Greek poets (including Homer) wrote about the Trojan war, which was set in motion by Helen who [?] her marriage vows and betrayed Menelaus. Other stories put more of the blame on Paris who committed a [?] act by kidnapping Helen and taking her to Troy. The people of Troy certainly [?] Paris' actions, but he died without ever learning how his actions would destroy his city. An archaeologist named Heinrich Schliemann suggests that this myth can be [?] with history if the Trojan of myth were actually a group of Luwian speaking people from the 12th century BC.

However, there are many more famous historical battles. The Persian wars were led by the [?] Darius I and Xerxes I on the Persian side. Cyrus started the Persian conquest of the area around the Aegean Sea on the Asian side; he then gave power to his son-in-law, Darius the Great. However when local towns started rebelling, he set up [?] to rule tyrannically. Athens helped these rebelling towns [?] against their Persian rulers because they believed they would be the next enslaved by the Persians, and they even sent a whole fleet of ships in 499. This [?] Darius' anger, so once he had the rebelling towns under control, he sent an invading force against Athens in 490 BC. The Athenians shocked everyone when they won in the Battle of Marathon. The great Athenian general Miltiades [?] the Persians into attacking quickly by thinning the center line of his defenses and making them think the Greeks were too weak to fight back. They weren't. As soon as the Persians pushed through the center of the Greek force, the Greeks flanked the Persian army and won an [?] victory. This victory and the discovery of a silver mine which allowed the Athenians to assemble a huge fleet made some of them [?], however.

This [?], peaceful period ended soon enough. Darius' son, Xerxes, was [?], however; nothing would stop his desire to make Athens pay for this defeat. So, once he took power, he invaded Greece in 480. Xerxes' forces (probably about 300,000) encountered about 8000 [?] warriors from Sparta and its allies. At the end of one day of fighting, the Persians were so [?] tired, they wanted to go home, but Xerxes whipped them into battle. The Persians were lucky in that they found a Greek with a [?] of honor who revealed the Greek battle plans.

After the Persians confronted the main army, Leonides knew his men were defeated, and he sent most of the warriors running to regroup while the Thebans and 300 Spartans undertook the [?] task of covering the retreat. The Thebans surrendered (and it is rumored they were helping the Greeks under [?] because they later helped Persia), but the Spartans fought to the last man. While the Spartans could slow the Persians down, they were [?] against the larger force.

The Athenians [?] the prophetic power of Apollo by going to the Oracle at Delphi. The Oracle said that everything Athenian would burn except for what lay behind a wooden wall. Given this message, the Athenians were [?] to fight such a [?] army, so many of them wanted to hide behind the wooden wall of the Acropolis. A leader saved many lives by convincing them that the wooden wall was Athens' fleet of wooden ships. So the men joined the women and children in fleeing. Only a few Athenians remained behind and died when Athens burned.

But the Greeks weren't done yet. They left false intelligence behind. The Persians believed the [?] of that information and moved their fleet to the mouth of the Bay of Salamis, but the Greeks had positioned their boats to ram the Persians. The Athenians lost much of the city, but ended up winning the battle in the end, proving that the great Persian army was not [?].

Xerxes went home leaving an army behind to [?] the Greeks. In the Battle of Plataea (479 BC), over thirty city-states combined their forces and defeated both the Persian army and the Thebans who were now fighting for Persia. This began decades of peace, but that peace was not [?]. It ended with the Peloponnesian War, but that's another story.