Hi there, I'm Ms. Roberts.

Thank you for joining me today for this history lesson from our unit all about ancient Greece.

In this unit, we are finding out about one very important ancient Greek person, and that person is Alexander the Great.

To better understand Alexander's story, this lesson is going to give you a lot of important historical background.

The background is a conflict that was happening for many years between the civilizations of ancient Greece and the Persian Empire.

By the end of the lesson today, you will be able to explain some of the famous battles that took place during that conflict between the Greeks and the Persians.

I'd like to begin by going through some key words with you.

These are very important words that you may not have heard before today, but they're going to be very useful in this lesson and for you to be able to use yourself to talk about the war between Greece and Persia.

So listen carefully while I say the words, and then you can try repeating them for yourself.

The first key word is conquer.

This is a verb.

Conquer.

Can you say that? Excellent.

Our next key word is runner.

Can you say runner? Lovely.

Then we have acropolis.

This is an ancient Greek word.

Acropolis.

Can you try that one? Nice.

Okay.

And then we have sea-battle.

Can you say sea-battle? Very good.

Now I'll give you a definition of each of the words to begin with, and as we use the words in the lesson, I'll be highlighting them again for you.

So the first of our key words was that verb, to conquer.

So when there is a war, which is the situation we are exploring today.

In warfare, when you conquer something, you can conquer a place or a group of people.

That means that you have defeated them in a battle, and then you can take over them.

So you become the ruler of those people or the ruler of that place.

That's to conquer.

Next, we had the word runner.

Now, in the context of this situation here in this lesson, the runner is a person who's a messenger.

And the messenger is someone who carries a message, a very important message, by running from one place to another.

Today, we can think of runners as athletes in the Olympic Games.

And even in the TV and film industry, a job of a runner is to transport messages and information and even objects from one place to another around a film set.

Isn't that interesting? The ancient Greek keyword that we heard earlier was acropolis.

Now ancient Greece is a very hilly country.

It's not very flat at all.

There are lots and lots of hills and mountains.

And within most ancient Greek cities, there would be one hill that was very important, and the top of that hill would be fortified, it would be strengthened.

So that strengthened part of the top of a hill in an ancient Greek city was called the acropolis.

Finally, we had the word sea-battle.

We're in the context of warfare here because we are looking at the war that happened between Greece and Persia.

A sea-battle is when boats are used to attack a country during a war.

So the battle doesn't take place by people physically fighting each other on land, it actually takes place by people attacking each other with boats at sea.

Today's lesson, I have split into three parts because there are three key battles in this conflict that I would like to tell you about.

The first battle we are going to look at is called the Battle of Marathon.

And later, we'll be looking at two other important battles.

They're the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis.

So let's begin by looking at the Battle of Marathon.

Now we have a map here, and we want to start before the war began.

I want to explain how and why this war started.

The map shows the territory that belonged to the Persian Empire at the time the war began.

So all of those areas, the green part, the blue part, and the orange parts of that map belonged to the Persians.

If you look in the west of that map, you can see Greece is there.

And the orange area that belonged to the Persians is just starting to creep slowly into the territory that belonged to ancient Greece.

Now the year this war started was 499 BCE.

The Persian Empire, as we can see from the map, had been expanding closer and closer towards the lands of ancient Greece.

They had already taken over the land of ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley.

Their king at that time was called Darius III, and he was very hungry to expand the Persian Empire further than it had ever expanded before.

He had his sights firmly set on conquering and ruling over the city-states of ancient Greece.

This started a war between Greece and Persia that was going to last for another 50 years.

The first major battle of this war between Greece and Persia happened at a place called Marathon in the year 490 BCE.

Now you can see the location of Marathon marked on this map.

Take a moment to look at the map and think about that location.

You can see that Marathon is a place situated on the coast.

And it is northeast of the very important ancient Greek city of Athens.

Now the Persians chose Marathon because it was a strategic location.

They chose it because they wanted to attack by boat.

The Persians arrived by their boats at Marathon, and they jumped from their boats into the shallow water of the bay and marched quickly towards the beach.

The Greek soldiers were there waiting for them on the beach at Marathon; they were ready to defend their territory.

There were twice as many Persian soldiers as there were Greek soldiers.

