title: Jez Butterworth

text: Jez and John-Henry Butterworth were named recipients of the Writers Guild of America West's 2011 Paul Selvin Award for their screenplay for the film "Fair Game" (2010), directed by Doug Liman and starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn.


title: Jez Butterworth

text: On 26 October 2012, Butterworth's play "The River" opened at the Royal Court Theatre, starring Dominic West, Laura Donnelly and Miranda Raison, with an appearance by Gillian Saker. "The River" had its US premiere on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theatre in a limited engagement in October 2014, starring Hugh Jackman and directed by Ian Rickson. Reception was positive, with London critics finding the work "lyrical", "beautifully written" and "suffuse[d] with wonder and beauty".


title: Jez Butterworth

text: Butterworth's play "The Ferryman" opened at the Royal Court Theatre in April 2017. Directed by Sam Mendes, it became the fastest selling play in the Royal Court Theatre's history. Set in rural Derry in 1981 and focusing on the events surrounding the deaths of the IRA hunger strikers, it received 15 five-star reviews, including all the major UK papers. "The Irish Times" said, "Although Butterworth is English, "The Ferryman" feels like a thoroughly Irish play, not only because there is not a single false note in the dialogue." The "Huffington Post" said that it was "one of the two or three greatest plays of the decade". But, "The Guardian"s Sean O'Hagan wrote, "I'm from Northern Ireland and it doesn't ring true", and it was "so close to a cultural stereotype as to be offensive". Two weeks later "The Irish Times" printed an opinion piece by actor Gerard Lee (of "Father Ted") entitled "In defence of "The Ferryman"". He challenged negative comments, calling the play "layered and powerful".


title: Jez Butterworth

text: "The Ferryman" won the 2017 "Evening Standard" Award for Best Play, the 2018 Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play, the 2018 WhatsOnStage Award for Best New Play, and the 2018 Olivier Award for Best New Play. It has played for over 350 performances at the Gielgud Theatre and transferred to Broadway in October 2018. The play won the 2019 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play and Tony Award for Best Play.


title: Mushishi

text: "Mushishi" has been adapted into an anime television series by Artland which aired in Fuji Television and BS Fuji between October 2005 and June 2006. It has been licensed by Funimation to its release in North America, while Madman Entertainment and Revelation Films licensed it for Australia and the United Kingdom respectively. A second anime series aired between April and December 2014, which has been licensed in North America by Aniplex of America, with two television specials airing in 2014 and an anime film released in 2015. A live-action film, directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, was released in late 2006. It has also spawned a video game and many types of "Mushishi"-related merchandise.


title: Mushishi

text: The "Mushishi" manga has been well received both by the public and critics. In Japan, it has frequently ranked in the weekly top ten list of best-selling manga, and the entire series has sold over 3.8 million copies. Both the manga and the anime have received several awards such as the Kodansha Manga Award and the Tokyo Anime Award, and numerous publications have praised them.


title: Mushishi

text: "Mushishi" is set in an imaginary time between the Edo and Meiji periods, featuring some 19th-century technology but with Japan still as a "closed country". The story features ubiquitous creatures called that often display what appear as supernatural powers. It is implied that there are many more primitive lifeforms than "normal" living things such as animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria, and Mushi is the most primitive of all. Due to their ethereal nature, most humans are incapable of perceiving Mushi and are oblivious to their existence, but there are a few who possess the ability to see and interact with Mushi. One such person is , the main character of the series voiced by Yuto Nakano in the original version and by Travis Willingham in the English dub. He employs himself as a , traveling from place to place to research Mushi and aid people suffering from problems caused by them.


title: Mushishi

text: The series is an episodic anthology with no overarching plotline in which the only common elements are Ginko and the Mushi. Ginko is a man with one green eye, who not only can see various types of mushi but also attracts them. Because of this ability, he is constantly wandering and smokes in order to keep the mushi away. He appears to have a generally laid back personality, however, he can be very serious and focused on his work when it comes to protecting people from mushi. He stresses that the mushi are not evil, but merely trying to survive like everyone else. A majority of the stories do not focus on Ginko but rely on him as a catalyst to move the story forward by diagnosing or curing mushi-related illnesses and phenomena.


title: Mushishi

text: Written and illustrated by Yuki Urushibara, "Mushishi" debuted as a one-shot in Kodansha's "Monthly Afternoon" on January 25, 1999. Later, it was serialized in Kodansha's "Afternoon Season Zōkan" from 1999 to 2002. It moved to "Monthly Afternoon" on December 25, 2002, and was serialized until August 25, 2008. Kodansha collected the chapters into ten "tankōbon" volumes published under the "Afternoon KC" line from November 20, 2000, to November 21, 2008. On November 21, 2013, Kodansha started to re-release the series in an "aizōban" format in their "KC Deluxe" line, concluding with the tenth on July 23, 2014.


title: Mushishi

text: At the 2006 Comic-Con, Del Rey Manga announced that it had licensed "Mushishi" for an English-language translation in North America. Del Rey published the first volume on January 30, 2007, and the last volume, a combined edition covering volumes 8 to 10, was released on July 27, 2010. Kodansha USA also released the manga in digital format between July 29 and August 12, 2014. The manga was also licensed in some countries such as in France by Kana, in Italy by Star Comics, in South Korea by Daewon C.I., and in Spain by Norma Editorial.


title: Mushishi

text: In addition, two additional chapters were published in the magazine on November 25 and December 25, 2013, respectively. They were encapsulated into a single "tankōbon" titled and released on April 23, 2014. Another special short was published in "Monthly Afternoon" on March 25, 2021.


title: Mushishi

text: The "Mushishi" anime adaptation was animated by Artland, directed by Hiroshi Nagahama, and produced by a group called ""Mushishi" Production Committee", which consists of Marvelous Entertainment, Avex Entertainment and SKY Perfect Well Think. The first 20 episodes of the series originally aired between October 23, 2005 and March 12, 2006 on Fuji Television. A digest was broadcast on May 7, 2006 by BS Fuji, which aired the last six episodes from May 14 to June 18 of the same year. Marvelous Entertainment and Avex released the series from January 25 to September 27, 2006 in five DVDs for sale, and at the same time in nine DVDs for rental. On March 28, 2008 a DVD box set containing all episodes was released; it was followed by a Blu-ray box set on March 27, 2009, and a Limited Edition Blu-ray box on December 20, 2013.


title: Mushishi

text: The anime series' licensing was announced by Funimation to North American release in January 2007. To promote the series' release, it hosted Nagahama at the Anime Expo 2007 between June 29 and July 2. In addition, Funimation exhibited the first four episodes in New York and Texas' locations such as ImaginAsian Theater, Studio Movie Grill, and Alamo Drafthouse, on July 23 and 24 of that year. The series was released in six DVDs between July 31, 2007 to February 26, 2008 by Funimation, which also streamed series on its own channel, Hulu, Joost, Anime News Network, Crackle, as well as distributed it to Comcast cable service. Funimation also released four box sets with all episodes: on December 16, 2008, on October 6, 2009, on July 6, 2010, and November 8, 2011. In United Kingdom, the series was released between October 22, 2007 and November 17, 2008 by Revelation Films in six DVD. Madman Entertainment acquired the series' distribution rights at AVCon in 2007, releasing it in a six-discs box set on January 14, 2009 in PAL region.


title: Mushishi

text: Based on the 2013 two-chapter side story, a special titled "Mushishi Tokubetsu-hen: Hihamukage" ("The Shadow That Devours the Sun") was broadcast on Tokyo MX, Tochigi TV, Gunma TV, and BS11 on January 4, 2014, and streamed by Niconico. Aniplex released the special on DVD and Blu-ray on April 23, 2014. A second anime television season titled started airing on April 5, 2014, on Tokyo MX and other channels. As with the special, the second season featured the same director, the same studio and main cast from the first season. After the broadcast of the tenth episode on June 21, the "first half" was finished. Another special, , aired on August 20 on BS11. The latter half of the second season started to air on October 19, and ended on December 21, 2014. "Zoku-Shō" first DVD compilation was released on July 23, 2014 in Japan, and the sixth—and last–was released on July 22, 2015. A sequel anime film titled , based on the manga's last arc, was announced in December 2014 and released on May 16, 2015 in Japan.


title: Mushishi

text: "Hihamukage" was streamed by Crunchyroll for premium members on January 4, 2014, and made available for free user a week later. In March, the second season was licensed for streaming by Aniplex of America and Crunchyroll as "Mushi-Shi -Next Passage-". In November, Madman Entertainment acquired its home media release rights for Australia. Late in the same month, Madman also licensed the series for streaming and made it available on its site AnimeLab. Madman released a DVD box set containing all "Next Passage" episodes, "Path of Thorns" and "Bell Droplets" on December 7, 2016.


title: Mushishi

text: Several books based on "Mushishi" have been released. A guidebook titled "Mushishi Official Book" was released by Kodansha on January 23, 2006. On June 30, and July 20, 2007, were released an artbook, and a book with staff commentaries on the anime series production, respectively. Two books have been released on April 23, and May 14, 2014; a and a respectively. On June 19, 2015, a "large format" art book was released by Kodansha.


title: Mushishi

text: The music for both "Mushishi" anime adaptation was composed by Toshio Masuda. Two soundtrack albums were released by Marvelous Entertainment and Geneon Entertainment for the first anime adaptation; the first on March 24, 2006 and the second on July 23, 2006. On June 25, 2015, the soundtrack for "Next Passage" was released by Aniplex.


title: Mushishi

text: A live-action "Mushishi" feature film, released at the 2006 Venice International Film Festival, was directed by Katsuhiro Otomo and starred Joe Odagiri. Also known as "Bugmaster" and "Mushi-Shi: The Movie" in English, it was released in Japanese theaters on March 24, 2007.


title: Mushishi

text: "Mushishi" was also adapted into a video game; the Nintendo DS game titled was developed by Tenky and published by Marvelous Entertainment in Japan on January 31, 2008.


