Wars by Era
3 major conflicts, 33 battles, and an estimated 4,105,000 dead.
When the Achaemenid Persian Empire launched major invasions of mainland Greece, a shifting coalition of Greek city-states resisted at Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea, and elsewhere. Greek victories ended the invasions and became central to later Greek political and cultural memory, while the Persian Empire remained the dominant power across much of western Asia.
10 battles · 350,000 dead
For two and a half centuries, seven great kingdoms tore apart the ruins of the Zhou realm in the deadliest wars the ancient world had yet seen — mass conscript armies of hundreds of thousands, crossbows, iron, and siege engineering. From that slaughter emerged the ruthless state of Qin, whose king Ying Zheng conquered all rivals by 221 BC and made himself Qin Shi Huang, First Emperor — founder of a unified China that has endured, in one form or another, ever since.
13 battles · 3,500,000 dead
Athens and Sparta — the two great powers of the Greek world — tore their civilization apart in a generation-long war of attrition. Thucydides, who lived through it, called it 'the greatest disturbance in the history of the Hellenes.' It ended in the total defeat of Athens and a democracy that never fully recovered, leaving Greece weakened for the Macedonian conquest to come.
10 battles · 255,000 dead