Introduction Organization Slides: The title of my presentation in entitled the Battle of Thermopylae.  I will focus on the history of the Persian and Greek Conflict, the Persian and Spartan Leaders, the differing cultures of the Persians and Spartans, the actual battle and the weaponry for each side, and finally, the History Implications and Aftermath.  As you will see here, my thesis states that “Although the Spartan and Greek forces suffered defeat at Thermopylae, the military stand provided motivation and historical political importance for Western Civilization and the World.”

First Main Point and Supporting Evidence (slides 4-6): The Persian conflict with the Greek nation began with the Ionian Revolt.  Cyrus the Great worked to expand the Persian Empire in 560 BC and faced off against the Ionians.  The Athenians decided to offer military support to the Ionians and ended up defeating the Persian forces.  This brought about a lot of shame and dishonor for Cyrus and the Persian Empire.  In 490 BC, at the Battle of Marathon the son of Cyrus, King Darius, attacked the Athenian and Ionian armies.  The Persians were again defeated, and just before Darius could devise a new attack strategy against Athens, he passed away.  His son, Xerxes, vowed to avenge the defeat at Marathon and spent the next 10 years developing a battle strategy to invade Athens.  His intentions were very clear and provided the Greeks several years to plan a proper military response to protect Greece.  Unfortunately, the Greek states had a large history of competing against one another through political and military combat.  Less than 1 in 20 Greek states rose up to fight together against the impending Persian invasion.  The Greeks chose the pass at Thermopylae to face the much larger Persian enemy.

The Persians’ only road to Athens went through the narrow pass at Thermopylae.  Thermopylae translates to literally mean the “Hot Gates” and it was so narrow of a landscape that it would reduce the strength of any army’s numbers.  This land mass was directly between a large mountain and the Aegean Sea, so there was no way around except to go directly through the pass.

Second Main Point and Supporting Evidence (slides 7-10): There were three highly important military leaders throughout this conflict.  First of all, King Xerxes led the forces for the Persian Empire.  He was the son of Darius and devised a 10-year plan to avenge the defeat against Athens at Marathon.  King Leonidas was the leader of the Spartan and united Greek forces during the Battle of Thermopylae.  He was chosen by the Greek states to lead the military into battle.  One interesting fact is that he likely killed his step-brother to gain the throne in Sparta.  Finally, Themistocles is the unspoken hero of the entire conflict.  He was the likely mastermind between the land and naval strategies of this war and the ultimate defeat of the Persian Empire at Salamis.  Themistocles was an Athenian commander and democratic politician.  He was born as a merchant’s son and train as a seaman to hone his Naval skills.  His main philosophy was that land forces can only be supplied by the Navy, so if the Greeks could cut off the Persian Navy it would cripple the army, regardless of their numbers.  Themistocles convinced the Athenian government to increase the Navy by using money that was retrieved from silver mining.  He lied to the Athenian politicians to imply that there was a pending attack from a nearby enemy.  Without his participating in this conflict, the Greek nation would never have been nearly as successful at Thermopylae and would not have defeated the Persian Empire at Salamis.