2,500 years since the Battle of Marathon

Future prospects remain inextricably bound up with the past on both an individual and collective level. As we examine our past in terms of the questions new and old and issues current and chronic which the present requires us to reframe and discuss anew, people, events and interpretations shed light on the past from unexpected viewpoints, making our relationship with History more creative and alive.

2,500 years since the Battle of Marathon: Greek–Persian relations in antiquity.
Though we enjoy anniversaries, our focus today, 2,500 years after the battle of Marathon, should be not the battle itself or its outcome, with which everyone is more or less familiar, but rather on the context in which it was fought: What was the position of Pericles’ Empire in the known world of the era? What broader impact did the Greek-Persian wars have on subsequent Greek and European history? How have these wars imprinted themselves on the collective memory of contemporary Iranians?