Alright, so today I want to talk about this little project I tackled: making a map of the Greek-Persian Wars. It sounds grand, but honestly, it was more of a "let's see if I can do this" kind of thing. I've always found that period super interesting, you know, tiny Greek city-states against this massive Persian empire. Wild stuff.
Getting Started - The Messy Bit
So, first thing, I didn't just magically conjure a map. Nah, I grabbed a piece of scrap paper and a pencil. My first attempts at drawing the Aegean Sea and Greece looked more like a blob monster, if I'm being honest. It's always like that, isn't it? The first draft is just for you. I wasn't aiming for perfection, just trying to get a feel for the shapes. Where's Athens roughly? Where's Persia coming from? That sort of thing.
Then I figured, okay, what actually needs to be on this thing? I started jotting down a list:
- Marathon, obviously.
- Thermopylae – gotta have the 300.
- Salamis, the big sea battle.
- Plataea, the final land showdown.
- Key places like Athens, Sparta, Sardis (that was a big Persian hub, right?).
I spent a bit of time just refreshing my memory, looking up the main invasion routes. My notes were a mess, arrows pointing everywhere, names misspelled. Standard procedure for me.
Actually Making the Thing
I thought about doing it all by hand, proper old-school. But then I figured, if I mess up, I'd have to start over, and who has time for that? So I decided to use a super basic drawing program on my computer. Nothing fancy, you know, the kind of thing that probably came free with the operating system. Some people use complex software, but for this, simple was good enough.
So, I opened up this program. The first real challenge was drawing the coastline. Getting the Greek peninsula and all those islands to look somewhat recognizable took a while. Lots of clicking, dragging, undoing, and redoing. It wasn’t going to win any cartography awards, but it started to look like something.
Once I had the basic land and sea, I started plonking down dots for the cities and battle sites. I tried to get them in roughly the right spots based on my notes and a quick glance at a proper atlas. Then I labeled them. My handwriting with a mouse is terrible, so I used the text tool. Much neater.
Showing the Action
Now for the tricky part – showing who went where. Arrows! Big, chunky arrows seemed like the way to go for the Persian invasions. I made them a distinct color, say, red. Then maybe smaller, different colored arrows for Greek movements, or just markers for where they defended. I tried to show the sweep from Asia Minor into mainland Greece. It’s amazing how a few arrows can suddenly make a static map feel more dynamic, even if they're crudely drawn.
I realized pretty quickly that just having dots and arrows wasn’t super clear. So, I added a little box in the corner – a legend. Something simple like:
- Red Arrow: Persian March
- Blue 'X': Greek Win
- Red 'X': Persian Win (though I mostly focused on Greek victories for this one, ha!)
- Circle: Important City
You get the idea. Without a key, it’s just a bunch of squiggles.
Finishing Touches
Then I just sort of looked at it for a bit. Tweaked a few things. Moved a label that was too close to a line. Made an arrow a bit thicker. It’s never really “done,” you just sort of decide to stop fiddling with it. I added a title right on the map image itself, something like "Greco-Persian Wars – Key Moments."
And that was pretty much it. Saved the file. It’s not a professional historian's map, not by a long shot. But it helped me visualize the whole thing better, and it was a fun little exercise. Sometimes just making something yourself, however simple, is the best way to get your head around it. So yeah, that was my adventure in ancient war mapping!
