The battle of Plataea was brought on under circumstances very unfavorable to the Greeks.  Want of water and a difficulty about provisions had necessitated a night movement on their part.  The cowardice of all the small contingents, and the obstinacy of an individual Spartan, disconcerted the whole plan of the operation, and left the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians at daybreak separated from each other, and deserted by the whole body of their allies.  Mardonius attacked at once, and prevented the junction of the two allies, so that two distinct and separate engagements went on at the same time.  In both the Greeks were victorious.  The Spartans repulsed the Persian horse and foot, slew Mardonius and were the first to assail the Persian camp.  The Athenians defeated the medizing Greeks, and effected a breach in the defences of the camp, on which the Spartans had failed to make any impression.  A terrible carnage followed.  The contingent of 40,000 troops under Artabazus alone drew off in good order.

The remainder were seized with panic, and were either slaughtered like sheep or fled in complete disarray.  Seventy thousand Greeks not only defeated but destroyed the army of 300,000 barbarians, which melted away and disappeared making no further stand anywhere.  The disaster of Marathon was repeated on a larger scale, and without the resource of an embarkation.  Henceforth the immense superiority of Greek troops to Persian was well known on both sides; and nothing but the distance from Greece of her vital parts, and the quarrels of the Greek states among themselves, preserved for nearly a century and a half the doomed empire of Persia.

The immediate result of the defeats of Salamis and Platsea was a contraction of the Persian boundary towards the west.  Though a few Persian garrisons maintained themselves for some years on the further side of the straits, soothing thereby the wounded vanity of the Great King, who liked to think that he had still a hold on Europe; yet there can be no doubt that, after the double flight of Xerxes and Artabazus, Macedonia, Pseonia, and Thrace recovered their independence.  Persia lost her European provinces, and began the struggle to retain those of Asia.  Terminus receded, and having once receded never advanced again in this quarter.  The Greeks took the offensive.  Sailing to Asia, they not only liberated from their Persian bondage the islands which lay along the coast, but landing their men on the continent, attacked and defeated an army of 60,000 Persians at Mycale, and destroyed the remnant of the ships that had escaped from Salamis.  Could they have made up their minds to maintain a powerful fleet permanently on the coast of Asia, they might at once have deprived Persia of her whole sea-hoard on the Propontis and the Egean; but neither of the two great powers of Greece was prepared for such a resolve.  Sparta disliked distant expeditions; and Athens did not as yet see her way to undertaking the protection of the continental Greeks.  She had much to do at home, and had not yet discovered those weak points in her adversary’s harness, which subsequently enabled her to secure by treaty the freedom of the Greek cities upon the mainland.  For the present, therefore, Persia only lost the bulk of her European possessions, and the islands of the Propontis and the Egean.