From the day the Persian Empire was formed until its demise, its contradiction with Greece ran through.
The contradiction between Persia and Greece began with Ju Lushi's conquest of Lydia. Ju Lushi's conquest policy seriously threatened the independence of the small city-states in sub-Greece. According to Herodotus, when Lydia was conquered, all Greek city-states on the west coast of Asia Minor (except Miletus) expressed their willingness to surrender to Ju Lushi. But Ju Lushi told them a prophecy, which meant that they surrendered late. So these city-states turned to Sparta in the Greek mainland for help (Athens was in the period of peisistratus's autocratic politics at that time, with sharp internal contradictions), and Sparta expressed its willingness to help them, thus being threatened by Ju Lushi. The contradiction between Greece and Poland began here.
Later, Darius conquered Thrace on the northern shore of the Aegean Sea, which more seriously threatened the security of the Greek States on the mainland. Moreover, because the Persians controlled the communication channel between Greece and the Black Sea, the economic interests of the Greeks were seriously damaged, thus deepening the contradiction between the two sides.
In 500 BC, Miletus rebelled against Darius' rule, and the Greek states on the mainland supported Miletus' struggle, thus intensifying the conflict between Greece and Poland, and Miletus uprising became the fuse of the Greek-Persian war. Darius brutally suppressed the uprising and launched the Persian War in 492-449 BC. As a result, this war, which lasted about 50 years, ended in the defeat of Persia, and its conquest ambition was seriously frustrated. However, the Persian rulers were not reconciled. From then on, whenever there was an opportunity, they intervened in the struggle of the Greek city-states in an attempt to profit from it.
The Peloponnesian War between the Greek States from 4365438 BC to 404 BC gave the Persians an excellent opportunity to intervene in Greek affairs. During the war, the Persians helped the Spartans build a navy, thus defeating the powerful Athens. As a result of this war, Sparta and Athens were defeated, thus benefiting the Persians. The Spartans promised to return the Greek city-states of Little argyle to Persia. However, due to the opposition of various States, Spartans failed to keep their promises, which caused dissatisfaction in Persia.
Since then, Greece has fallen into the crisis of city-state, and the class contradictions within each city-state are very sharp, and the States are also in a scuffle. The Persians made waves in the meantime, which aggravated the crisis of the Greek city-state.
Spartans also intervened in the Persian throne dispute. After Darius II died, his youngest son, Kurus, wanted to take the throne. Spartans supported Kurus and opposed Atta Xue Xisi. After the defeat of Kurus, the Greek mercenaries who participated in the Persian throne struggle also suffered heavy losses on their way back to Greece. The contradiction between Persia and Sparta intensified.
In 399 BC, Sparta went to war with Persia. The Persians used the internal contradictions in Greece to form an anti-Spartan alliance, in which all the city-states of Athens, Corinth and Biotia participated. In 395 BC, the anti-Spartan alliance went to war against Sparta, namely the Corinthian War. Sparta was caught between Scylla and Charybdis and had to negotiate with the Persians.
At this time, Athens took the opportunity to rise, and the Persians in turn supported Sparta, forcing the rest of the Greek city-states to make a truce with Sparta and deal with Athens. In 387 BC, Persians concluded the Peace Treaty of Persia the Great (or the Peace Treaty of Anta Caidas) with Spartans through coercion. The treaty declared that the States of Asia Minor were ruled by the Persian king, and forbade the Greek States on the mainland to form any alliance (except Sparta and its allies). The Persians achieved the goal of controlling Greece.
In the late 4th century BC, the kingdom of Macedonia in northern Greece rose. The great slave owners of the Greek states regarded Macedonia as a savior, hoping that it would not only free Greece from the crisis of the polis, but also free Greece from the control of Persia. So a pro-Macedonian faction was formed in Greece. In order to cater to the greed of Greek slave owners, King Philip II of Macedonia put forward the slogan of bringing war to the East (that is, the Persian Empire) and bringing wealth back to Greece. In 334 BC, Alexander, the king of New Macedonia, led an army eastward on the pretext that the Persians had invaded Greece before, but Greece had not provoked Persia at that time; Now he Alexander wants to avenge the Greeks. Therefore, after ten years of war, Alexander destroyed the Persian Empire and established the Alexander Empire, thus ending the two-century dispute between Greece and Persia.
