comes well after both invasions happened well before he was even born makes him a very suspicious source of information.

At least Herodotus fucking traveled across parts of Asia and what was then the known world before writing about it.

Don't worry. There's about 10,000 or so tablets unearthed at Persepolis and not even 1% of them have been fully translated so far. Eventually at least a fraction of them will contain information on the Persian side of the Greco-Persian Wars and I'm sure that'll cause all kinds of hilarious butthurt for the anti-Persianfags.

>There's about 10,000 or so tablets unearthed at Persepolis and not even 1% of them have been fully translated so far. Eventually at least a fraction of them will contain information on the Persian side of the Greco-Persian Wars and I'm sure that'll cause all kinds of hilarious butthurt for the anti-Persianfags.

No doubt. But I'm not an anti-Persianfag so I don't know why you even bring that up, because as long as those tablets aren't dug up, scoffing at Thucydides as a primary source is retarded and childish.

>Thucydides
>primary source
That's entire what's being scoffed.

>Living and writing about events that happened in your lifetime
>Not a primary source for philological and historical criticism

Stop talking, you're embarrassing yourself.

>In your life time

He wasn't alive during the Persian Wars, you moron.

>Romans had not religion
absolute nonsense
do you secular morons actually think this?
zero understanding of Roman society

Thucydides was born over 20 years after the second Persian Invasion of Greece. I get what the other user is saying that Thucydides and even Herodotus are both extremely biased and more or less unscrupulous sources when it comes to information about the Persians.

Both relay on second and third hand accounts of major events, and neither were born during Darius and Xerxes' invasions of Greece. But some things are clearly fabrication. Herodotus regales a story of us about Cyrus the Great sparing Croesus life after defeating the Lydian army because a storm magically "sprouted" out of thin air when Cyrus was about to have him burned alive as a sign from Apollo to spare and pardon the Lydian ruler.

Given that a) we already know that Cyrus did not subjugate his enemies, former or current, to executions or Assyrian styled punishments, and that b) Croesus disappears after the Babylonian Chronicles state that Croesus was killed in combat.

History is all about disseminating fact from bullshit.

Don't forget the crap about how Herodotus claims that Darius when ascending to the throne after Cambyses death was only able to "retake" Babylonia by a loyal Persian soldier mutiliating his face and pretending to be a traitor who supposedly after being put in charge of the rebel army opened the gates of Babylon.

Now if anyone is familiar with Homer, they know this fucking directly parallels and is a copy-pasted version of Odysseus doing the same in Homer's epic. Coincidence? Thought so.

Is that true? What do I have to major in to help translate them? Or is learning Old Persian and Cuneiform enough to get such a job?

>one user is wrong about religion in Rome
>therefore secular people are ignorant about Rome
do you religious morons actually think this?
zero understanding about human society

Not sure about the exact number but at least 1000+ tablets detailing stuff about building projects, tax records, administrative works, court issues, edicts, and what not are presumed to be on those tablets.

Though I'm pretty sure to translate you'd need to know both Old Persian and Aramic. And possibly Elamite as well. But yeah the gist of it there's a shit ton of records and information on those tablets so who knows what other gems they have.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_Administrative_Archives

>the hypocrisy in your post

Are you an idiot?

I think you might be the pleb here. The movie 300 is entierly based on the comicbook by Frank Miller who imagined it as fanfic of the 1962 movie The 300 Spartans. The author never claimed it was based much on historical research and he admited that he was pulling most of it out of his ass.

So you really are an idiot.

Read the original post that started this (who's not even me, by the way).

>Man, it must suck of Hollywood to turn you into a gay evil black guy

Clearly, this user knows Xerxes's depiction in 300 is inaccurate.

And then you (or some other faggot, because he doesn't even capitalize his sentences while you at least do) come(s) with this response:

>>Hollywood
>read a book please
>specifically 300

For what purpose? The only thing that this response is implying is what that user already knows: that 300 is inaccurate.

Everybody here already knows that. Even normalfag plebs with no interest in history have a high chance of knowing that. You (both) just want to feel superior for knowing soooo much better than the plebs who take Hollywood adaptations at face value. Man, you're so smart and not at all pathetic.

Except I'm not wrong, Romans had no religion. There's that. Think about this, it is true.

How old are you kid

If you mean no centralized religion, then sure.

But no ancient civilization was really devoid of religion and we know about the Roman pantheon and their religious thought.

because he was an 8 foot tall transexual with a funny accent

Retard

And paganism everywhere

I'm guessing 12, then.

Paganism is religion m8.

Not to mention they had a widespread Sol Invictus cult right before Christianity took hold.

I'm guessing you are really retarded.

I'm not the user who admonished you, child.

Go scream to mommy that Internet strangers are being mean to you.

Wasn't Persia sort of a paper tiger anyway?
After the war, Spartans marched into Anatolia and conquered some territories.
And some time later, Alexander wrecked Persian shit

Please stop trying to deflect from the fact you made a stupid comment, keyboard warrior kun.

No it wasn't. The Persians wrecked the Spartans in the Corthinian War and destroyed their entire naval fleet. By the end of the wars between the Spartans and Athenians, both sides constantly appealed to the Persians to act as mediators.

So that is completely incorrect.

>And some time later, Alexander wrecked Persian shit.
Alexander nearly died multiple times fighting the Persians. One young Persian noblemen was going to kill Alexander until one of his generals managed to chop the Persian's arm off from behind.

>I'm not the user who admonished you
Making a stupid one-liner statement about someone's age for asking for a better source then Wikipedia certainly paints you as being the same poster.

If the Persians were a paper tiger then the Athenian Army in Egypt wouldn't have been routed after their failed siege, counter siege and largely annihilated attempting to return to Greece. The Greeks then again lost all the gains in Asia Minor involving Ionian Greek settlements and colonies because both sides on Athena and Sparta's alliances feared Persian power regained supremacy.

Persia was definitely not a paper tiger after the initial Persian Wars.

Probably, but it just made me mad that that user really thought "retard" was an acceptable reply. I know I made it sound like I was the same person, as if he were an actual underage kid.

What comment?

>Probably, but it just made me mad that that user really thought "retard" was an acceptable reply. I know I made it sound like I was the same person, as if he were an actual underage kid.
Damn.

>Probably, but it just made me mad that that user really thought "retard" was an acceptable reply, as if he were an actual underage kid. I know I made it sound like I was the same person.

>someone said something that upset me on the internet
>better be a hypocrite and accuse them of being underaged while acting wholly the same way
Ironic.

Some other user accused him, I just figured he was right after the user's stupid response.

"He" wasn't.

He very clearly was, that user (you?) has shown he can't do anything other than scream "Retard!".

>samefag accusation
Whatever. I know which ones were my posts.

>(you?)
Wrong.

>Whatever. I know which ones were my posts.
So do the rest of us, dude. You don't have to worry about that.

See Stop posting.

>Wrong.
Sure thing, kid.

I guess you're right, and this is just shitposting, so I'm stopping with this post.

>kid

t. Fucking Moron

Morale and superior armor, along with naval strategy. There are quite many texts about this such as Herodotus, Plutarch and also later historians.