Battle of Artemisium 480 BC
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Year | 480 BC | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
|---|---|---|
| Era | Ancient (before 500) | derived from year |
| Location | Greece | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Greco-Persian Wars, Second Persian invasion of Greece | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | Achaemenid Empire, Aegina, Ancient Corinth, Chalcis, Classical Athens, Epidaurus, Eretria, Megara, Sicyon, Sparta, Styra, Troezen | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 39.0527, 23.3178 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The Battle of Artemisium or Artemision was a series of naval engagements over three days during the second Persian invasion of Greece. The battle took place simultaneously with the land battle at Thermopylae, in August or September 480 BC, off the coast of Euboea and was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, including Sparta, Athens, Corinth and others, and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I.
The Persian invasion was a delayed response to the defeat of the first Persian invasion of Greece, which had been ended by the Athenian victory at the Battle of Marathon. King Xerxes had amassed a huge army and navy, and set out to conquer all of Greece. The Athenian general Themistocles proposed that the Allied Greeks block the advance of the Persian army at the pass of Thermopylae and simultaneously block the Persian navy at the Straits of Artemisium. An Allied naval force of 271 triremes was thus dispatched to await the arrival of the Persians.
Approaching Artemisium towards the end of summer, the Persian navy was caught in a gale off the coast of Magnesia and lost around a third of their 1200 ships.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Battle of Artemisium (revision 1375095070), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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Other battles of the Second Persian invasion of Greece
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All 5 battles of the Second Persian invasion of Greece →
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