Persian Empire and the End of Ancient Civilization in West Asia and North Africa
The era of the rise of the Persian Empire was an era of prosperity and decline of ancient civilizations in West Asia and North Africa. The rise of the Persian Empire plays an important role in the history of ancient civilizations in West Asia and North Africa (that is, ancient civilizations in the Near East).
Persian Empire is the highest stage of the ancient civilization in West Asia and North Africa from a small country with few people to a regional kingdom and empire. In the middle of 4000 BC (about 3500 BC), all over the world, first of all, the Sumerian region south of the two river basins in West Asia and Egypt in the Nile basin in North Africa gradually entered the era of civilization, and several small countries were formed in these two regions. At that time, the two regions developed independently and had little contact with each other. After 3000 BC, first in Egypt, then in the two river basins, a unified country was formed, and absolute monarchy appeared. By the end of 2000 BC, Egypt had conquered and formed a slave empire across West Asia and North Africa. In the early period of 1000 BC, the Assyrian Empire was formed in West Asia, including two civilized regions, namely, the two river basins and Egypt. The Persian Empire, which rose in the middle of BC 1000, is not only much larger than the Egyptian Empire and Assyrian Empire (including the three civilization centers of Egypt and the Indus River valley, close to the edge of Greece, the fourth civilization center), but also has much richer and deeper connotations. It has formed a set of mature systems for maintaining and managing the empire (such as provincial system, tax system, coinage system, post road system, military system, religious policy, policy towards the ruling class in conquered areas, etc.). ), its former empire was incomplete or incomplete, but it was inherited by its later empire (Alexandria, especially the Roman Empire).
The Persian Empire was an empire in the era when iron was widely used and spread, the Egyptian Empire was an empire in the heyday of bronzes, and the Assyrian Empire was an empire in the era when iron was just used. The extensive use and spread of ironware is not only a great progress in productivity, but also a great influence on political and military development. It is in this era that the social division of labor is more detailed, the relationship between goods and money is more developed, the scale of exchange is more expanded, the content of exchange is richer, the field of exchange is broader, and people's horizons are broader. The iron age provided a stronger economic foundation and sharper weapons for large-scale wars, so the scale of wars was even larger. The wars launched by the Persian Empire, especially the Persian War, would have been unimaginable if it had not been backed by strong economic strength and if it had not been in the era when iron was widely used and spread. It was also in this era that a great empire across Asia, Africa and Europe was formed.
On the surface, the Persian Empire seems to be the product of pure military conquest (indeed, the establishment of the empire, from the Egyptian Empire to the Assyrian Empire to the Persian Empire, was achieved through cruel wars of conquest, and there would be no empire without conquest), but the formation of the Persian Empire, in a sense, is also the product of the comprehensive development of social economy, politics, military and even culture in West Asia, North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, and is the economy of these regions. At the same time, the Persian Empire objectively provided a broader stage for economic and cultural exchanges in West Asia and North Africa. In order to consolidate their rule, the Persians also took some measures that were conducive to strengthening exchanges and contacts, thus making this exchange and contact reach a higher stage (the coin-making system and the post-road system objectively played this role).
However, the existence of the Persian Empire also played another role, that is, it disrupted the normal process of independent development of slave economy in West Asia and North Africa; Its conquest war brought great disaster to the residents in the imperial territory; It disturbs and destroys the normal order and rules of economic and cultural exchanges in West Asia and North Africa, destroys some conditions of original regional exchanges, and marks the exchanges and contacts in these areas as conquerors. Moreover, this kind of communication was limited to the empire, which restricted the communication and contact between parts of West Asia and North Africa and the Greek world, or even completely cut off.