So from the very beginning here, we can see that the Persians had the advantage.

Let's stop at this point for a quick check on our learning before we continue this journey.

Quick multiple choice question for you here: How did the Persians travel to Marathon? On horseback, by walking, by boat, or in chariots? Make your choice now.

Have you chosen one? They arrived by boat.

As we saw from the map, Marathon was located on the coast, and the Persians chose this location because they wanted to attack by boat.

So what happened next? Let's find out.

When the Persians arrived at Marathon in their boats, they jumped from the boats into the shallow waters of the bay and marched towards the beach, where the Greek soldiers were waiting.

The Battle of Marathon happened there on the beach.

There were about twice as many Persian soldiers on those boats as there were Greek soldiers waiting on the beach.

So from the very start of this conflict, the Persian soldiers really did have an advantage over the Greeks.

There may have been fewer of them, but the ancient Greeks had other strategies, they were highly skilled and well-trained for fighting in the army.

The Greek soldiers wore bronze helmets, and they had metal armour for protection.

They were known as hoplites.

They carried weapons called spears or swords, and they had large round shields that they could use to push back their enemies.

All of these things and a lot of teamwork and strength helped the Greeks to defeat the Persians at the Battle of Marathon.

The remaining Persian soldiers were forced to retreat, and they ran back to their boats and sailed away.

You can see some examples of the shields and the weapons that I was just describing in this illustration.

This victory was very important for the ancient Greeks.

So after this battle, one of the soldiers was sent as a runner to go to the city of Athens to announce the news of their great victory over the Persians.

The distance between the two locations is equal to about 26 miles.

That's a very long way, and in ancient Greece, in the summer sun, it would've been a very gruelling and difficult task.

This important run has been remembered throughout history thanks to running events that are still held today called marathons.

Marathons take place all around the world, and they're part of the Olympic games too.

Athletes run the same distance as the Greek runner did when the Greeks successfully stopped the Persians from invading at Marathon.

So we are now at the point where the Persians have started their attack on ancient Greece.

They have first invaded at Marathon, and on this occasion, the ancient Greeks have managed to defeat the Persians and defend their territory.

Let's stop here at this point in the story and try some activities about what we know so far.

I'm going to read you three statements from the Oak Academy children.

I would like you to listen and decide which of the statements has the correct factual information.

Be careful and listen closely because there could be more than one correct statement.

Who knows? Jun says that at Marathon, the Greeks and the Persians had a sea-battle.

Aisha says that at Marathon, the Greeks defeated the Persians.

And Sam says that at Marathon, the Persian soldiers outnumbered the Greek soldiers.

Pause the video now while you decide which of those statements has correct factual information.

Have you decided? Let's look at the statements more closely together.

So let's start with Jun's statement.

"At Marathon, the Greeks and the Persians had a sea-battle." Sea-battle was one of our keywords from earlier, and a sea-battle is a battle that happens at sea when two enemies attack each other with boats.

The Persians did arrive at Marathon by boat, but the Battle of Marathon happened on the beach.

So it was actually a land battle, it was not a sea-battle.

Aisha says that at Marathon, the Greeks defeated the Persians.

That is correct.

Sam says that at Marathon, the Persian soldiers outnumbered the Greek soldiers.

That means that there were more Persians than there were Greeks, and that is also correct.

Did you identify both of those correct statements? Let's now move on to an ordering activity about the situation we've discovered so far.

I would like you to use the numbers one to six to show the correct order of these events, and I have already identified the first one for you.

This all started because the Persian Empire wanted to conquer the ancient Greek city-states.

Read the statements, find out what happened next, and go from there until you have all six events in the correct order.

Pause the video now and complete the activity.

Have you finished? Good job! Let's look at the answers together then.

So we know that it started when the Persian Empire wanted to conquer the ancient Greek city-states.

So, number two was that the Persian soldiers arrived at Marathon in their boats and they were ready to attack.

Then, number three, this battle took place on the beach at Marathon.

Number four, the smaller Greek army worked together and defeated the Persians.

Number five, the Persian army was forced to retreat to go back to their boats and they left.

And then, finally, the Greek soldiers sent a runner to announce their victory in Athens.

Did you put all those things in the correct historical order? Great work! Okay, so we're going to look at another important battle now.

