Battle of Plataea

[hoplite07]

Okay, Im curious about the details on this battle:

I know there were around 45,000 total troops sent by Sparta including 10,000 real Spartans soldiers leaving 35,000 Spartan serfs. At the end of it which was a manslaughter, the Tegans and Spartans fought the Persians, but exactly how many were there on each side? Did all 45,000 of the Spartans fight here or was it just the 10,000 true warriors? Im curious and around how many Persians did the Tegans and Spartans together kill?

-thx

We are not even roughly sure of the strengths on either side, unfortunately, and only some idea of the casualties on one side (the Greek coalition). 300,000 in the imperial army is impossible, but IIRC that is what Herodotus says. The size of their camp has been used to calculate an upper limit to their possible strength. Likewise, Herodotus' claim that there were two helots, peltasts or psiloi in the Greek army for every hoplite is quite possibly an exaggeration to compensate for his over-estimate of imperial strength, although his count of the Greek hoplite strength sounds reliable. Very possibly each polis committed to send a certain number of hoplites or peltasts, and each polis watched its neighbors to make sure they fulfilled their commitments.

We can say that the Persian army was broken with terrible slaughter, loosing perhaps 10-20% of their force as casualties, but I don't think we can know their losses more precisely than that.

So the hoplites killed probably around 30,000-60,000 Persians? Or something like that at least. I also read this from a book titled 'The Spartans' by Paul Cartledge that the 5000 Spartans did around 2/3 of all the killing at Plataea, do u think that sounds right or have u heard this from somewhere else as well.?