The ancient civilizations in West Asia and North Africa were once an important center of world civilization and a holy place for other Mediterranean peoples to learn during the 3,000 years before the rise of the Persian Empire, and their civilizations had a great influence on other Mediterranean peoples. However, the development of nearly 3000 years has also brought a heavy burden to these two ancient civilizations and become a huge obstacle to their further development; Moreover, the development of nearly three thousand years has accumulated many contradictions (class contradictions and ethnic contradictions) in ancient civilizations in West Asia and North Africa, and the decadent nature of the ruling class has been exposed. However, Persians, as a new nation, appeared on the Iranian plateau in the eastern Mediterranean. They don't have a heavy burden, nor do they have so many sharp and complicated contradictions. They absorbed the advanced achievements of ancient civilizations in West Asia and North Africa to enrich and develop themselves. And use the internal contradictions of ancient civilizations in West Asia and North Africa to conquer. However, after all, the Persian Empire grew up in the soil of civilization in the Near East. While conquering this vast area, it also carried some cultural burdens from West Asia and North Africa to itself, making itself the focus of all contradictions. In addition, the economic and cultural ties within the empire are very fragile, the development between regions is extremely unbalanced, the natural economy is still dominant, and the development of commodity-currency relations is subject to many restrictions. So the Persian Empire itself was still very unstable. Therefore, when the decay of its ruling group has lost its original vitality, its collapse is inevitable, and it is a very rapid and complete collapse.
Early civilizations in West Asia and North Africa developed in areas suitable for farming. Although both of them paid equal attention to agriculture and animal husbandry at first, gradually, agriculture occupied a dominant position in these two early civilizations. These two centers of agricultural civilization not only developed earlier, but also developed rapidly. However, the early civilizations in West Asia and North Africa did not develop independently. They have frequent exchanges and conflicts with the surrounding nomadic areas. The farming world in the two river basins was conquered by the surrounding nomadic tribes several times, and the earliest Sumerian civilization and Akkadian civilization were pushed off the historical stage by these nomadic tribes (Egypt was also invaded by nomadic tribes, but its civilization tradition was not interrupted before the Persian Empire invaded). The relationship between the farming world and the nomadic world is not only manifested in the invasion and conquest of the nomadic world, but also in the invasion and conquest of the nomadic world by the farming world. The relationship between the farming world and the nomadic world is not only manifested in invasion and conquest, but also in economic and cultural exchanges, which has promoted the historical progress of both sides. Judging from the general trend of development, the interaction between the farming world and the nomadic world is getting bigger and wider.
The Persian people used to lag far behind the two river basins and Egypt. Its relationship with ancient civilizations in West Asia and North Africa, in a sense, can also be said to be the relationship between nomadic world and farming world. This is not only because the Persians were a nomadic tribe in 2000 BC; Moreover, because four of its 10 tribes were engaged in animal husbandry when they conquered the ancient agricultural civilization areas in West Asia and North Africa, their ancient agricultural civilization was far behind that in Sri Lanka and North Africa. Persians conquered three civilization centers with a backward nation, approached the edge of the fourth civilization center, and ruled on it, maintaining and ruling such a huge empire for about 200 years, showing a larger scale and providing a more vivid picture for the exchange and conflict between the farming world and the nomadic world.
In short, the rise of the first Persian empire in the ancient world across Asia, Africa and Europe interrupted the independent development of the original ancient civilizations in West Asia and North Africa. At the end of 4th century BC, the Persian Empire was replaced by the Alexander Empire of Greece-Macedonia, which marked the end of ancient civilizations in West Asia and North Africa (their writing was forgotten for 2000 years, which is a vivid example). On the contrary, the Alexander Empire and its successor, the Roman Empire, undoubtedly learned many useful things from the tradition of the Persian Empire. Therefore, the Persian Empire not only summarized the ancient civilizations of West Asia and North Africa, but also provided reference for the later classical civilizations of Greece and Rome, and played a bridge role in connecting the past with the future.