This battle is called the Battle of Thermopylae.

This happened after the Battle of Marathon.

So although the Persians were defeated at Marathon, that didn't stop them from coming back and trying again.

20 years after the Battle of Marathon, in 480 BC, this Persian king, Xerxes, also tried, just like Darius did, to conquer ancient Greece.

Xerxes, however, used a different strategy to attack ancient Greece.

He didn't attack by boat in the same way that Darius had done at Marathon.

Instead, Xerxes and his Persian army invaded ancient Greece in the north by land.

They invaded at a place called Thermopylae.

You can see where Thermopylae is on this map.

It's much further from Athens than Marathon was, but it's right at the top of the north of ancient Greece, which was on the border of lands that the Persian Empire already ruled over.

The Battle of Thermopylae was going to be one of the most important and significant battles of the war between Greece and Persia.

So before we find out what happened at Thermopylae, let's just make sure we've been paying attention so far with a quick check.

Here's a multiple-choice question: How did the Persians invade at Thermopylae? A, by underground passages? B, by disguising themselves? C, by the sea in boats? Or D, by land? Make your choice now.

Ready? Did you choose option D, land? That's the right answer.

Good job! There were no underground passages, they didn't disguise themselves, and they didn't arrive by sea, because this is inland, it's not on the coast.

Let's find out what happened next then at Thermopylae.

Here's the map again, so you can see Thermopylae there to the north of Athens.

And again, when they arrived at Thermopylae, although the Greek soldiers were there and ready to defend themselves, the Persian army outnumbered the Greeks.

It is actually believed by many historians that there were as many as 120,000 Persian soldiers and just 7,000 Greeks.

The ancient Greek soldiers were led by some very highly trained soldiers from the city-state of Sparta, and they tried to defend by blocking a main route that led from Thermopylae to Athens.

For a while, this did hold back the Persian army.

However, the Persian armies realised that that wasn't the only route between Thermopylae and Athens, and soon they found themselves another path.

Finding that alternative route allowed the Persians to make great progress and begin to take control of this battle.

As it became clear that the Persians were gaining ground and control in this battle, the Greeks knew that their defeat was imminent.

The leader of the Greek army decided to give an order to tell most of his soldiers to retreat, to try and go back home.

Only a few soldiers remained there on the battlefield with him, and they did try desperately for three days to hold the larger Persian army and defend their lands.

Eventually though, the Persian army was just too big and too strong, and they did defeat the Greeks after a very arduous three-day battle.

This victory at Thermopylae was a key victory for the Persians because it was their gateway towards conquering not only the city-state of Athens but even more territories of ancient Greece.

After the battle, the Persians quickly made their way south, heading towards the important city of Athens.

On the way, they conquered many other ancient Greek towns and villages and the people that lived there.

By the time they got to Athens, luckily, a lot of Athenian people had managed to escape.

Those people had headed towards other safer areas in Greece.

Some of the Athenian people did stay, and they tried to defend their city and to protect the acropolis where an important temple was situated.

But the Persians ransacked the city.

They went to the acropolis, and they burned it to the ground, and they destroyed the temple that sat on top of it.

The photograph shows the ruins of some statues that have been unearthed in Athens that are believed to have been damaged at that time.

So at this point in the story, the Persians lost the first battle at Marathon, and 20 years later, they came back again with a different king to attack in a different location.

And this time, they were successful, which has allowed the Persians to enter the city of Athens.

At this point in the story, let's pause and try some activities before we move on.

We're going to start with this true or false situation.

I'm going to read a statement.

I want you to think carefully, you can talk to a learning partner if you want, and then decide whether this statement is true or false.

The Persians defeated the Greeks at the Battle of Thermopylae and gained control of Athens.

Is that true or is that false? Have you reached a decision? Okay, let's look at it together.

I believe that this statement is true.

Do you agree? The Persians defeated the Greeks at the Battle of Thermopylae, and then they gained control of Athens.

Now, as historians, we don't just make statements and facts without having some extra evidence or explanation to back up what we are saying.

So I'm going to read you two more sentences now, and I would like you to choose which of these sentences is best to back up how we know that it is true that the Persians defeated the Greeks.

A, Following their victory, the Persians ransacked Athens, burned the acropolis to the ground, and destroyed the temple at the top.