title: Mushishi

text: From March 18 to 29, 2015, a "stage reading" event, which adapted six chapters from the manga into six separate performances, was held in Tokyo. It was directed by "Mushishi" anime director Hiroshi Nagahama and its original script was written by Kazuaki Nakamura, while the anime voice actors acted as their respective characters. The production used augmented reality on its visuals, which was designed to span a 270 degree field of view.


title: Mushishi

text: The series has won numerous awards: in 2003, the manga was awarded an Excellence Prize for manga at the 7th Japan Media Arts Festival, while in 2006, the series won the Kodansha Manga Award for general manga. At the 10th Japan Media Arts Festival, both the anime and manga series were placed among the top 10 in their respective categories for best manga and anime. The anime series won grand prizes in the categories of television series and best art direction (for Takashi Waki) at the 5th Tokyo Anime Award competition held at the Tokyo International Anime Fair in 2006, while Nagahama won the Animation Kobe Individual Award for his directing. It also ranked 13th in a "Top 20" poll conducted by Japanese anime magazine "Animage" in 2006. In the following year, "Mushishi" was placed in 9th on Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs's list of best manga, as well as ranked in 6th place on its list of best anime. Young Adult Library Services Association also listed the manga among 33 titles with "good quality literature and appealing reading for teens" in 2008.


title: Mushishi

text: "Mushishi" was also well received by Japanese-language readers. The ten volumes have sold over 3.8 million copies. Individual volumes frequently appeared on the weekly lists of best-selling manga there. Furthermore, the eighth volume was the 9th best-selling manga of Amazon.com in the first half of 2007. A similar feat was achieved by the last volume which was ranked 49th in the Oricon list of best-selling manga of the first half of 2009. In North America, ICv2 has listed the manga among the "Top 300 Graphic Novels" of the month twice. Readers of About.com voted it the best seinen manga released in North America in 2007. The sixth volume of "Mushishi" was also among the best-selling manga in Malaysia in the week of March 1, 2009.


title: Mushishi

text: "Mushishi" was chosen as the best manga of 2007 by Deb Aoki of About.com, elected the best anime series of 2007 by Anime News Network's Carl Kimlinger, and was ranked seventh by Ramsey Isler in IGN's list of the Top Anime of 2007. Aoki called it "a rare breed of manga: a smartly-written, original story that's told with simple yet mesmerizing imagery." Similarly, Kimlinger declared that "Its hypnotic rhythm, humanism, and naturalist's eye for beauty give it a charm that far outstrips mere entertainment value." Reviewer Jason Thompson intoned that while it may be "too mellow" for certain readers, he found praiseworthy its "very original vision, with a sort of 'flowing life' of its own, a biologist's precision mixed with creepy fairytales and a surreal, dreamy feel." Its storytelling was highly praised; Isler deemed it as "near flawless", while Pop Culture Shock's Ken Haley labeled it "an enjoyable and intriguing read", and Shirl Sazynski of Sequential Tart lauded its "short, spooky and breathtaking stories." Manga Life's Joy Kim stated that its lack of a central story allows one to enter at any volume, and that "the quality of the storytelling" will make fans want to read it in entirety. The "quiet and subtle stories that evoke strong emotions with great story crafting and a fine tune to the essence of what moves people" is the main appeal of the series, according to Holly Ellingwood of Active Anime. Both Ed Sizemore and Avi Weinryb, writing for Comics Worth Reading and Comic Book Bin respectively, said "Mushishi" has something to tell to readers, with the former commenting "If you want a manga to make you stop and think, this is the manga for you."


title: Mushishi

text: "Mushi-Shi -Next Passage-" was also well received by fans; almost all of its DVD and Blu-ray volumes made the Top 20 list of the Oricon best-selling charts. Jacob Hope Chapman of Anime News Network praised the maintenance of the visual quality and the improvement upon the quality of the stories, declaring that ""Mushi-Shi" is quickly evolving from an excellent series of fables about the natural world to a wholly unique masterpiece that a written review can't really do justice by." Chapman dubbed it "one of the all-time greatest animated anthology series." The Fandom Post's Kory Cerjak stated the series "is perhaps one of the most innovative shows out there in terms of storytelling." Ben Huber of Japanator praised its "soothing music and beautiful art", noting that "most anime struggle to create relatable and compelling characters in 12 or 24 episodes. "Mushishi" does it every week in one goddamn episode... and it does it with grace." Richard Eisenbeis of Kotaku said while it is worth watching simply for the quality of its imagery, it "is a series that is equal parts beautiful and haunting — often bringing more emotion in a 22-minute episode than most series can bring in their entire runs."


title: Crab Nebula

text: The Crab Nebula (catalogue designations M1, NGC 1952, Taurus A) is a supernova remnant and pulsar wind nebula in the constellation of Taurus. The common name comes from William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, who observed the object in 1842 using a telescope and produced a drawing that looked somewhat like a crab. The nebula was discovered by English astronomer John Bevis in 1731, and it corresponds with a bright supernova recorded by Chinese astronomers in 1054. The nebula was the first astronomical object identified that corresponds with a historical supernova explosion.


title: Crab Nebula

text: At an apparent magnitude of 8.4, comparable to that of Saturn's moon Titan, it is not visible to the naked eye but can be made out using binoculars under favourable conditions. The nebula lies in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way galaxy, at a distance of about from Earth. It has a diameter of , corresponding to an apparent diameter of some 7 arcminutes, and is expanding at a rate of about , or 0.5% of the speed of light.


title: Crab Nebula

text: At the center of the nebula lies the Crab Pulsar, a neutron star across with a spin rate of 30.2 times per second, which emits pulses of radiation from gamma rays to radio waves. At X-ray and gamma ray energies above 30 keV, the Crab Nebula is generally the brightest persistent gamma-ray source in the sky, with measured flux extending to above 10 TeV. The nebula's radiation allows detailed study of celestial bodies that occult it. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Sun's corona was mapped from observations of the Crab Nebula's radio waves passing through it, and in 2003, the thickness of the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan was measured as it blocked out X-rays from the nebula.


title: Crab Nebula

text: Modern understanding that the Crab Nebula was created by a supernova traces back to 1921, when Carl Otto Lampland announced he had seen changes in the nebula's structure. This


title: Crab Nebula

text: eventually led to the conclusion that the creation of the Crab Nebula corresponds to the bright SN 1054 supernova recorded by medieval astronomers in AD 1054.


title: Crab Nebula

text: The Crab Nebula was first identified in 1731 by John Bevis. The nebula was independently rediscovered in 1758 by Charles Messier as he was observing a bright comet. Messier catalogued it as the first entry in his catalogue of comet-like objects; in 1757, Alexis Clairaut reexamined the calculations of Edmund Halley and predicted the return of Halley's Comet in late 1758. The exact time of the comet's return required the consideration of perturbations to its orbit caused by planets in the Solar System such as Jupiter, which Clairaut and his two colleagues Jérôme Lalande and Nicole-Reine Lepaute carried out more precisely than Halley, finding that the comet should appear in the constellation of Taurus. It was in searching in vain for the comet that Charles Messier found the Crab Nebula, which he at first thought to be Halley's comet. After some observation, noticing that the object that he was observing was not moving across the sky, Messier concluded that the object was not a comet. Messier then realised the usefulness of compiling a catalogue of celestial objects of a cloudy nature, but fixed in the sky, to avoid incorrectly cataloguing them as comets. This realization led him to compile the "Messier catalogue".


title: Crab Nebula

text: William Herschel observed the Crab Nebula numerous times between 1783 and 1809, but it is not known whether he was aware of its existence in 1783, or if he discovered it independently of Messier and Bevis. After several observations, he concluded that it was composed of a group of stars. William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse observed the nebula at Birr Castle in 1844 using a telescope, and referred to the object as the "Crab Nebula" because a drawing he made of it looked like a crab. He observed it again later, in 1848, using a telescope but could not confirm the supposed resemblance, but the name stuck nevertheless.


title: Crab Nebula

text: The Crab Nebula was the first astronomical object recognized as being connected to a supernova explosion. In the early twentieth century, the analysis of early photographs of the nebula taken several years apart revealed that it was expanding. Tracing the expansion back revealed that the nebula must have become visible on Earth about 900 years before. Historical records revealed that a new star bright enough to be seen in the daytime had been recorded in the same part of the sky by Chinese astronomers on 4 July 1054, and probably also by Japanese observers.


title: Crab Nebula

text: In 1913, when Vesto Slipher registered his spectroscopy study of the sky, the Crab Nebula was again one of the first objects to be studied. Changes in the cloud, suggesting its small extent, were discovered by Carl Lampland in 1921. That same year, John Charles Duncan demonstrated that the remnant is expanding, while Knut Lundmark noted its proximity to the guest star of 1054.


title: Crab Nebula

text: In 1928, Edwin Hubble proposed associating the cloud with the star of 1054, an idea that remained controversial until the nature of supernovae was understood, and it was Nicholas Mayall who indicated that the star of 1054 was undoubtedly the supernova whose explosion produced the Crab Nebula. The search for historical supernovae started at that moment: seven other historical sightings have been found by comparing modern observations of supernova remnants with astronomical documents of past centuries.


title: Crab Nebula

text: After the original connection to Chinese observations, in 1934 connections were made to a 13th-century Japanese reference to a "guest star" in Meigetsuki a few weeks before the Chinese reference. The event was long considered unrecorded in Islamic astronomy, but in 1978 a reference was found in a 13th-century copy made by Ibn Abi Usaibia of a work by Ibn Butlan, a Nestorian Christian physician active in Baghdad at the time of the supernova.


title: Crab Nebula

text: Given its great distance, the daytime "guest star" observed by the Chinese could only have been a supernova—a massive, exploding star, having exhausted its supply of energy from nuclear fusion and collapsed in on itself. Recent analysis of historical records have found that the supernova that created the Crab Nebula probably appeared in April or early May, rising to its maximum brightness of between apparent magnitude −7 and −4.5 (brighter even than Venus' −4.2 and everything in the night sky except the Moon) by July. The supernova was visible to the naked eye for about two years after its first observation.


