Battle of Plataea

Battle context

The Battle of Plataea was the final land battle of the second Persian invasion of Greece, fought near the city of Plataea in Boeotia. It brought into direct confrontation the Achaemenid army under Mardonius against a Spartan-led Hellenic alliance that included Athens, Corinth, Tegea, Megara, and other city-states, under the overall command of Pausanias. The engagement involved forces of vastly unequal size on paper, with the Hellenic alliance numbering between 75,000 and 85,000 against a reported Achaemenid strength of 300,000. The scale of recorded casualties — 257,000 on the Achaemenid side against 10,000 for the alliance — reflects the decisive character of the outcome. As the concluding land engagement of the invasion, Plataea effectively ended the Persian effort to subjugate mainland Greece by force, removing Mardonius and the main Achaemenid field army as an operational threat. Its result complemented the naval engagements of the broader Greco-Persian Wars, consolidating Greek resistance and closing the period of direct Persian military pressure on the Greek mainland that had defined the conflict since the late sixth century.