The Immortals

[Sean Manning]

I don't see that. If you reject Herodotos, it's not the number that goes away, it's simply the idea that they were always kept up to that exact strength: they're not called Immortals (in his version) because there were 10,000 of them but because there were always 10,000. The story would work just as well if they were always 5,000, or 1,000.

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Always a pleasure to read you. I agree, the name can be a mistranslation, but originated from the actual number. 10.000 appears associated to the "doruphoroi" and "melophoroi" aroun the King in many greco-latin passages.

For example, this text from the lost Persica from Heraclides of Cyme (I take Pierre Briant's translation):

"These formed his bodyguard (doruphoroi), and all of them were persians by birth, having on the butt of their spears golden apples, and numbering a thousand, selected because of their rank from the 10.000 persians who are called Immortals" (in Athenaeus, XII 514c)

Sadly, we haven't the term 10.000 attested in the Elamite foundation tablets (Sekunda's *baivarabam is speculative), but we have records for 10 and 100... it shows a decimal organisation.

regards

We also have the Old Persian word for a unit of 1,000 thanks to the thousand-man royal guard, don't we? And armies with decimal organization tend to go up to units of 10,000 (eg. Mongol armies did). Units of 1,000 are a bit too small to organize a major army out of, and armies of 100,000 men in one place are extremely rare before the Napoleonic period, but 10,000 is more convenient for administration.

There are 15,000 Companions in one of Q. Curtius Rufus' accounts of Darius III's army before Issos, I think. (Does anyone know of an article that tries to make sense of his three different accounts of that army?)