title: Crab Nebula

text: In the 1960s, because of the prediction and discovery of pulsars, the Crab Nebula again became a major center of interest. It was then that Franco Pacini predicted the existence of the Crab Pulsar for the first time, which would explain the brightness of the cloud. The star was observed shortly afterwards in 1968. The discovery of the Crab Pulsar, and the knowledge of its exact age (almost to the day) allows for the verification of basic physical properties of these objects, such as characteristic age and spin-down luminosity, the orders of magnitude involved (notably the strength of the magnetic field), along with various aspects related to the dynamics of the remnant. The role of this supernova to the scientific understanding of supernova remnants was crucial, as no other historical supernova created a pulsar whose precise age is known for certain. The only possible exception to this rule would be SN 1181, whose supposed remnant 3C 58 is home to a pulsar, but its identification using Chinese observations from 1181 is contested.


title: Crab Nebula

text: The inner part of the Crab Nebula is dominated by a pulsar wind nebula enveloping the pulsar. Some sources consider the Crab Nebula to be an example of both a pulsar wind nebula as well as a supernova remnant, while others separate the two phenomena based on the different sources of energy production and behaviour.


title: Crab Nebula

text: The Crab Nebula was the first astrophysical object confirmed to emit gamma rays in the very-high-energy (VHE) band above 100 GeV in energy. The VHE detection was carried out in 1989 by the Whipple Observatory 10m Gamma-Ray telescope, which opened the VHE gamma-ray window and led to the detection of numerous VHE sources since then.


title: Crab Nebula

text: In 2019 the Crab Nebula was observed to emit gamma rays in excess of 100 TeV, making it the first identified source beyond 100 TeV.


title: Crab Nebula

text: In visible light, the Crab Nebula consists of a broadly oval-shaped mass of filaments, about 6 arcminutes long and 4 arcminutes wide (by comparison, the full moon is 30 arcminutes across) surrounding a diffuse blue central region. In three dimensions, the nebula is thought to be shaped either like an oblate spheroid (estimated as away) or a prolate spheroid (estimated as away). The filaments are the remnants of the progenitor star's atmosphere, and consist largely of ionised helium and hydrogen, along with carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, iron, neon and sulfur. The filaments' temperatures are typically between 11,000 and 18,000 K, and their densities are about 1,300 particles per cm.


title: Crab Nebula

text: In 1953, Iosif Shklovsky proposed that the diffuse blue region is predominantly produced by synchrotron radiation, which is radiation given off by the curving motion of electrons in a magnetic field. The radiation corresponded to electrons moving at speeds up to half the speed of light. Three years later the theory was confirmed by observations. In the 1960s it was found that the source of the curved paths of the electrons was the strong magnetic field produced by a neutron star at the centre of the nebula.


title: Crab Nebula

text: Even though the Crab Nebula is the focus of much attention among astronomers, its distance remains an open question, owing to uncertainties in every method used to estimate its distance. In 2008, the consensus was that its distance from Earth is . Along its longest visible dimension, it thus measures about across.


title: Crab Nebula

text: The Crab Nebula currently is expanding outward at about . Images taken several years apart reveal the slow expansion of the nebula, and by comparing this angular expansion with its spectroscopically determined expansion velocity, the nebula's distance can be estimated. In 1973, an analysis of many methods used to compute the distance to the nebula had reached a conclusion of about , consistent with the currently cited value.


title: Crab Nebula

text: The Crab Pulsar itself was discovered in 1968 by Dr Susan Jocelyn Bell. Tracing back its expansion (assuming a constant decrease of expansion speed due to the nebula's mass) yielded a date for the creation of the nebula several decades after 1054, implying that its outward velocity has decelerated less than assumed since the supernova explosion. This reduced deceleration is believed to be caused by energy from the pulsar that feeds into the nebula's magnetic field, which expands and forces the nebula's filaments outward.


title: Crab Nebula

text: Estimates of the total mass of the nebula are important for estimating the mass of the supernova's progenitor star. The amount of matter contained in the Crab Nebula's filaments (ejecta mass of ionized and neutral gas; mostly helium) is estimated to be .


title: Crab Nebula

text: One of the many nebular components (or anomalies) of the Crab Nebula is a helium-rich torus which is visible as an east–west band crossing the pulsar region. The torus composes about 25% of the visible ejecta. However, it is suggested by calculation that about 95% of the torus is helium. As yet, there has been no plausible explanation put forth for the structure of the torus.


title: Crab Nebula

text: At the center of the Crab Nebula are two faint stars, one of which is the star responsible for the existence of the nebula. It was identified as such in 1942, when Rudolf Minkowski found that its optical spectrum was extremely unusual. The region around the star was found to be a strong source of radio waves in 1949 and X-rays in 1963, and was identified as one of the brightest objects in the sky in gamma rays in 1967. Then, in 1968, the star was found to be emitting its radiation in rapid pulses, becoming one of the first pulsars to be discovered.


title: Crab Nebula

text: Pulsars are sources of powerful electromagnetic radiation, emitted in short and extremely regular pulses many times a second. They were a great mystery when discovered in 1967, and the team who identified the first one considered the possibility that it could be a signal from an advanced civilization. However, the discovery of a pulsating radio source in the centre of the Crab Nebula was strong evidence that pulsars were formed by supernova explosions. They now are understood to be rapidly rotating neutron stars, whose powerful magnetic fields concentrates their radiation emissions into narrow beams.


title: Crab Nebula

text: The Crab Pulsar is believed to be about in diameter; it emits pulses of radiation every 33 milliseconds. Pulses are emitted at wavelengths across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to X-rays. Like all isolated pulsars, its period is slowing very gradually. Occasionally, its rotational period shows sharp changes, known as 'glitches', which are believed to be caused by a sudden realignment inside the neutron star. The energy released as the pulsar slows down is enormous, and it powers the emission of the synchrotron radiation of the Crab Nebula, which has a total luminosity about 75,000 times greater than that of the Sun.


title: Crab Nebula

text: The pulsar's extreme energy output creates an unusually dynamic region at the centre of the Crab Nebula. While most astronomical objects evolve so slowly that changes are visible only over timescales of many years, the inner parts of the Crab Nebula show changes over timescales of only a few days. The most dynamic feature in the inner part of the nebula is the point where the pulsar's equatorial wind slams into the bulk of the nebula, forming a shock front. The shape and position of this feature shifts rapidly, with the equatorial wind appearing as a series of wisp-like features that steepen, brighten, then fade as they move away from the pulsar to well out into the main body of the nebula.


title: Crab Nebula

text: The star that exploded as a supernova is referred to as the supernova's "progenitor star". Two types of stars explode as supernovae: white dwarfs and massive stars. In the so-called Type Ia supernovae, gases falling onto a 'dead' white dwarf raise its mass until it nears a critical level, the Chandrasekhar limit, resulting in a runaway nuclear fusion explosion that obliterates the star; in Type Ib/c and Type II supernovae, the progenitor star is a massive star whose core runs out of fuel to power its nuclear fusion reactions and collapses in on itself, releasing gravitational potential energy in a form that blows away the star's outer layers. Type Ia supernovae do not produce pulsars, so the pulsar in the Crab Nebula shows it must have formed in a core-collapse supernova.


title: Crab Nebula

text: Theoretical models of supernova explosions suggest that the star that exploded to produce the Crab Nebula must have had a mass of between . Stars with masses lower than are thought to be too small to produce supernova explosions, and end their lives by producing a planetary nebula instead, while a star heavier than would have produced a nebula with a different chemical composition from that observed in the Crab Nebula. Recent studies, however, suggest the progenitor could have been a super-asymptotic giant branch star in the range that would have exploded in an electron-capture supernova. In June 2021 a paper in the journal "Nature Astronomy" reported that the 2018 supernova SN 2018zd (in the galaxy NGC 2146, about 31 million light-years from Earth) appeared to be the first observation of an electron-capture supernova The 1054 supernova explosion that created the Crab Nebula had been thought to be the best candidate for an electron-capture supernova, and the 2021 paper makes it more likely that this was correct.


title: Crab Nebula

text: A significant problem in studies of the Crab Nebula is that the combined mass of the nebula and the pulsar add up to considerably less than the predicted mass of the progenitor star, and the question of where the 'missing mass' is, remains unresolved. Estimates of the mass of the nebula are made by measuring the total amount of light emitted, and calculating the mass required, given the measured temperature and density of the nebula. Estimates range from about , with being the generally accepted value. The neutron star mass is estimated to be between .


title: Crab Nebula

text: The predominant theory to account for the missing mass of the Crab Nebula is that a substantial proportion of the mass of the progenitor was carried away before the supernova explosion in a fast stellar wind, a phenomenon commonly seen in Wolf–Rayet stars. However, this would have created a shell around the nebula. Although attempts have been made at several wavelengths to observe a shell, none has yet been found.


title: Crab Nebula

text: The Crab Nebula lies roughly 1.5 degrees away from the ecliptic—the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun. This means that the Moon—and occasionally, planets—can transit or occult the nebula. Although the Sun does not transit the nebula, its corona passes in front of it. These transits and occultations can be used to analyse both the nebula and the object passing in front of it, by observing how radiation from the nebula is altered by the transiting body.


title: Crab Nebula

text: Lunar transits have been used to map X-ray emissions from the nebula. Before the launch of X-ray-observing satellites, such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory, X-ray observations generally had quite low angular resolution, but when the Moon passes in front of the nebula, its position is very accurately known, and so the variations in the nebula's brightness can be used to create maps of X-ray emission. When X-rays were first observed from the Crab Nebula, a lunar occultation was used to determine the exact location of their source.


title: Crab Nebula

text: The Sun's corona passes in front of the Crab Nebula every June. Variations in the radio waves received from the Crab Nebula at this time can be used to infer details about the corona's density and structure. Early observations established that the corona extended out to much greater distances than had previously been thought; later observations found that the corona contained substantial density variations.


