Battle of Plataea, 479 BC: Persia driven from Greece

By the numbers
Side	Strength	Losses
Greek alliance	tens of thousands of hoplites and light troops	Relatively light
Persian Empire	larger (ancient figures wildly inflated)	Very heavy; the army destroyed, Mardonius killed

By the numbers

Side

Strength

Losses

Greek alliance

tens of thousands of hoplites and light troops

Relatively light

Persian Empire

larger (ancient figures wildly inflated)

Very heavy; the army destroyed, Mardonius killed

Quick answer

In 479 BC, a year after Thermopylae and Salamis², the Greek city-states united to face the Persian army that Xerxes had left behind under his general Mardonius. Near Plataea in central Greece they assembled the largest hoplite army the Greek world had ever fielded³. After days of standoff, the Spartans and their allies broke the Persian infantry in close combat⁴, killed Mardonius, and stormed the enemy camp. It was the decisive land victory that ended the Persian invasion of Greece.

Salamis had saved Greece at sea, but the Persian army was still on Greek soil, and until it was beaten nothing was settled. In the summer of 479 BC the Greeks did what they had so rarely managed: they put aside their quarrels, gathered under a single command, and marched out to finish the war on land.

Engraving of a flat plain stretching toward a long range of hills — The battlefield of Plataea, a flat plain with hills beyond, in an engraving from a history by Gaston Maspero and A. H. Sayce published in 1903. Public domain

The invasion unfinished

In 480 BC the Persian king Xerxes had invaded Greece, forced the pass at Thermopylae and burned Athens, only to see his fleet wrecked at Salamis. Xerxes went home, but he left a powerful army in Greece under his kinsman and leading general, Mardonius, to finish the conquest. In 479 BC the Greek states, led by Sparta and Athens, gathered their full strength to drive him out.

The largest Greek army

The allied army that mustered near Plataea in Boeotia was the largest force the Greek city-states ever put in the field together⁵, tens of thousands of armoured hoplites from dozens of cities under the Spartan regent Pausanias. For days the two armies watched each other, neither willing to attack on the other's ground, while Persian cavalry harried the Greek supply lines and fouled their water⁴.

Black and white map of the Plataea plain with numbered Greek positions and the Persian camp — Map of the Battle of Plataea after Grundy, from an 1897 edition of Herodotus: the Persian camp by the Asopus, the Greek positions during the days of waiting, and the lines at the moment of battle below Mount Kithaeron. Public domain

The break

Short of water and food, the Greeks began a difficult night withdrawal that fell into disorder⁴, and Mardonius, thinking they were in flight, ordered a general attack. It played into Greek hands. The Spartans and Tegeans held against a storm of arrows⁴, then closed to the spear-work at which the hoplite was supreme. They broke the Persian infantry, and when Mardonius was killed in the thick of it¹, the whole army lost heart.

Spartan hoplites at Plataea, from Cassell's Illustrated Universal History (1882). Public domain.

At sea Greece had been saved; on the field at Plataea it was made safe.

The end of the invasion

The Persians fled to their fortified camp, which the Greeks stormed³ with great slaughter. By tradition, on the same days a second Greek victory at Mycale, across the Aegean, destroyed the remains of the Persian fleet and army in Ionia. Together Plataea and Mycale ended the Persian invasion of Greece for good. The Greek world had survived, and the confidence born of that survival would shape the golden age of Athens that followed.

Twisted bronze column of intertwined snakes standing in a sunken enclosure — The Serpent Column in the Hippodrome of Istanbul, the bronze stand of the victory tripod that the allied Greeks dedicated at Delphi after Plataea, later moved to Constantinople. Public domain

Frequently asked questions

When and where was the Battle of Plataea?

It was fought in 479 BC near Plataea in Boeotia, central Greece, the year after Thermopylae and Salamis, during the Greco-Persian Wars.

Who fought at Plataea?

A broad alliance of Greek city-states under the Spartan regent Pausanias against the Persian army left in Greece under the general Mardonius.

Who won the Battle of Plataea?

The Greeks won a decisive victory, destroying the Persian army and killing Mardonius.

Why was Plataea important?

It was the decisive land battle that ended the second Persian invasion of Greece; with the sea victory at Mycale, it removed the Persian threat for good.

How big were the armies at Plataea?

Herodotus gives huge figures, including 300,000 Persians, which are impossible; modern historians think both armies numbered in the tens of thousands, with the Persians larger.

How is Plataea linked to Salamis and Thermopylae?

Thermopylae (480 BC) delayed the Persians, Salamis (480 BC) wrecked their fleet, and Plataea (479 BC) destroyed their army on land, ending the invasion.

Sources and notes

Numbered notes in the text point to the works below.

Peter Green, The Greco-Persian Wars (University of California Press, 1996). ↩ a b

Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Plataea” ↩

Livius.org (Jona Lendering), “Plataea (479 BCE)” ↩ a b

Herodotus, Histories, Book 8, 113 and Book 9, 32 (Mardonius' army of 300,000); Book 9, 25 to 30 (the Greek muster at Plataea); 9, 49 to 57 (Persian cavalry harrying the Greeks and choking the Gargaphian spring, the disordered night withdrawal); 9, 58 to 65 (Mardonius' attack, the Spartans and Tegeans under the arrows, the death of Mardonius); 9, 70 (the Persian camp stormed); 9, 90 to 106 (Mycale, fought on the same day, 9, 100 to 101). ↩ a b c d

William Shepherd, Plataea 479 BC (Osprey Publishing (Campaign 239), 2012). ↩

Wikipedia, “Battle of Plataea”

Wikipedia, “Bitwa pod Platejami”