Battle of Thermopylae

Thermopylae is a location in Greece where a narrow coastal passage existed in antiquity. It derives its name from its hot sulphur springs. "Hot... gates" is also "the place of hot springs and cavernous entrances to Hades". Thermopylae is primarily known for the battle that took place there between the Greek forces including the 300 Spartans and the Persian forces, spawning the famous epitaph beginning with "Go tell the Spartans". It is also the locality of the city Anthela , where the first Amphictyony is mentioned. Thermopylae is located in eastern central Greece on the only land route large enough to bear any significant traffic between Lokris and Thessaly. Passage from north to south along the east coast of the Balkan peninsula requires use of the pass. Further west the way is blocked by mountains and the Gulf of Corinth. For this reason the area has been the site of several battles. The ancient name of the region was Malis after the Malians , a Greek tribe that resided at the mouth of the river Spercheios in Greece. The Malian Gulf is named after them.
more

The Greco-Persian Wars were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire of Persia and city-states of the Hellenic world that started in 499... BC and lasted until 449 BC. The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus the Great conquered Ionia in 547 BC. By Greek accounts, enmity between Greek and Persian continued for more than two centuries, culminating in the dissolution of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great; the principal events of the wars, however, unfolded during the two failed Persian expeditions against Greece, in 490 and in 480/479 BC. The Greeks themselves referred to those wars as the "Median affair" . Although they were perfectly aware that the Achaemenid Empire, their enemy, was ruled by a Persian dynasty, they retained for this empire the name under which they had known it first, that of the Medes.
more