Section I: The Greeks

The nations of those of the Western and Northern Ægean in the time period of approximately 800 to 360 B.C. are most commonly known as the Greeks, or the Hellenes in their own tongue. To the east resided their most hated and feared enemy: the Persians. The heart of the Persian Empire lay in what is now Iran. The Greek peoples were just as familiar with warfare as the Persians, but for the Greeks, war was basically an inter-tribal affair. Armies were often no more than a thousand heavy infantry in a close combat. The weak weapons and heavy armor limited the casualties of a normal battle to only a score or two. Meanwhile, the dense populations of the Persian satrapies allowed the middle-eastern peoples to engage in massive battles, fielding sometimes more than 100,000 infantry and hundreds more on horse and chariot. Despite the overwhelming numbers of the Persian forces, the Greek heavy infantry known as hoplites and their lighter counterparts, the peltastai (peltasts) were infinitely superior to almost anything the Persian kings could send to do battle. The only thing stopping the Greeks from invading Persia was their mutual distrust of the other city-states. Only after a foreign power came into Greece did they dare to attack their mortal enemies.