title: Crab Nebula

text: Very rarely, Saturn transits the Crab Nebula. Its transit on 4 January 2003 (UTC) was the first since 31 December 1295 (O.S.); another will not occur until 5 August 2267. Researchers used the Chandra X-ray Observatory to observe Saturn's moon Titan as it crossed the nebula, and found that Titan's X-ray 'shadow' was larger than its solid surface, due to absorption of X-rays in its atmosphere. These observations showed that the thickness of Titan's atmosphere is . The transit of Saturn itself could not be observed, because Chandra was passing through the Van Allen belts at the time.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: Friday the 13th Part III is a 1982 American slasher film directed by Steve Miner, produced by Frank Mancuso Jr., and starring Dana Kimmell, Paul Kratka, and Richard Brooker. It is the third installment in the "Friday the 13th" franchise. Set directly after the events of "Friday the 13th Part 2", the plot follows a teenage girl (Kimmell) and her friends who go on a trip at a house near Crystal Lake where a wounded Jason Voorhees (Brooker) has taken refuge until reemerging for another killing spree. The film marks the first appearance of Jason's signature hockey mask, which has since become a trademark of both the character and the franchise, as well as an icon in American cinema and the horror genre in general.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: The original storyline was supposed to focus on a post-traumatic Ginny Field who began learning self defense and returned to college after surviving her ordeal in the previous film. After finding Paul's corpse inside her dormitory, she prepares to track down Voorhees and face him in a final confrontation. However, this concept was abandoned when Amy Steel declined to reprise her role.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: "Friday the 13th Part III" was theatrically released in 3D, and is the only film in the series to be released in that format. The film was intended to end the series as a trilogy, however, unlike many of its successors, the film did not include a moniker in its title to indicate it as such. The film was theatrically released on August 13, 1982, grossing $36.7 million at the US box office on a budget of $2.2 million, and received negative reviews from critics. It was the first film to remove "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" from the number-one box office spot and became the second highest-grossing horror film of 1982, behind "Poltergeist". It has the third most attendance of the "Friday the 13th" franchise, with approximately 11,762,400 tickets sold. It was followed by "".


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: Following the events of the night before, a badly injured and unmasked Jason Voorhees goes to a lakefront store for a change of clothes. While there, he murders the store owner Harold and his wife Edna. Meanwhile, Chris Higgins and her friends travel to Higgins Haven, her old home on Crystal Lake, to spend the weekend. The gang includes pregnant Debbie, her boyfriend Andy, prankster Shelly, his blind date Vera (who does not reciprocate his feelings), and stoners Chuck and Chili. After running into a man named Abel who warns them to turn back, the gang meets Chris' boyfriend Rick at their destination.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: At a convenience store, Shelly and Vera get into a confrontation with bikers Ali, Fox, and Loco. Shelly gets in the car and knocks down their motorcycles, impressing Vera. Later, the bikers show up at Higgins Haven, where they take the gas out of the van and attempt to burn the barn down to get even. Jason, who has been hiding in the barn, murders Fox and Loco with a pitchfork before beating Ali unconscious. That night, Chris and Rick head out into the woods, where Chris reveals that she was attacked by a deformed man two years prior, which prompted her to leave Crystal Lake in the first place; the main reason that she returned was to confront her fears and escape the trauma.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: Back at Higgins Haven, Shelly scares Vera with a hockey mask and then wanders into the barn, where Jason slashes his throat. Taking his mask to conceal his face, Jason emerges from the barn. Vera retrieves Shelly's wallet from under the dock and is shot in the eye with a speargun. Jason enters the house and slices in half a hand-standing Andy with a machete. Debbie finishes her shower and rests on a hammock, where Jason thrusts a knife through her chest from beneath. When the power goes out in the house, Chuck goes downstairs to the basement only for Jason to hurl him into the fuse box, electrocuting him. Chili finds that everyone else is dead and is then impaled with a hot fire poker.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: When Rick's car dies, Chris and Rick are forced to walk back to the house to find it in disarray. Rick steps outside to search the grounds, but Jason grabs him and crushes his skull with his bare hands, making one of his eyes pop out of its socket. Jason then attacks Chris, who narrowly escapes the house and tries to flee in her van. The van runs out of gas and Chris makes her way to the barn to hide, but Jason attacks her again. Inside the barn, Chris strikes Jason over the head with a shovel, and hangs him. He regains consciousness and temporarily removes his mask in order to get free from the noose, which causes Chris to recognize him as the same man who attacked her two years prior. A still-living Ali tries to attack Jason, but Jason quickly finishes him off. The distraction allows Chris to strike Jason in the head with an axe. He staggers momentarily towards her before finally collapsing. Exhausted, Chris pushes a canoe out into the lake and falls asleep.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: Chris has a nightmare of an unmasked Jason running towards her from the house before disappearing, which then turns into the decomposing body of Pamela Voorhees, with her head attached, emerging from the lake to pull her in. The following morning, the police arrive and escort a traumatized Chris away from Higgins Haven. Jason's body is shown to still be lying in the barn as the lake is shown at peace.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: Initially, one of the earlier drafts for "Part III" was Ginny (Amy Steel) from the previous film being sent to a psychiatric hospital and confined there. Suffering from the events of "Part 2", she eventually finds out that Jason Voorhees survived from his wound and tracks her down to the hospital, murdering the staff and other patients at the hospital. At the time, Steel turned down the role due to her involvement in other projects, resulting in significant script changes. Steel recalled: "They really wanted me for "Part III". They didn't have a script, but they were just going to show me some sort of outline. Then my agents got involved, and I don't know if it was a money issue or a script issue, but I didn't do it."


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: Screenwriter Ron Kurz, who had written "Part II", was offered to draft a screenplay, but also turned the project down. Husband-and-wife screenwriting duo Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson instead were hired to write the screenplay for "Part III", completing the first draft. Paramount subsequently brought in Petru Popescu to alter the screenplay and make it "more sinister and menacing." Though the final filmed version of the script contained significant contributions from Popescu, he remained uncredited.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: The script for "Part III" called for Jason to wear a mask to cover his face, having worn a bag over his head in "Part 2"; this mask would become a trademark for the character, and one instantly recognizable in popular culture in the years to come.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: Screenwriter Popescu said casting was based on looks rather than talent, and recalled that his vision of the characters was at significant odds with the cast chosen by director Steve Miner. Dana Kimmel was cast in the lead role of Chris Higgins after Miner had become aware of her involvement in "Sweet Sixteen", another slasher film she had appeared in with Bo Hopkins and Susan Strasberg. Tracie Savage, who had previously worked as a child actor, was offered the role through her agent. Larry Zerner was discovered by casting directors while walking along a street, and was offered the role of Shelly. For the role of Jason Voorhees, Miner cast British stuntman Richard Brooker.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: Georgetown Productions, who had produced the previous two installments in the "Friday the 13th" series, was initially involved in the pre-production of "Part III", agreeing with distributor Paramount Pictures to shoot the film with 3-D cameras, making it the first Paramount film produced in 3-D since "Jivaro" in 1954. Paramount leased two 3-Depix cameras from the photography company Marks Polarized Corporation to shoot the film. Simultaneously, Paramount executive Al Lo Presti was researching current 3-D camera technology with the intention of developing a 3-D lens to be owned and used exclusively by Paramount.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: According to a September 1982 issue of "Forbes" magazine, Sirius II Corp. owner Gale Weaver visited the set of "Friday the 13th Part III", reportedly over producer Frank Mancuso, Jr.'s worries that faulty projection lenses at cinemas would prevent the film from having a wide theatrical release. Over a two-week period, Weaver developed a prototype lens that would be adaptable to "almost all theater projectors"; Paramount subsequently awarded Sirius II Corp. $1 million to manufacture the lenses, which would be used in projection—to the exclusion of Marks projection lenses. Marks Polarized Corporation subsequently filed a $25 million lawsuit against Paramount, alleging that the studio was "monopolizing the marketing of 3-D exhibition materials, as well as providing deductions to theaters choosing to lease projection lenses directly from Paramount." Paramount ultimately agreed to credit Marks Polarized Corporation onscreen with the statement: "Filmed utilizing the Marks 3-Depix® Converter," but the company was denied an injunction that would have required Paramount to change its equipment.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: "Friday the 13th Part III" was shot on location at the Valuzet Movie Ranch in Saugus, California. It was the first film in the series not to be shot on the East coast. The house, barn, and lake featured in the film were all custom-built. The house remained on the ranch lot until it burnt down in 2012. Additional photography for the film's grocery store scenes took place at a small market in Green Valley, California.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: Because of the newness of the 3-D camera lenses, the shooting process was extensive, with the crew sometimes taking hours to set up a shot, and the cast performing multiple takes of scenes in order for the cinematographer to properly capture the 3-D effects. Actor Larry Zerner recalled that perfecting the 3-D effects often superseded the actors' performances: "It quickly became clear that most of the time, the performances didn't matter. When we were shooting the scene at the convenience store with the gang members and I had to throw a wallet at the camera, it was, "Hit the camera!" Then, after ten takes it was "Hit the camera, asshole!"" Actress Tracie Savage echoed this sentiment, stating that "it didn't matter how the lines were delivered."


