Dr. Roel Konijnendijk

What are their options in terms of geographical advances?

And then what do they do when they encounter the enemy?

And the Battle of Thermopylae, first of all, which is described in almost excruciating detail, down to the final blows.

But then you have the Battle of Salamis, similarly on the sea, Artemision first and then Salamis.

And then

And finally, you have the Battle of Plataea, which is, you know, in terms of Greek history, this is the longest, most detailed battle description that we get, right?

It goes on for such a long time.

All of the different moves and counter moves across 12 days of fighting across this plain.

And so you get so many little details and vignettes about what it was like to be there.

This is clearly his virtuoso piece, right?

He's really talking about a decisive moment in Greek history and he wants to give it all the space it can.

So it's actually the ending of Herodotus' history has been enigmatic since ancient times.

People don't really get why he ends it the way he does.

So what he does is he describes the aftermath of the Battle of Plataea and then Mycale, where the Persian fleet is decisively defeated, which supposedly happened on the same day.

So this is this big decisive moment.

But then there are further campaigns after that.

So obviously after that, the allied Greeks who were in this fleet start to retaliate and start to push back Persian control.

And this is kind of the start of this story that Thucydides picks up, which is the story of the Athenian Empire on the rise.

And so there is that moment of looking forward at least one more campaign season.

He goes on to 478 and describes the campaign on land to subject the Thebans and the campaign on the sea to start liberating parts of the Greek world that have been subjected to the Persians.