Or B, following their victory, the Persians ransacked Sparta, burned the acropolis to the ground, and destroyed the temple at the top.

Make your choice now.

Have you decided? I chose option A.

Did you? Yes, this explains what happens as a direct consequence of the Persians winning that battle.

So if the Persians hadn't won that battle, Athens wouldn't have been ransacked and the Acropolis wouldn't have been burned.

So statement A justifies that we know it is true that the Persians defeated the Greeks at Thermopylae.

Let's try an activity together.

I've got some statements here.

Some of these statements describe things that happened at the Battle of Thermopylae, and some of them do not.

I want you to put a cross for statements that did not happen at Thermopylae, and I want you to put a tick for things that did happen at Thermopylae.

Pause the video now whilst you complete the activity.

All done? Good job! Let's look at the answers together.

So the Persians attacked Greece at sea and they had a sea-battle.

That was your example.

That did not happen at Thermopylae.

The Persian army outnumbered the Greek army.

Yes, it did.

That's true.

That did happen at Thermopylae.

Next, the Greeks and the Persians fought each other for three days.

That is true.

Remember, we talked about how brave it was for those soldiers to stay on and fight even though they knew they weren't going to win.

The Persians forced the Greek army to retreat.

Yes, that did happen.

Some of the soldiers tried to get home.

All of the Greek soldiers fled, leaving Thermopylae to the Persians.

That's not quite true, is it? Because we know that those soldiers who stayed fought on for three days.

So we'll put a cross for that one.

The Persians sent a runner to Athens to announce their victory.

No, that's not what happened.

The Persians continued to send their army all the way to Athens, conquering the towns and villages on the way.

Finally, we have the fact that Athens was attacked and the temple at the acropolis was destroyed.

And yes, because of the Persians winning the Battle of Thermopylae, this did happen in Athens.

So a tick for the last one.

Did you identify all four ticks and all three crosses correct? You're doing really well today.

So we have one more battle to look at in the war between Greece and Persia, and this is called the Battle of Salamis.

The Battle of Salamis also happened in 480 BCE.

So at a time when the Persians were gaining power in ancient Greece, another battle happened a bit further south.

This battle at Salamis was, in fact, a very large sea-battle.

Remember, a sea-battle from our keywords is a battle that happens at sea when enemies attack each other in boats.

The ancient Greeks and the Persians used special kinds of warships called triremes to attack each other in their sea-battles.

These warships, called triremes, were used themselves as weapons because each of the enemies would try to ram into each other's boats.

And each boat would be filled with trained soldiers called arches who would use bows and arrows to fire at the enemy.

So at this point in the timeline, the Persians have been successful at Thermopylae, they have conquered Athens, and now this battle at Salamis is about to begin.

Let's pause quickly here for a check of our learning so far.

Here are three maps.

I want to know which of these three maps shows us the location of a sea-battle? Is it A, B, or C? Make your choice now.

Okay, let's have a look at the answers together.

A shows the battle of Thermopylae, and that's clearly inland, it's not on the coast at all.

So that's not the right answer.

Option B is the battle of Salamis.

This is the battle that was a sea-battle.

We're going to find out some more about this sea battle in a moment.

Option C is Marathon.

If you remember from the start of the lesson, although the Persians arrived by boat to the Battle of Marathon, the battle itself took place on the beach.

Let's find out more now about what happened at Salamis.

Just as we have seen at the battles of Marathon and at Thermopylae, the Persian soldiers outnumbered the Greek soldiers very significantly.

There were many more Persian soldiers than there were Greeks.

But the Greeks were aware of this.

They understood that this would be the case.

And so this time, learning from their history, they used that fact to their advantage.

Instead of continuing to fight and return fire at this sea-battle with their enemies, the Greek ships instead stopped firing, turned around, and began to retreat.

"Well," thought the Persians, "we've won, haven't we?" And they soon began to relax and celebrate their victory, and they decided to follow the Greek boats back to the lands that they believed they had now conquered.

The Greek boats headed for a very narrow strait.

Now a strait is a very thin passage of water that flows in between two cliffs.

This point, this strait, was the strait of Salamis.

When they entered the strait, the Greek ships stopped there.

They defended that strait because it was so small and narrow that the small number of Greek boats were able to sufficiently block the way for the Persians.