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: The decision to dress Jason Voorhees in his now-signature hockey mask occurred during a lighting check on set; the film's 3-D effects supervisor Martin Sadoff was a hockey fan, and supplied a Detroit Red Wings goaltender mask to Miner. Miner loved the mask, but during test shots found it was too small. Using a technique called VacuForm, makeup effects director Doug White enlarged the mask and created a new mold to work with. After White finished the molds, art director Terry Ballard placed new red triangles on the mask to give it a unique appearance. Holes were also punched into the mask, and the markings were altered, making it different from Sadoff's original template. There were two prosthetic face masks created for Richard Brooker to wear underneath the hockey mask. One mask was composed of approximately 11 different appliances, and took about six hours to apply to Brooker's face; this mask was used for scenes where the hockey mask was removed. In the scenes where the hockey mask is over the face, a simple head mask was created. This one piece mask would simply slip on over Brooker's head, exposing his face but not the rest of his head.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: The film's music was composed by Harry Manfredini, who previously composed the scores of the series' first two installments. A disco theme was also included in the film, co-written by Manfredini and Michael Zager, who shared a credit with a fictional band called Hot Ice. The theme was included on releases of the film's soundtrack, and according to Manfredini, became popular at disco and gay clubs at the time.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: Upon the release of the third film in 1982, Gramavision Records released an LP album of selected pieces of Manfredini's scores from the first three "Friday the 13th" films. On January 13, 2012, La-La Land Records released a limited edition 6-CD boxset containing Manfredini's scores from the first six films. It sold out in less than 24 hours. An additional double LP was released by Waxwork Records in 2015, along with other soundtracks in the series.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: "Friday the 13th Part III" was released theatrically in the United States on Friday, August 13, 1982. It was the first-ever 3-D film to receive a wide domestic release, opening on 1,079 screens. Of these screens, 813 were 3-D capable, while the remainder consisted of drive-in theaters which were unable to accommodate the format. In order to allow non-3-D-capable theaters to screen the film, Paramount completed a seven-week-long conversion process that cost $2 million, "an amount equal to the picture’s entire negative cost."


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: "Friday the 13th Part III" was first made available on home video on VHS in 1983 by Paramount Home Entertainment. It was also released on CED. Paramount reissued the VHS on September 28, 1994. Paramount later issued a DVD edition, with the film presented only in standard 2-D form, on October 17, 2000. The 2-D version was subsequently included in a box set, titled "From Crystal Lake to Manhattan", released in 2004, and featuring the first eight films in the series; this disc features an audio commentary track with several cast members, moderated by historian Peter Bracke.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: The 3-D version of the film was eventually released on DVD by Paramount in February 2009, and included two pairs of cyan and red 3-D glasses. In June of that year, a "Deluxe Edition" Blu-ray edition (which includes both the 2-D and 3-D versions) was released, also with two pairs of cyan and red 3-D glasses designed to look like Jason's mask.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: The film was included in a further three Blu-ray sets: "Friday the 13th: The Complete Collection" released in 2013, "Friday the 13th: 8-Movie Collection" in 2018 and "Friday the 13th Collection: Deluxe Edition" in 2020.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: The film grossed $9,406,522 in its opening weekend and broke the opening horror film record held by "Friday the 13th" (1980). Domestically, the film made a total of $36.7 million. It placed number 21 on the list of the top-grossing films of 1982, facing strong competition from other high-profile horror releases such as "Poltergeist", "Creepshow", "The Thing", "", "The Slumber Party Massacre", "X-ray", "Visiting Hours", "", "The Beast Within", "Cat People" and "Venom". As of 2020, it still stands as the fourth highest-grossing film in the "Friday the 13th" series and the third best selling in ticket sales; with approximately 11,762,400 tickets sold, it is surpassed only by the 1980 original with 14,778,700 tickets and "Freddy vs. Jason" with 13,701,900 tickets. The film also stands as the tenth highest-grossing R-rated film of 1982, the second-highest grossing horror film of 1982, the sixth largest box office opening of 1982, and adjusted for inflation it is the ninth highest-grossing slasher film of all time.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, "Friday the 13th Part III" holds an approval rating of 7% based on 27 reviews, with an average rating of 3.7/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Jason may solidify his iconic wardrobe in this entry, but "Friday the 13th Part 3" lacks any other distinguishing features, relying on a tired formula of stab and repeat." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 30 out of 100, based on seven critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews."


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: While criticizing the plot for being derivative, in a mixed review for "The New York Times", film critic Janet Maslin praised the acting of Kimmell, Savage, Rogers, and Parks, in which she called a major improvement to the acting in the predecessors, and wrote that Miner's use of 3-D filmmaking was innovative and the most professional effort when compared to other films released at the time, stating: "As in each of the other recent 3-D movies, of which this is easily the most professional, there is a lot of time devoted to trying out the gimmick. Titles loom toward you. Yo-yos spin. Popcorn bounces. Snakes dart toward the camera and strike. Eventually, the novelty wears off, and what remains is the now-familiar spectacle of nice, dumb kids being lopped, chopped and perforated."


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: Writing for the "Los Angeles Times", Linda Gross wrote: "Ironically, "Friday the 13th Part 3" is so terrible that "Friday the 13th Part 1" and "Friday the 13th Part 2" don't seem so bad." Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" stated that it "would be a little better than "Part I" or "Part II" even without 3-D". In continuing to compare the film to its predecessors, Maslin commented that "it's a little more adept at teasing the audience." Richard Schickel of "Time" magazine wrote: "Maybe all sequels should be made in 3-D... It is all so gruesome that horror turns to humor and fun comes from the appreciation of being cleverly conned by Steve Miner. The way the eyeball of one of Jason's victims pops out of his skull and seems to sail over the audience's head is alone worth buying a ticket and putting on funny glasses." Gene Siskel praised the film's "impressive" 3-D effects, particularly in the opening credits, also noting its slowburn approach, as the "heavy-duty slaughter doesn't come until one hour into the film," but criticized it for "lingering over the impending deaths of the young women, who are stalked by the camera so we find ourselves in the revolting position of stalking them too."


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: The entertainment-trade magazine "Variety" provided a general consensus, stating, ""Friday the 13th" was dreadful and took in more than $17 million. "Friday the 13th Part 2" was just as bad and took in more than $10 million. "Friday the 13th Part 3" is terrible, too." The magazine added, "There are some dandy 3-D sequences, however, of a yo-yo going up and down and popcorn popping." Similarly, "TV Guide" awarded the film one out of five stars, writing that it "exploits precisely the same formula plot as its predecessors, though the gore is a bit deemphasized, with the special-effects crew concentrating on the nicely done 3-D depth work for a change. It's still trash, however, and also made a ridiculous amount of money."


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: The film scholar Jim Harper has noted "Friday the 13th Part III" for its final girl character, Chris, suffering from childhood trauma resulting from sexual assault, which leaves her unable to engage in intimate relationships, although there is no undisputed evidence of what has really happened to her. In the film, Chris' trauma stems from an attack she survived from Jason Voorhees, which leaves her "mentally scarred." According to Jim Harper's interpretation, in comparison to the final girl characters in other contemporaneous slasher films such as "Halloween" (1978) or "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984), Chris' failure to engage in sexual relations is a function of trauma as opposed to "repress[ion] or dysfunct[ion]."


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: "Friday the 13th Part III" has been most noted for its introduction of villain Jason's hockey mask disguise, which was replicated in the following numerous sequels and became an iconic image in American cinema and the horror genre. Film scholar Carol Clover notes that the film has historically been cited as one of the most violent of the series, with a total of fourteen murder sequences.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: For his appearance in the film, Jason Voorhees was nominated for AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains as one of the Top 50 Villains. Meslow cites the film's 3-D effects as paving the way for later horror films which also used the technique.


title: Friday the 13th Part III

text: "Friday the 13th Part III" was followed by "" (1984). Uniquely, the film was novelized twice. The first book was written by Michael Avallone and published in 1982 to coincide with the release of the film, while the second adaptation was published in 1988 by Signet. The latter novelization was written by Simon Hawke, who had previously written novelizations for the first, second, and sixth installments in the series.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The second Persian invasion of Greece (480–479 BC) occurred during the Greco-Persian Wars, as King Xerxes I of Persia sought to conquer all of Greece. The invasion was a direct, if delayed, response to the defeat of the first Persian invasion of Greece (492–490 BC) at the Battle of Marathon, which ended Darius I's attempts to subjugate Greece. After Darius's death, his son Xerxes spent several years planning for the second invasion, mustering an enormous army and navy. The Athenians and Spartans led the Greek resistance. About a tenth of the Greek city-states joined the 'Allied' effort; most remained neutral or submitted to Xerxes.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The invasion began in spring 480 BC, when the Persian army crossed the Hellespont and marched through Thrace and Macedon to Thessaly. The Persian advance was blocked at the pass of Thermopylae by a small Allied force under King Leonidas I of Sparta; simultaneously, the Persian fleet was blocked by an Allied fleet at the straits of Artemisium. At the famous Battle of Thermopylae, the Allied army held back the Persian army for three days, before they were outflanked by a mountain path and the Allied rearguard was trapped and annihilated. The Allied fleet had also withstood two days of Persian attacks at the Battle of Artemisium, but when news reached them of the disaster at Thermopylae, they withdrew to Salamis.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: After Thermopylae, all of Euboea, Phocis, Boeotia and Attica fell to the Persian army, which captured and burnt Athens. However, a larger Allied army fortified the narrow Isthmus of Corinth, protecting the Peloponnesus from Persian conquest. Both sides thus sought a naval victory that might decisively alter the course of the war. The Athenian general Themistocles succeeded in luring the Persian navy into the narrow Straits of Salamis, where the huge number of Persian ships became disorganised, and were soundly beaten by the Allied fleet. The Allied victory at Salamis prevented a quick conclusion to the invasion, and fearing becoming trapped in Europe, Xerxes retreated to Asia leaving his general Mardonius to finish the conquest with the elite of the army.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The following spring, the Allies assembled the largest ever hoplite army and marched north from the Isthmus to confront Mardonius. At the ensuing Battle of Plataea, the Greek infantry again proved its superiority, inflicting a severe defeat on the Persians and killing Mardonius in the process. On the same day, across the Aegean Sea an Allied navy destroyed the remnants of the Persian navy at the Battle of Mycale. With this double defeat, the invasion was ended, and Persian power in the Aegean severely dented. The Greeks would now move to the offensive, eventually expelling the Persians from Europe, the Aegean islands and Ionia before the war finally came to an end in 479 BC.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The main source for the Great Greco-Persian Wars is the Greek historian Herodotus. Herodotus, who has been called the 'Father of History', was born in 484 BC in Halicarnassus, Asia Minor (then under Persian overlordship). He wrote his 'Enquiries' (Greek—"Historia"; English—"(The) Histories") around 440–430 BC, trying to trace the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars, which would still have been relatively recent history (the wars finally ending in 450 BC). Herodotus's approach was entirely novel, and at least in Western society, he does seem to have invented 'history' as we know it. As Holland has it: "For the first time, a chronicler set himself to trace the origins of a conflict not to a past so remote so as to be utterly fabulous, nor to the whims and wishes of some god, nor to a people's claim to manifest destiny, but rather explanations he could verify personally."


