BATTLE TO THE PERSIANS The Persians came three times, and fought three huge battles - Marathon, Thermopylae,

and Salamis. Each time the Persians were convinced they could easily conquer the Greeks. Each time, the Greeks drove them away. Xerxes, the Persian King, was furious at the result of the first two battles with the now hated Greeks. For the third major battle, the Battle of Salamis, he sent an incredible number of Persian ships to wage war on Greece. He didn't want just to win. He wanted Greece to be totally destroyed. Xerxes was so confident of success that he had his slaves carry a golden throne from Persia, and set it up on a hillside overlooking the Greek harbor, so he could be comfortable while he watched the Greeks die. But the Greeks did not die. Their small ships could maneuver better. The Greeks were able to toss burning wood aboard the Persian ships and get safely away. The Persians had to abandon their burning ships. Those Persian sailors who made it to land were greeted by the Spartan army. The Spartans killed them all. When Xerxes saw how the battle was going, he ran away and left his army behind. While Athens burned the Persian ships, Sparta left some men on the beach to handle any Persians who made it to shore. The rest of the Sparta army marched north and defeated the Persian army coming in from that direction. PELOPONNESIAN WAR In 431 B.C., fighting broke out between Corinth and one of its colonies. Sparta and Athens took opposite sides in the conflict. Sparta marched on the city of Athens that year. Because Athens had built the Long Wall that securely connected the two cities, they were able to keep the city supplied from their port city. However, a plague broke out in Athens that killed over one-fourth of its population. In 421 B.C., a peace treaty was signed. In 415 B.C., an Athenian politician named Alcibiades betrayed the military plans of Athens to the Spartans. His betrayal cost the Athenians 175 ships and over 40,000 men. At the same time, Athens began to lose some of its influence over the cities in the Delian League. Some of those cities started to abandon the league. Sparta joined forces with Persia to defeat the Athenian navy at Aegospotami in 405 B.C. Without a navy, Athens was not able to supply food to its city when it was besieged again. They surrendered in 404 B.C. Although the Spartans won the war, peace did not come to Greece. Spartas alliance with Persia collapsed. Wars between the city-states continued until fifty years later when Macedonia took over most of the Greek city-states and made them part of the new Macedonian Empire. TROJAN WAR Greek general, Odysseus, had a tricky idea. "Let's pretend to sail away," he suggested. "We'll leave a gift for Troy, a gift to announce the end of the war, a wooden horse with 30 men hidden inside. At night, these men can sneak out and open the gate of Troy!" That was the way things were done back then. When you admitted defeat, you supplied a gift. It could be a gift of money, art, slaves, anything really. It made sense to leave a gift of art. The Greeks were famous for their art. The Greeks thought it was a brilliant idea. They had their best artists build the horse. It was a magnificent horse. When it was ready, the Greeks brought the huge wooden horse as close

to Troy's city gates as they could get without being shot full of arrows. The Greeks pretended to sail away. When the Trojan archers at the top of the stairs saw the Greeks leaving, they could not believe their eyes. They thought the Greeks were giving up. Some people wanted to burn the horse, which would have been a sad fate for the Greek soldiers hidden inside. But the Trojan people said it can be a reminder for their victory. That night, while the Trojan people slept soundly, exhausted from their celebrations, the 30 Greek men hidden inside the wooden horse climbed out and opened the gates of Troy and let the Greek army inside. MYTHICAL ORIGIN OF ROME Romulus and Remus were twin sons of Mars, the Roman god of war and a human mother. According to the legend the two boys were left in the forest to fend for themselves. They were raised by a she-wolf until a shepherd came along to take them home with him. According to the legend, when the boys grew up they decided to found a new city where they had been rescued by the she-wolf. There was a disagreement as to exactly where to build the city, and Romulus killed Remus. The city Romulus built was named Rome in his honor.

RAE LAURA B. DE LEON III-OLO CHARTRES