Plataea, Not Salamis, Ends Persia's Invasion of Greece
What happened
After the Persian navy's defeat at Salamis in September 480 BCE, Xerxes himself returned home but left his general Mardonius in charge of a large land force to continue the invasion. The following year, a combined Greek army, the largest single Greek force assembled up to that point, drawing on Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and other city-states under the overall command of the Spartan regent Pausanias, met Mardonius near Plataea in Boeotia. The Greeks won decisively, and Mardonius himself was killed in the fighting, struck down by a rock thrown by a Spartan. On what several ancient accounts describe as roughly the same time, a Greek fleet also destroyed most of the remaining Persian naval presence at Mycale in Ionia.
Why it matters
Salamis had been a naval victory, but it left Persia's land army, still larger than anything the Greeks could field, occupying Greek territory. Plataea destroyed that army and killed the general leading it, which is why many historians treat Plataea, not Salamis, as the battle that actually ended Persia's invasion of the Greek mainland. Despite this, Plataea is far less remembered today than Thermopylae or Salamis. Both of those battles make for a clean, dramatic single narrative, a doomed last stand and a naval trap, while Plataea was a sprawling engagement involving several separated Greek contingents fighting across rough terrain, much harder to reduce to one memorable story.
How we know
Herodotus gives the fullest ancient account of Plataea, including troop numbers, the Greek chain of command under Pausanias, and Mardonius's death, though his account was written decades after the battle and some specific figures are treated by historians as rough rather than precise. The Spartan credited with killing Mardonius appears under different names in different ancient retellings, a minor naming variance within the ancient tradition itself.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Battle of Plataea · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Part of a timelineAncient Greece26 events · From Bronze Age palaces on Crete to a Roman general's sack of Corinth, the invention of democracy, philosophy, and Western theatre, every event sourced.View all →