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Some subsequent ancient historians, despite following in his footsteps, criticised Herodotus, starting with Thucydides. Nevertheless, Thucydides chose to begin his history where Herodotus left off (at the Siege of Sestos), and therefore evidently felt that Herodotus's history was accurate enough not to need re-writing or correcting. Plutarch criticised Herodotus in his essay "On The Malignity of Herodotus", describing Herodotus as ""Philobarbaros"" (barbarian-lover), for not being pro-Greek enough, which suggests that Herodotus might actually have done a reasonable job of being even-handed. A negative view of Herodotus was passed on to Renaissance Europe, though he remained well read. However, since the 19th century his reputation has been dramatically rehabilitated by archaeological finds that have repeatedly confirmed his version of events. The prevailing modern view is that Herodotus generally did a remarkable job in his "Historia", but that some of his specific details (particularly troop numbers and dates) should be viewed with skepticism. Nevertheless, there are still some historians who believe Herodotus made up much of his story.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus from Sicily, writing in the 1st century BC in his "Bibliotheca Historica", also provides an account of the Greco-Persian wars, partially derived from the earlier Greek historian Ephorus. This account is fairly consistent with Herodotus's. The Greco-Persian wars are also described in less detail by a number of other ancient historians including Plutarch, Ctesias, and are alluded by other authors, such as the playwright Aeschylus. Archaeological evidence, such as the Serpent Column, also supports some of Herodotus's specific claims.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The Greek city-states of Athens and Eretria had supported the unsuccessful Ionian Revolt against the Persian Empire of Darius I in 499–494 BC. The Persian Empire was still relatively young and prone to revolts among its subject peoples. Moreover, Darius was a usurper and had spent considerable time extinguishing revolts against his rule. The Ionian revolt threatened the integrity of his empire, and Darius thus vowed to punish those involved (especially those not already part of the empire). Darius also saw the opportunity to expand his empire into the fractious world of Ancient Greece. A preliminary expedition under Mardonius, in 492 BC, to secure the land approaches to Greece ended with the re-conquest of Thrace and forced Macedon to become a fully subordinate kingdom part of Persia. It had previously been a vassal as early as the late 6th century BC, but remained having autonomy and not fully subordinate yet.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: In 491 BC, Darius sent emissaries to all the Greek city-states, asking for a gift of 'earth and water' in token of their submission to him. Having had a demonstration of his power the previous year, the majority of Greek cities duly obliged. In Athens, however, the ambassadors were put on trial and then executed; in Sparta, they were simply thrown down a well. This meant that Sparta was also now effectively at war with Persia. (Later, in order to appease Xerxes, who was about to launch the Second Persian invasion of Greece after succeeding his father, Darius, two Spartans were voluntarily sent to Susa for execution, in atonement for the death of the Persian heralds sent earlier by Darius.)


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Darius thus put together an ambitious task force under Datis and Artaphernes in 490 BC, which attacked Naxos, before receiving the submission of the other Cycladic Islands. The task force then moved on Eretria, which it besieged and destroyed. Finally, it moved to attack Athens, landing at the bay of Marathon, where it was met by a heavily outnumbered Athenian army. At the ensuing Battle of Marathon, the Athenians won a remarkable victory, which resulted in the withdrawal of the Persian army to Asia.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Darius therefore began raising a huge new army with which he meant to completely subjugate Greece; however, in 486 BC, his Egyptian subjects revolted, indefinitely postponing any Greek expedition. Darius then died while preparing to march on Egypt, and the throne of Persia passed to his son Xerxes I. Xerxes crushed the Egyptian revolt, and very quickly restarted the preparations for the invasion of Greece.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Since this was to be a full-scale invasion, it required long-term planning, stock-piling and conscription. It was decided that Xerxes' Pontoon Bridges were to be set up to allow his army to cross the Hellespont to Europe, and that a canal should be dug across the isthmus of Mount Athos (rounding which headland, a Persian fleet had been destroyed in 492 BC). These were both feats of exceptional ambition, which would have been beyond any contemporary state. However, the campaign was delayed one year because of another revolt in Egypt and Babylonia.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: In 481 BC, after roughly four years of preparation, Xerxes began to muster the troops for the invasion of Europe. Herodotus gives the names of 46 nations from which troops were drafted. The Persian army was gathered in Asia Minor in the summer and autumn of 481 BC. The armies from the Eastern satrapies was gathered in Kritala, Cappadocia and were led by Xerxes to Sardis where they passed the winter. Early in spring it moved to Abydos where it was joined with the armies of the western satrapies. Then the army that Xerxes had mustered marched towards Europe, crossing the Hellespont on two pontoon bridges.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The numbers of troops that Xerxes mustered for the second invasion of Greece have been the subject of endless dispute because the numbers given in ancient sources are very large indeed. Herodotus claimed that there were, in total, 2.5 million military personnel, accompanied by an equivalent number of support personnel. The poet Simonides, who was a contemporary, talks of four million; Ctesias, based on Persian records, gave 800,000 as the total number of the army (without the support personnel) that was assembled by Xerxes. While it has been suggested that Herodotus or his sources had access to official Persian Empire records of the forces involved in the expedition, modern scholars tend to reject these figures based on knowledge of the Persian military systems, their logistical capabilities, the Greek countryside, and supplies available along the army's route.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Modern scholars thus generally attribute the numbers given in the ancient sources to the result of miscalculations or exaggerations on the part of the victors, or disinformation by the Persians in the run up to the war. The topic has been hotly debated but the modern consensus revolves around the figure of 200,000 or 300,000–500,000. Nevertheless, whatever the real numbers were, it is clear that Xerxes was eager to ensure a successful expedition by mustering overwhelming numerical superiority by land and by sea, and also that much of the army died of starvation and disease, never returning to Asia.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Herodotus tells us that the army and navy, while moving through Thrace, was halted at Doriskos for an inspection by Xerxes, and he recounts the numbers of troops found to be present:


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Herodotus doubles this number to account for support personnel and thus he reports that the whole army numbered 5,283,220 men. Other ancient sources give similarly large numbers. The poet Simonides, who was a near-contemporary, talks of four million; Ctesias gave 800,000 as the total number of the army that assembled in Doriskos.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: An early and very influential modern historian, George Grote, set the tone by expressing incredulity at the numbers given by Herodotus: ""To admit this overwhelming total, or anything near to it, is obviously impossible."" Grote's main objection is the supply problem, though he does not analyse the problem in detail. He did not reject Herodotus's account altogether, citing the latter's reporting of the Persians' careful methods of accounting and their stockpiling of supply caches for three years, but drew attention to the contradictions in the ancient sources. A later influential historian, J. B. Bury, calls Herodotus's numbers "wholly fabulous" and judges that the Persian land forces may have been 180,000. A major limiting factor for the size of the Persian army, first suggested by Sir Frederick Maurice (a British transport officer) is the supply of water. Maurice suggested in the region of 200,000 men and 70,000 animals could have been supported by the rivers in that region of Greece. He further suggested that Herodotus may have confused the Persian terms for chiliarchy (1,000) and myriarchy (10,000), leading to an exaggeration by a factor of ten. Other early modern scholars estimated that the land forces participating in the invasion at 100,000 soldiers or less, based on the logistical systems available to the Ancients.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Munro and Macan note Herodotus giving the names of six major commanders and 29 myriarchs (leaders of a baivabaram, the basic unit of the Persian infantry, which numbered about 10,000-strong); this would give a land force of roughly 300,000 men. Other proponents of larger numbers suggest figures from 250,000 to 700,000.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The size of the Persian fleet is also disputed, though perhaps less so. According to Herodotus the Persian fleet numbered 1,207 triremes and 3,000 transport and supply ships, including 50-oared galleys ("Penteconters") (πεντηκοντήρ). Tetramnestos, King of Sidon, served as the chief advisor of Xerxes in naval matters. In effect, the Sidon fleet held a position of primacy among the naval forces of the Achaemenid Empire at that time, providing the best ships in the fleet, even before the fleet of Artemisia of Halicarnassus or the Egyptians. The Phoenicians furnished a fleet of 300 ships, "together with the Syrians of Palestine".