The Persians simply could not get through.

Any Persians that tried to attack or tried to come into the strait were ambushed by the Greeks instead.

And the Greeks actually managed to sink many Persian ships that attempted to make their way into the strait at Salamis.

The Persians knew that they were not going to win this battle.

So because they were at a disadvantage due to their position, they decided to retreat.

Because they had been defeated at Salamis, which was south of Athens, this prevented the Persians from then entering southern territories in ancient Greek and expanding any further.

It took another year before the ancient Greeks managed to force the Persians out of ancient Greece entirely.

But finally, the ancient Greeks were able to start rebuilding the great city of Athens once again.

The Persians may have conquered many other ancient lands like the lands of the Indus Valley and ancient Egypt, but the Greeks stopped them in their tracks and they proved that they could not conquer ancient Greece.

You have done so well listening to a lot of information today, lots of dates and places and details.

So let's end the lesson with some quick activities to bring all that learning together.

We're going to start with another quick multiple choice question, the same maps as you looked at before.

Which of these maps now shows us the location of a battle that the Greeks won? Look at the maps carefully, there could be more than one correct answer.

Pause the video and make your choice.

Have you decided? Map A shows us the location of the Battle of Thermopylae.

Now we know the Persians won that one because Thermopylae was when they were able to then travel on to Athens and take over that city.

So that's not a battle won by the Greeks.

Option B is the Battle of Salamis that we have just been hearing about, the sea-battle where the Persians were tricked into heading towards a narrow strait.

The Greeks definitely won that sea-battle.

Option C is the location of the Battle of Marathon.

That was the first attempt the Persians made to invade ancient Greece, and they were not successful.

The Greeks won there as well.

Did you identify both correct answers? Well done! And now let's have a look at our last activity for today.

You can see the map again here, but I've now put all three locations onto this map for you.

We have the locations of Thermopylae, Marathon, and Salamis.

I want you to choose one of those important battles and write your own short account of what happened there.

You could include details about how the Persians arrived at the battle, who won the battle, and any other important details that you think you want to include.

You can work with a learning partner for extra support, and you can look back through everything you've discovered in this lesson.

Pause the video now while you complete your account.

Finished? Well done for your very hard work.

I'm going to share some examples with you now from the Oak Academy Children.

This example is from Jacob, and he's written about the Battle of Marathon.

At Marathon, the Persians arrived by boat.

The two armies battled each other on the beach.

There were more Persians than Greeks, but the Greek soldiers managed to win.

The Persians had to sail away and retreat.

A runner was sent to Athens to announce the Greek victory, and this is still remembered today through athletes running marathons.

Well done, Jacob.

Laura has written about Thermopylae.

She says that at the Battle of Thermopylae, the Persians arrived by land.

There were more Persians than Greeks, but even though most of the Greek army retreated, some Greek soldiers stayed to fight.

It took three days for the Persians to defeat them.

The Persians then travelled to Athens, took control of the city, and burned down the acropolis.

Finally, Alex has written about Salamis.

The Battle of Salamis was a sea-battle, so the Persians came by boats.

There were more Persians than Greeks, but the Greeks had learned from history.

The Greeks tricked the Persians and trapped them in a narrow strait.

The Persians tried to attack, but the Greeks sank lots of the Persian ships.

The Greeks won and they stopped the Persians from conquering any more of ancient Greece.

Well done, Alex.

And well done you as well for all of your hard work today.

Let's end the lesson with a review of what we have discovered today.

We know that the war began because the Persian king Darius III wanted to conquer all the city-states of ancient Greece.

The first attempt to conquer ancient Greece was made at the Battle of Marathon in the year 499 BCE.

The Greeks won that battle, and they sent a runner all the way to Athens to announce their victory.

20 years later, in 480 BCE, King Xerxes then attacked at Thermopylae.

It took the Persians three days to defeat a small Greek army, but they were successful, and the Persians took control of Athens and destroyed the acropolis.

That same year, the Battle of Salamis happened.

This was a sea-battle that was won by the Greeks, and it was important because this battle stopped the Persians from conquering any more land in ancient Greece.

Well done for some very hard work and some great thinking today.

I'm looking forward to seeing you again for another lesson about ancient Greece.

Bye for now.