San Antonio College Library

In 480 B.C.E., Xerxes, the King of Persia, led an invasion of mainland Greece. Its success should have been a formality. For seventy years, victory--rapid, spectacular victory--had seemed the birthright of the Persian Empire. They had swept across the Near East, shattering ancient kingdoms, storming famous cities, putting together an empire which stretched from India to the shores of the Aegean. Xerxes ruled as the most powerful man on the planet....

"The Greco-Persian Wars (also often called the Persian Wars) were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire of Persia and city-states of the Hellenic world that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC. The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus the Great conquered Ionia in 547 BC. Struggling to rule the independent-minded cities of Ionia, the Persians appointed...

The three-day battle for the pass at the "Hot Gates" of Thermopylae was a critical contest in the Persian king Xerxes's massive invasion of Greece. The bloody stand made there by Leonidas and his small Spartan army in 480 BC has since become the very emblem of patriotism, courage, and sacrifice. The ambitions of Xerxes were vast. Having amassed the largest force of men and ships ever assembled, he set out to conquer Greece, at the same time sending...

"Two thousand five hundred years ago, Herodotus singlehandedly created the concept of Western Civilisation. Fortunately, because he found the world an inexhaustible source of fascination and delight, he is himself an inexhaustibly fascinating man. The father of history displayed all the modern techniques now associated with analytical journalism, television interviewing, film travelogues and historical research. Indeed, it is precisely his creation...

More than 2,500 years ago, a confederation of small Greek city-states defeated the invading armies of Persia, the most powerful empire in the world. In this book, the author argues that Sparta was responsible for the initial establishment of the Hellenic defensive coalition and was the most essential player in its ultimate victory. Drawing from a range of ancient sources, including Herodotus and Plutarch, the author veers from the traditional Atheno-centric...

This book examines the life of Themistocles, a statesman of the fifth century B.C. who transformed Athens from a second-rate land power to the leading maritime state in Ancient Greece.

Recounts the causes and history of the wars between the Greek city-states and Persia.