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Herodotus also records that this was the number at the Battle of Salamis, despite the losses earlier in storms off Sepia and Euboea, and at the battle of Artemisium. He claims that the losses were replenished with reinforcements, though he only records 120 triremes from the Greeks of Thrace and an unspecified number of ships from the Greek islands. Aeschylus, who fought at Salamis, also claims that he faced 1,207 warships there, of which 1,000 were triremes and 207 fast ships. Diodorus and Lysias independently claim there were 1,200 at Doriskos. The number of 1,207 (for the outset only) is also given by Ephorus, while his teacher Isocrates claims there were 1,300 at Doriskos and 1,200 at Salamis. Ctesias gives another number, 1,000 ships, while Plato, speaking in general terms refers to 1,000 ships and more.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: These numbers are (by ancient standards) consistent, and this could be interpreted that a number around 1,200 is correct. Among modern scholars some have accepted this number, although suggesting that the number must have been lower by the Battle of Salamis. Other recent works on the Persian Wars reject this number—1,207 being seen as more of a reference to the combined Greek fleet in the Iliad—and generally claim that the Persians could have launched no more than around 600 warships into the Aegean.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The Athenians had been preparing for war with the Persians since the mid-480s BC, and in 482 BC the decision was taken, under the guidance of the politician Themistocles, to build a massive fleet of triremes that would be necessary for the Greeks to fight the Persians. The Athenians did not have the man-power to fight on land and sea; therefore combatting the Persians would require an alliance of several Greek city states. In 481 BC Xerxes sent ambassadors around Greece asking for earth and water, but making the very deliberate omission of Athens and Sparta. Support thus began to coalesce around these two states.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: A congress of states met at Corinth in late autumn of 481 BC, and a confederate alliance of Greek city-states was formed. This confederation had the power to send envoys asking for assistance and to dispatch troops from the member states to defensive points after joint consultation. Herodotus does not formulate an abstract name for the union but simply calls them "οἱ Ἕλληνες" (the Greeks) and "the Greeks who had sworn alliance" (Godley translation) or "the Greeks who had banded themselves together" (Rawlinson translation). Hereafter, they will be referred to as the 'Allies'. Sparta and Athens had a leading role in the congress but interests of all the states played a part in determining defensive strategy. Little is known about the internal workings of the congress or the discussions during its meetings. Only 70 of the approximately 700 Greek cities sent representatives. Nevertheless, this was remarkable for the disjointed Greek world, especially since many of the city-states in attendance were still technically at war with each other.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The majority of other city-states remained more-or-less neutral, awaiting the outcome of the confrontation. Thebes was a major absentee and was suspected of being willing to aid the Persians once the invasion force arrived. Not all Thebans agreed with this policy, and 400 "loyalist" hoplites joined the Allied force at Thermopylae (at least according to one possible interpretation). The most notable city actively siding with the Persians ("Medised") was Argos, in the otherwise Spartan-dominated Peloponnese. However, the Argives had been severely weakened in 494 BC, when a Spartan-force led by Cleomenes I had annihilated the Argive army in Battle of Sepeia and then massacred the fugitives.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The allies had no 'standing army', nor was there any requirement to form one; since they were fighting on home territory, they could muster armies as and when required. Different-sized allied forces thus appeared throughout the campaign. These numbers are discussed fully in the article for each battle.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Having crossed into Europe in April 480 BC, the Persian army began its march to Greece. Five major food depots had been set up along the path: at White Headland on the Thracian side of the Hellespont, at Tyrodiza in Perinthian territory, at Doriskos at the Evros river estuary where the Asian army was linked up with the Balkan allies, at Eion on the Strymon river, and at Therme, modern-day Thessaloniki. There, food had been sent from Asia for several years in preparation for the campaign. Animals had been bought and fattened, while the local populations had, for several months, been ordered to grind the grains into flour. The Persian army took roughly three months to travel unopposed from the Hellespont to Therme, a journey of about 600 km (360 mi). It paused at Doriskos where it was joined by the fleet. Xerxes reorganized the troops into tactical units replacing the national formations used earlier for the march.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The Allied 'congress' met again in the spring of 480 BC. A Thessalian delegation suggested that the allies could muster in the narrow Vale of Tempe, on the borders of Thessaly, and thereby block Xerxes's advance. A force of 10,000 Allies led by the Spartan polemarch Euenetus and Themistocles was thus dispatched to the pass. However, once there, they were warned by Alexander I of Macedon that the vale could be bypassed by at least two other passes and that the army of Xerxes was overwhelming; the Allies therefore retreated. Shortly afterwards, they received the news that Xerxes had crossed the Hellespont. The abandonment of Tempe meant that all of Thessaly submitted to the Persians, as did many cities to the north of the pass of Thermopylae when it seemed help was not forthcoming.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: A second strategy was therefore suggested to the Allies by Themistocles. The route to southern Greece (Boeotia, Attica and the Peloponnesus) would require the army of Xerxes to travel through the very narrow pass of Thermopylae. This could easily be blocked by the Allies, despite the overwhelming number of Persians. Furthermore, to prevent the Persians from bypassing Thermopylae by sea, the allied navy could block the straits of Artemisium. This dual strategy was adopted by congress. However, the Peloponnesian cities made fall-back plans to defend the Isthmus of Corinth should it come to it, while the women and children of Athens were evacuated "en masse" to the Peloponnesian city of Troezen.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: When the Allies received the news that Xerxes was clearing paths around Mount Olympus, and thus intending to march towards Thermopylae, it was both the period of truce that accompanied the Olympic games, and the Spartan festival of Carneia, during both of which warfare was considered sacrilegious. Nevertheless, the Spartans considered the threat so grave that they despatched their king Leonidas I with his personal bodyguard (the "Hippeis") of 300 men (in this case, the elite young soldiers in the Hippeis were replaced by veterans who already had sons). Leonidas was supported by contingents from the Peloponnesian cities allied to Sparta, and other forces that were picked up "en route" to Thermopylae. The Allies proceeded to occupy the pass, rebuilt the wall the Phocians had built at the narrowest point of the pass and waited for Xerxes's arrival.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: When the Persians arrived at Thermopylae in mid-August, they initially waited for three days for the Allies to disperse. When Xerxes was eventually persuaded that the Allies intended to contest the pass, he sent his troops to attack. However, the Greek position was ideally suited to hoplite warfare, the Persian contingents being forced to attack the phalanx head on. The Allies thus withstood two full days of battle and everything Xerxes could throw at them. However, at the end of the second day, they were betrayed by a local resident named Ephialtes who revealed to Xerxes a mountain path that led behind the Allied lines. Xerxes then sent his elite guards, the Immortals on a night march to outflank the Allies. When he was made aware of this maneuver (while the Immortals were still "en route"), Leonidas dismissed the bulk of the Allied army, remaining to guard the rear with 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians, 400 Thebians and perhaps a few hundred others. On the third day of the battle, the remaining Allies sallied forth from the wall to meet the Persians and slaughter as many as they could. Ultimately, however, the Allied rearguard was annihilated, and the pass of Thermopylae opened to the Persians.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Simultaneous with the battle at Thermopylae, an Allied naval force of 271 triremes defended the Straits of Artemisium against the Persians. Directly before Artemisium, the Persian fleet had been caught in a gale off the coast of Magnesia, losing many ships, but could still probably muster over 800 ships at the start of the battle. On the first day (also the first of the Battle of Thermopylae), the Persians detached 200 seaworthy ships, which were sent to sail around the eastern coast of Euboea. These ships were to round Euboea and block the line of retreat for the Allied fleet. Meanwhile, the Allies and the remaining Persians engaged in the late afternoon, the Allies having the better of the engagement and capturing 30 vessels. That evening, another storm occurred, wrecking the majority of the Persian detachment which had been sent around Euboea.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: On the second day of the battle, news reached the Allies that their lines of retreat were no longer threatened; they therefore resolved to maintain their position. They staged a hit-and-run attack on some Cilician ships, capturing and destroying them. On the third day, however, the Persian fleet attacked the Allies lines in full force. In a day of savage fighting, the Allies held on to their position, but suffered severe losses (half the Athenian fleet was damaged); nevertheless, the Allies inflicted equal losses on the Persian fleet. That evening, the Allies received news of the fate of Leonidas and the Allies at Thermopylae. Since the Allied fleet was badly damaged, and since it no longer needed to defend the flank of Thermopylae, they retreated from Artemisium to the island of Salamis.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Victory at Thermopylae meant that all Boeotia fell to Xerxes; the two cities that had resisted him, Thespiae and Plataea, were captured and razed. Attica was also left open to invasion, and the remaining population of Athens was thus evacuated, with the aid of the Allied fleet, to Salamis. The Peloponnesian Allies began to prepare a defensive line across the Isthmus of Corinth, building a wall, and demolishing the road from Megara, thereby abandoning Athens to the Persians.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Athens fell a first time in September 480 BC. The small number of Athenians who had barricaded themselves on the Acropolis were eventually defeated, and Xerxes then ordered Athens to be torched. The Acropolis was razed and the Older Parthenon as well as the Old Temple of Athena were destroyed.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The Persians had now captured most of Greece, but Xerxes had perhaps not expected such defiance from the Greeks; his priority was now to complete the war as quickly as possible; the huge invasion force could not be supplied indefinitely, and probably Xerxes did not wish to be at the fringe of his empire for so long. Thermopylae had shown that a frontal assault against a well defended Greek position had little chance of success; with the Allies now dug in across the isthmus, there was therefore little chance of the Persians conquering the rest of Greece by land. However, if the isthmus's defensive line could be outflanked, the Allies could be defeated. Such an outflanking of the isthmus required the use of the Persian navy, and thus the neutralisation of the Allied navy. In summary, if Xerxes could destroy the Allied navy, he would be in a strong position to force a Greek surrender; this seemed the only hope of concluding the campaign in that season. Conversely by avoiding destruction, or as Themistocles hoped, by destroying the Persian fleet, the Greeks could avoid conquest. In the final reckoning, both sides were prepared to stake everything on a naval battle, in the hope of decisively altering the course of the war.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Thus, it was that the Allied fleet remained off the coast of Salamis into September, despite the imminent arrival of the Persians. Even after Athens fell to the advancing Persian army, the Allied fleet still remained off the coast of Salamis, trying to lure the Persian fleet to battle. Partly as a result of subterfuge on the part of Themistocles, the navies finally engaged in the cramped Straits of Salamis. There, the large Persian numbers were an active hindrance, as ships struggled to manoeuvre and became disorganised. Seizing the opportunity, the Greek fleet attacked, and scored a decisive victory, sinking or capturing at least 200 Persian ships, and thus ensuring the Peloponnesus would not be outflanked.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: According to Herodotus, after this loss Xerxes attempted to build a causeway across the straits to attack Salamis (although Strabo and Ctesias place this attempt before the battle). In any case, this project was soon abandoned. With the Persians' naval superiority removed, Xerxes feared that the Greeks might sail to the Hellespont and destroy the pontoon bridges. According to Herodotus, Mardonius volunteered to remain in Greece and complete the conquest with a hand-picked group of troops, while advising Xerxes to retreat to Asia with the bulk of the army. All of the Persian forces abandoned Attica, with Mardonius over-wintering in Boeotia and Thessaly.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Some Athenians were thus able to return to their burnt-out city for the winter. They would have to evacuate again in front of a second advance by Mardonius in June 479 BC.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: According to Herodotus a Persian general known as Artabazus escorted Xerxes to the Hellespont with 60,000 men; as he neared Pallene on the return journey to Thessaly: "he thought it right that he should enslave the people of Potidaea, whom he found in revolt.". Despite attempts to capture Potidaea by treachery, the Persians were forced to keep up the siege for three months. Then, attempting to use an unusually low tide to attack the town from sea, the Persian army was caught by the returning tide, many drowning and the survivors being attacked by the Potideans in boats. Artabazus was thus forced to lift the siege, and return to Mardonius in Thessaly with the remnants of his men.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: While besieging Potidea, Artabazus also decided to besiege Olynthus, which was also in revolt. The town was held by the Bottiaean tribe, who had been driven out of Macedon. Having taken the town, he massacred the defenders and handed over the town to the Chalcidian people.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Over the winter, there seems to have been some tension between the Allies. In particular, the Athenians, who were not protected by the isthmus, but whose fleet were the key to the security of the Peloponnesus, felt hard done by. They demanded an Allied army march north the following year. When the other Allies failed to commit to this, the Athenian fleet probably refused to join the Allied navy in the spring. The navy, now under the command of the Spartan king Leotychides, thus skulked off Delos, while the remnants of the Persian fleet skulked off Samos, both sides unwilling to risk battle. Similarly, Mardonius remained in Thessaly, knowing an attack on the isthmus was pointless, while the Allies refused to send an army outside the Peloponessus.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Mardonius moved to break the stalemate, by offering peace, self-government and territorial expansion to the Athenians (with the aim of thereby removing their fleet from the Allied forces), using Alexander I of Macedon as an intermediary. The Athenians made sure that a Spartan delegation was on hand to hear the offer, but rejected it. Athens was thus evacuated again, and the Persians marched south and re-took possession of it. Mardonius brought even more thorough destruction to the city. According to Herodotus, Mardonius "burnt Athens and utterly overthrew or demolished whatever wall or house or temple was left standing".


