Ancient World
Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC): Leonidas and the 300
Persian victory; after three days the Greek position was outflanked and Leonidas' rearguard was destroyed, opening central Greece to Xerxes.
Region
Europe
Ancient World
Battle of Mycale (479 BC): The Greeks Strike Back in Ionia
Greek victory; the Persian camp was stormed, the beached Persian fleet burned and the Ionian Greeks rose in revolt.
Ancient World
Battle of Plataea (479 BC): The End of Xerxes' Invasion
Decisive Greek victory; Mardonius was killed and the Persian invasion of mainland Greece came to an end.
Ancient World
Delian League (478 BC): From Greek Alliance to Athenian Empire
An alliance of Aegean Greek states formed under Athenian leadership to fight Persia, which gradually became an Athenian empire and was dissolved in 404 BC.
Ancient World
Long Walls of Athens (c. 461 BC): Linking the City to Piraeus
Athens became a fortified city-and-port that could be supplied by sea; the walls were demolished in 404 BC and rebuilt by Conon in the 390s BC.
Ancient World
Hippocrates of Kos (c. 460 BC): The Father of Western Medicine
Hippocrates and the physicians linked to his name developed a medicine based on observation and natural causes, recorded in the Hippocratic Corpus.
Ancient World
Twelve Tables (451-450 BC): The Foundation of Roman Law
Rome gained its first written law code, published in the Forum, which remained the acknowledged foundation of Roman law for a thousand years.
Ancient World
La Tène Culture: The Art and Society of the Iron Age Celts
La Tène became the name for the later Iron Age of Celtic-speaking Europe, whose art style spread from France to Hungary and from Ireland to Italy.
Ancient World
Parthenon (447 BC): Building the Temple of Athena in Athens
Athens built a marble Doric temple to Athena that became the most famous monument of classical Greece and a lasting symbol of Western architecture.
Ancient World
Democritus and Leucippus: Ancient Greek Atomic Theory (c. 440 BC)
The atomists proposed that everything consists of indivisible atoms and void, a theory that influenced Epicurean philosophy and, much later, modern chemistry.
Ancient World
Statue of Zeus at Olympia (c. 435 BC): Phidias' Lost Wonder
Phidias created a seated chryselephantine statue of Zeus about 12 metres high, later counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; it was destroyed in the fifth century AD.
Ancient World
Pericles' Funeral Oration (431 BC): Athens Praises Democracy
A celebrated speech honouring the first Athenian dead of the Peloponnesian War, which became a classic statement of democratic ideals.