5th century BC

(6th century BC – 5th century BC – 4th century BC – other centuries)

(2nd millennium BC – 1st millennium BC – 1st millennium AD)

Events

• Demotic becomes the dominant script of ancient Egypt
• Persians invade Greece twice (Persian Wars)
• Battle of Marathon (490)
• Battle of Salamis (480)
• Athenian empire rises and falls
• Peloponnesian War
• Approximate beginning of Iron Age in northern Europe
• Buddhist monastic university at Nalanda, India established.

Significant persons

• Pythagoras of Samos, Greek mathematician. See Pythagorean theorem. (582 – 496 BC).
• Gautama Buddha, founding figure of Buddhism (c. 563 – 483 BC).
• Confucius, founding figure of Confucianism (551 – 479 BC).
• Aeschylus of Athens, playwright (525 – 456 BC).
• Darius I, King of Persia (reigned 521 – 485 BC).
• Sophocles of Athens, playwright (496 – 406 BC).
• Pericles of Athens, politician (c. 495 – 429 BC).
• Herodotus of Halicarnassus, historian (c. 485 BC).
• Euripides of Athens, playwright (c. 480 – 406 BC).
• Socrates of Athens, philosopher (470 – 399 BC).
• Aristophanes of Athens, playwright (c. 446 – 385 BC).
• Darius II, king of Persia (reigned 423-404)
• Ezra and Nehemiah active in Judea.
• Tollund Man, Human sacrifice victim on the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark, possibly the earliest known evidence for worship of Odin.

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

• Cast iron is first used in Wu.

Decades and years