Honestly guys, always wanted a clear visual for those messy Greco-Persian Wars. Found a crumpled napkin sketch I did weeks ago while reading Herodotus – total chicken scratch. Needed something proper. So, grabbed my big sheet of cheap drawing paper – the kind I got from that discount craft store downtown. Spread it right here on my kitchen table.
The First Disaster Attempt
Started simple. Grabbed a blue pencil for the sea, right? Went ham on shading the Aegean and Mediterranean. Looked okay… until I sneezed. Bam! Blue smudge right where Athens needed to be. Tried wiping it – big mistake. Turned into this weird foggy mess. Almost threw the whole thing out.
Took a breath. Made coffee instead. Second wind hit. Found a clean spot on the back of the paper. Better plan this time.
Getting My Bearings Straight
- Land Shapes First: Roughly traced Greece and Anatolia – shaky hand, jagged coastlines, looked like a blob monster. Needed a reference. Pulled up a basic modern map on my phone, zoomed in. Just eyeballed the shapes onto my paper. Not perfect, but recognizable.
- Key Spots Dotting: Slopped little circles with a regular pen: Sparta (deep inland), Athens (carefully away from the earlier smudge zone!), Corinth, Persepolis (way over east), Sardis. Felt real now.
- Water Blues Done Right: Light touch with the blue pencil this time! Gentle strokes for seas. Drew a small arrow pointing north for orientation. Much needed.
The War Path Pain
Time for the invasions. Used different colors:
- Darius's Mess (1st War): Red pen. Started at Sardis, drew a wobbly line across land towards Greece. Made a big red "X" near Marathon. Short arrow from Sardis towards Marathon across the sea – bad weather maybe?
- Xerxes Overdoes It (2nd War): Black pen. Fat arrow pushing out of Sardis. Huge land route hugging the coast – tried drawing tiny stick soldiers & horses alongside. Sea route: arrows hopping from island to island towards Greece. Plopped giant "X"s at Thermopylae and Salamis.
Big problem: Ran out of space east of Sardis! Persepolis looked squashed. Didn't care. Added labels: "Invasion Route (Darius)", "Xerxes Land Army", "Persian Fleet". Scribbled key dates nearby – like "490 BC" by Marathon.
Finally, It Makes Some Sense
Stepped back. Kinda chaotic? Maybe. But seeing those two distinct Persian pushes towards little Greece, the choke points at Thermopylae and Salamis… suddenly Herodotus's ramblings clicked. The scale. The guts Greece needed. My messy paper captured the sheer audacity.
Left it on the table. Wife got home, squinted at it: "Battles?" she guessed. Close enough. Taped it to my study wall. Imperfect, maybe wrong scale, smudged corner… but mine. Finally see the whole bloody mess laid out.
