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Notes on video lecture:
The Importance of the Battle of Thermopylae
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on April 17, 2015 (go to class or lectures)


Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
Xerxes, exaggerated, submission, Susa, burned, arrows, mountains, gained, fires, Leonidas, psychological, treasurers, homes, willing, rebuild, Athenians, Aecheans, Bosphorus, kinsmen, Macedon, sacrileges, vengeance, century, Acropolis, 447, died, massacre, Greeks, south
Alexander the Great may have been inspired to greatness by reading about the struggles of the and the Trojans in the Iliad
the historical experience of the , however, had often been defined by violent encounters with their neighbor to the East, the kingdom of the Persians
one of these encounters provided Alexander justification for his war against the Persians
480 BCE: King of Persia
Herodotus wrote that the Persians led an army and an armada of 12,000 ships and 5 million men across the
Herodotus surely about the numbers in this conflict but there is evidence that it was large
150,000 soldiers
900 ships
the Persians pressed westward then into Northern part of Greece
demanded earth and water from the Greeks
earth and water were ancient tokens of
at the pass in modern Greece known as Thermopylae
small group of Greek soldiers commanded by the Spartan king [lay-OH-ni-das]
blocked Xerxes path
for seven days the Persians attacked to no avail
but eventually killed all the resisting Greeks
eventually the Persians passed over the and came up behind the Greeks
killed them through a barrage of
although Leonidas lost the battle, they achieved a kind of victory for the Greeks
before they stood in that pass, no one had been to face the Persians
set an example for other Greeks: they stood, they fought, they
Xerxes and his enormous army then made their way down to Athens
at his approach, the Athenians had abandoned their city
the only people left were some temple and old men who went up on the Acropolis and stayed there to defend the temples of the gods
unfortunately for them, Xerxes and his soldiers soon found a way up the
proceeded to the temple treasurers and all the old men
looted the temples and them all to the ground
to this day, you can still see some of the marks where the burned some of the columns
this was in retribution for the support Athens had given to some of their living on the coast of Asia Minor twenty years before
the Athenians saw the destruction of the temples as one of the greatest possible
the temples on the Athenian Acropolis did not belong to the
they were the of the gods
the Persians, therefore, had burned down the homes of the gods including the home of the patron deity of Athens, Athena
such sacrilege required
Athenians swore an oath not to the temples until they had exacted revenge from the Persians
for almost half a they perused the Persians back into Asia Minor before they began to rebuild the temples
BCE: began to rebuild the Temple of Athena
made a peace with the Persians
there were some that said vengeance had not been
150 years after Xerxes destroyed the temples on top of the Acropolis
a 26 year old king of settled accounts with the Persians
exacting revenge
burned down the palaces of the Persian kings in