The Persian war!
The Persian whilst the Persians were at their strongest. The Persians were capturing parts of Greece but Athens was not easily defeated and witheld the Persians. The Persians though were relentless and came back with an even bigger army set on crushing Athens. Athens turned to outside help and asked other city states to help defeat the huge Persian army. Whilst the Spartans where far more powerful than the Persian foot-soldiers, they were easily outmatched in a sea/naval battle. Another weakness was that the Persians had something the Spartans lacked, Archers! The Spartans were often had huge waves of arrows rained down on them. The Athenian army was much weaker than the Spartans but what they lacked in power they made up for in technology. The Athenian naval force though outnumbered were much more coordinated and powerful. Whilst the Persians had large numbers but were disorganised. This was best demonstrated at the battle of Salamis. Where a smaller Greek fleet lured the Persians into the shallow waters and then encirlced them. When the Persians tried to back out of the ambush they just caused more chaos with ships blocking each others paths making retreat impossible. A small amount of ships escaped but most of the Persians naval forces had been defeated. Though the Greeks did'nt celebrate for long. The Persian army had started to march towards Athens. To get there they had to go through a fifteen metre pass. This was called the Battle of Thermoplae.