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Mardonius now repeated his offer of peace to the Athenian refugees on Salamis. Athens, along with Megara and Plataea, sent emissaries to Sparta demanding assistance, and threatening to accept the Persian terms if not. The Spartans, who were at that time celebrating the festival of Hyacinthus, delayed making a decision for 10 days. However, when the Athenian emissaries then delivered an ultimatum to the Spartans, they were amazed to hear that a task force was in fact already marching to meet the Persians.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: When Mardonius heard that the Allied army was on the march, he retreated into Boeotia, near Plataea, trying to draw the Allies into open terrain where he could use his cavalry. The Allied army however, under the command of the Spartan regent Pausanias, stayed on high ground above Plataea to protect themselves against such tactics. Mardonius ordered a hit-and-run cavalry attack on the Greek lines, but the attack was unsuccessful and the cavalry commander killed. The outcome prompted the Allies to move to a position nearer the Persian camp, still on high ground. As a result, the Allied lines of communication were exposed. The Persian cavalry began to intercept food deliveries and finally managed to destroy the only spring of water available to the Allies. The Allied position now undermined, Pausanias ordered a night-time retreat towards their original positions. This went awry, leaving the Athenians, and Spartans and Tegeans isolated on separate hills, with the other contingents scattered further away, near Plataea itself. Seeing that he might never have a better opportunity to attack, Mardonius ordered his whole army forward. However, as at Thermopylae, the Persian infantry proved no match for the heavily armoured Greek hoplites, and the Spartans broke through to Mardonius's bodyguard and killed him. The Persian force thus dissolved in rout; 40,000 troops managed to escape via the road to Thessaly, but the rest fled to the Persian camp where they were trapped and slaughtered by the Allies, thus finalising their victory.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: On the afternoon of the Battle of Plataea, Herodotus tells us that rumour of the Allied victory reached the Allied navy, at that time off the coast of Mount Mycale in Ionia. Their morale boosted, the Allied marines fought and won a decisive victory at the Battle of Mycale that same day, destroying the remnants of the Persian fleet. As soon as the Peloponnesians had marched north of the isthmus, the Athenian fleet under Xanthippus had joined up with the rest of the Allied fleet. The fleet, now able to match the Persians, had first sailed to Samos, where the Persian fleet was based. The Persians, whose ships were in a poor state of repair, had decided not to risk fighting and instead drew their ships up on the beach under Mycale. An army of 60,000 men had been left there by Xerxes, and the fleet joined with them, building a palisade around the camp to protect the ships. However, Leotychides decided to attack the camp with the Allied fleet's marines. Seeing the small size of the Allied force, the Persians emerged from the camp, but the hoplites again proved superior and destroyed much of the Persian force. The ships were abandoned to the Allies, who burnt them, crippling Xerxes' sea power, and marking the ascendancy of the Allied fleet.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: With the twin victories of Plataea and Mycale, the second Persian invasion of Greece was over. Moreover, the threat of future invasion was abated; although the Greeks remained worried that Xerxes would try again, over time it became apparent that the Persian desire to conquer Greece was much diminished.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: In many ways Mycale represents the start of a new phase of the conflict, the Greek counterattack. After the victory at Mycale, the Allied fleet sailed to the Hellespont to break down the pontoon bridges, but found that this was already done. The Peloponnesians sailed home, but the Athenians remained to attack the Chersonesos, still held by the Persians. The Persians in the region, and their allies made for Sestos, the strongest town in the region, which the Athenians then laid siege to; after a protracted siege, it fell to the Athenians. Herodotus ended his "Historia" after the Siege of Sestos.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Over the next 30 years, the Greeks, primarily the Athenian-dominated Delian League, would expel the Persians from Macedon, Thrace, the Aegean islands and Ionia. The Achaemenid maintained a strong presence at the doorstep of Greece, in Thrace, until circa 465 BC. In 477–455 BC, according to Thucydides, the allies campaigned against the city of Eion, at the mouth of the Strymon river. Eion was one of the Achaemenid garrisons left in Thrace during and after the second Persian invasion, along with Doriskos. Herodotus then alludes to several failed attempts, presumably Athenian, to dislodge the Persian governor of Doriskos, Mascames. The Achaemenids finally removed Mascames and their garrison at Doriskos circa 465 BC.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: Peace with Persia came in 449 BC with the Peace of Callias, finally ending the half-century of warfare.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The Greek style of warfare had been honed over the preceding centuries. It revolved around the hoplite, members of the middle-classes (the "zeugites") who could afford the armour necessary to fight in this manner. The hoplite was, by the standards of the time, heavily armoured, with linothorax or a breastplate (originally bronze, but probably by this stage made of organic materials such as linen (possibly linothroax) and leather, greaves, a full helmet, and a large round shield (the "aspis"). Hoplites were armed with a long spear (the "doru"), which was evidently significantly longer than Persian spears, and a sword (the "xiphos"). Hoplites fought in the phalanx formation; the exact details are not completely clear, but it was a close-knit formation, presenting a uniform front of overlapping shields, and spears, to the enemy. Properly assembled, the phalanx was a formidable offensive and defensive weapon; on occasions when it is recorded to have happened, it took a huge number of light infantry to defeat a relatively small phalanx. It is also possible that the "leather armor" was actually untanned or partially tanned rawhide rather than fully tanned leather, because modern tests have concluded that plain or treated rawhide is a significantly better material for making armor than leather.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The phalanx was vulnerable to being outflanked by cavalry, if caught on the wrong terrain, however. The hoplite's heavy armour and long spears made them excellent troops in hand-to-hand combat and gave them significant protection against ranged attacks by light troops and skirmishers. Even if the shield did not stop a missile, there was a reasonable chance the armour would.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The Persian infantry used in the invasion were a heterogeneous group drawn from across the empire. However, according to Herodotus, there was at least a general conformity in the type of armour and style of fighting. The troops were, generally speaking, armed with a bow, 'short spear' and sword, carried a wicker shield and wore at most a leather jerkin. The one exception to this may have been the ethnic Persian troops, who may have worn a corslet of scaled armour. Some of the contingents may have been armed somewhat differently; for instance, the Saka were renowned axemen. The 'elite' contingents of the Persian infantry seem to have been the ethnic Persians, Medians, Cissians and the Saka. The foremost of the infantry were the royal guards, the Immortals, although they were still armed in the aforementioned style. Cavalry was provided by the Persians, Bactrians, Medes, Cissians and Saka; most of these probably fought as lightly armed missile cavalry. The style of fighting used by the Persians was probably to stand off from an enemy, using their bows (or equivalent) to wear down the enemy before closing in to deliver the "coup de grace" with spear and sword.


title: Second Persian invasion of Greece

text: The Persians had encountered hoplites in battle before at Ephesus, where their cavalry had easily routed the (probably exhausted) Greeks. However, at the battle of Marathon, the Athenian hoplites had shown their superiority over the Persian infantry, albeit in the absence of any cavalry. It is therefore slightly surprising that the Persians did not bring any hoplites from the Greek regions, especially Ionia, under their control in Asia. Equally, Herodotus tells us that the Egyptian marines serving in the navy were well armed, and performed well against the Greek marines; yet no Egyptian contingent served in the army. The Persians may not have completely trusted the Ionians and Egyptians, since both had recently revolted against Persian rule. However, if this is the case, then it must be questioned why there were Greek and Egyptian contingents in the navy. The Allies evidently tried to play on the Persian fears about the reliability of the Ionians in Persian service; but, as far as we can tell, both the Ionians and Egyptians performed particularly well for the Persian navy. It may therefore simply be that neither the Ionians nor Egyptians were included in the army because they were serving in the fleet — none of the coastal regions of the Persian empire appear to have sent contingents with the army.