Christmas Peace for Greece and Persia After 2300 Years of Strife.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue IX, 28 February 1903, Page 566

Christmas Peace for Greece and Persia After 2300 Years of Strife.

The most remarkable event in the establishing of the present era vf peare and goodwill among all nations is tie reconciliation of Greece and Persia, after an enmity which has lasted 2393 year's. A despatch from Athens last Christmas contained the announcement that diplomatic relations were at last about to be resumed between these two nations. This is an event so strange that it has not a parallel in the history of the world. No national quarrel has ever before lasted so long as the Greco-Persian feud. Neither has any quarrel been so generally recorded in the literature of all nations. The famous battles of Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis have been celebrated by the chroniclers of all nations, and the memory of those battles has done much to keep alive the feeling of enmity between the two nations most interested.

The last Persian Ambassadors were withdrawn from Athens and Sparta shortly before the invasion of Greece by the Persian army, in the year 491 before the Christian era. Previous to that time it was usual for Ambassadors to be recalled before hostilities began and sent back as soon as peace was concluded. But such was the hatred developed between the two nations during the Persian invasion that from that time until the present neither nation has taken any official recognition of the existence of the other.

The origin of this twenty-four-eentury feud forms one of the most dramatic pages in ancient history. It was the inspiration of Byron’s most striking poems and a theme on which historians have never tired of dwelling. In the year 547 B.C. the Persians conquered the land of Lydia—a country in Asia Minor not far from Greece. There were a great many Grecians in Lydia, and they were badly treated by the Governors whom the Persian King appointed. In revenge the Greeks stirred up a rebellion, and obtained a fleet of twentyfive ships from Athens to attack the Persian navy. The war continued for several years, and in 495 B.C. the Persians were victorious.

Darius, the Persian King, was deeply enraged at the assistance which the Greeks had given to his enemies, and four years later withdrew his Ambassadors from Greece, and declared war. A great army was put on board the Persian fleet and landed in Greece and Marathon, a curved harbour surrounded by hills. The leader of the Athenian army, Miltiades, had only 10,000 men with which to oppose the host of Persians, but the Greeks charged so fiercely down hill that the Persians were driven into the sea, leaving 6000 dead upon the shores The Greek loss was only 192. Shortly after this Darius died, heartbroken at his defeat, leaving his son Xerxes to take up the quarrel. The latter toiled for eleven years preparing an enormous army for the invasion of Greece. A million men were collected from forty-six different nations and hurled upon the tiny republics of Greece. At Thermopylae this vast host was held back for hours by a thousand Greeks under Leonidas; at Salamis the Persian fleet was defeated, 200 out of 1000 ships being destroyed, and at Plataea the invaders were utterly routed and driven back to Asia.