Mardonios

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Mardonios ( old Persian Marduniya , Persian Mrdunya , Greek Μαρδόνιος (Mardónios), Latin Mardonius ; † 479 BC ) was a Persian general of the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th and early 5th centuries BC.

He was a son of the conspirator Gobryas and on his mother's side a nephew of the Great King Dareios I. He himself married a daughter of the Great King named Artazostre and thus became a brother-in-law of his cousin Xerxes I.

Mardonios led the first Persian campaign in 492 BC. Against Thrace and Macedonia . He was sent out with a fleet and a land army to subjugate the Greeks to the Persian Empire. After he had restored the democratic constitutions in the Ionian cities in order to win the Greeks through friendly means and friendship, he moved over the Hellespont to Macedonia. On its coast, his fleet failed on Mount Athos , while the land army suffered great losses from the Bryger , whereupon Mardonios returned to Asia.

During the second Persian War under Xerxes I , his cousin, in 480 BC. BC he campaigned - as Herodotus reports - emphatically and against the advice of Xerxes' experienced uncle Artabanos for the campaign, the third Persian campaign, which he was also planning.

He received the supreme command of the Persian land army that invaded Greece. After the defeat of the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis , Mardonios stayed with a large army in Thessaly, where he wintered. In 479 he moved back to Hellas , destroyed Athens a second time, but was defeated in September by the Greeks under the leadership of the Spartan Pausanias in the battle of Plataiai and fell at the hand of the Spartan Aeimnestes.

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Remarks

  1. ↑ Herodotus 7.5.
  2. ↑ Herodotus 6:43.
personal data
SURNAME Mardonios
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mardonius (Latinized); Mrdunya (Persian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Persian general and son-in-law Darius I.
DATE OF BIRTH 6th century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 479 BC Chr.