There's been a series of programmes on British TV about how famous people's fortunes have "dis appeared" after their deaths. Each programme is entitled something like "Whatever happened to Marc Bolan's Millions?" We could ask the same about Xerxes!
It seems to me we may be moving towards a consensus. In my mind, the campaign goes like this:-
490: Xerxes invades Greece with awesome force of 500, 000.
Greeks make him fight "The Mother ****er of all Battles" at Thermopylae. Persians won; Greeks, nil.
Xerxes' slightly-depleted, but somewhat chastened, Awesome Force wrecks the bits of Greece which it has cleared of the enemy.
Meanwhile, his navy, said to outnumber the enemy's by 3 to 1 (though modern scholars dispute this, as well, suggesting about 1.5 to 1) and known to have more skilful crews, gets its stern kicked most woughly at Salamis. Xerxes' forces are still strong, but the campaigning season is drawing to a close and he can't afford to be away from the centre of his empire for long, so he departs for the fleshpots of Babylon (or Persepolis), leaving his General to occupy the territory cleared of resistance and to complete the conquest in the following year.
Important Question: How many men and ships does he take with him? Probably enough to reduce Mardonius' logistical problem to manageable proportions. That is, manageable with a strong Emperor secure at the heart of his Empire and still effectively in control of the Mediteranean.
491: Mardonius conducts a textbook campaign, outmanouevring his foes at every turn right up to the final day at Plataea, when he is unfortunate enough to lose both his most able commander and his life. His troops, without their general, his second in command or their Emperor, suffer a collapse of morale which leads to large numbers of them being slaughtered on the battlefield and a remnant facing the awful task of extricating itself from hostile territory where a resurgent and vengeful populace can harry it at will. Herodotos suggests 20,000 escaped Plataea as an organised group. Given the Greeks' total control of the land and of the sea, in home waters, it is not difficult to make the Persian retreat a nightmare.
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I think I will agree with you Paul.
But I think you mistyped the dates.
490. 2 Persian Generals fail in Marathon. They could be blamed for incompetence at no expense for the crown.
483. Mardonious gets a bloody nose from the Vrigoi from poor security measures, and has 2 years savage campaigning to pacify the Thracian coast.
480. The Empire strikes back in full pomp and splendor. Lots of things depend on the fleet. The unpleasant experience of Thermopylae and the bad supply situation worsened after Salamis makes the "Shach an Shach" to think that he missed his harem in Sousa. He leaves Mardonius who was ardent supporter of the campaign to deal with it. I don't think he leaves him the best troops but the king can do no wrong and if something is not OK it will be Mardonius fault.
So Mardonius laden with unreliable levies and allies casts his die in Platea.
Is seems if we believe Herodotus that he could not coordinate his forces and the Greek troops got the time to correct their tactical mistakes. Bravery was poor substitute for coordination and Mardonius death sealed the fate of the army. With the exception of the Thebans, the other Greek levies bolted and I think yo are right when you said that the retreat of the Platea survivors was a nightmare. The terrain that they had to negotiate on the way back was ambush country and they were not now numerous enough to make impression. I feel that their forage parties must had it awful.
I think Xerxes took almost all his fleet and his bodyguard. Having wrecked Thessaly and Fthiotis the only place that could he find food were the islands outside Thessaly but they couldn't feed 100000 men. His only chance was to go back to the Thracian coast. If he had started with 450000 he must have reached Thermopylae 400000 because of decease. 380000 after Thermopylae casualties. If supply was deteriorating and decease was rife it must have been 300000 left after Salamis. Chances are that he left half of them with Mardonius or 2/3 of them. Greeks were apprehensive in Plataea so Mardonius must have at least 150000 to make an impression.
If after Salamis Xerxes was left with 700 ships he could transfer around 70000 excluding the oars men by sea but overcrowding would make things worse and the voyage from Rafina to Thrace took a good 50 days at that time.
The extrication from Greece must have been a nightmare indeed.
Kind regards
Stefanos
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Herodotus says that Mardonius was allowed to pick 300,000 of the best troops. The numbers we may throw out I guess, but these were not rejects. The soldiers who starved to death were on Xerxes march back to Asia, not the ones Mardonius picked, but the ones he rejected. Of the soldiers that stayed at Platea, this it what is said:
Quote:LXX. So these perished without anyone noticing. But when the Persians and the rest of the multitude had fled within the wooden wall, they managed to get up on the towers before the coming of the Lacedaemonians; then they strengthened the wall as best they could. When the Athenians arrived, an intense battle for the wall began. For as long as the Athenians were not there, the barbarians defended themselves and had a great advantage over the Lacedaemonians who had no skill in the assault of walls. When the Athenians came up, however, the fight for the wall became intense and lasted for a long time. In the end the Athenians, by valor and constant effort, scaled the wall and breached it. The Greeks poured in through the opening they had made; the first to enter were the Tegeans, and it was they who plundered the tent of Mardonius, taking from it besides everything else the feeding trough of his horses which was all of bronze and a thing well worth looking at. The Tegeans dedicated this feeding trough of Mardonius in the temple of Athena Alea. Everything else which they took they brought into the common pool, as did the rest of the Greeks. As for the barbarians, they did not form a unified body again once the wall was down, nor did anyone think of defense because the terrified men in the tiny space and the many myriads herded together were in great distress. Such a slaughter were the Greeks able to make, that of two hundred and sixty thousand who remained after Artabazus had fled with his forty thousand, scarcely three thousand were left alive. Of the Lacedaemonians from Sparta ninety-one all together were killed in battle; of the Tegeans, seventeen and of the Athenians, fifty-two.(sub1)
(sub1) These figures must refer to the hoplitai alone, leaving out of account the Laconian perioikoi and the rest of the light-armed troops. Plutarch says that 60,300 Greeks fell at Plataea.
Rich Marinaccio
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OK agreed but Xrexrxes must have taken his Immortals with him.
Xerxes must have left all the cavalry. They were more dificult to transport in ships. They were also the most reliable element in the Persian Army and they accounted themselves well until the death of Massistios.
6300 Greek casualties are possible but 60300 is half the Army.
Unlikely since the Greeks won the day.
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Stefanos
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Here is what is said regarding the troops picked by Mardonius.
Quote:CXIII. Those who were with Xerxes waited for a few days after the sea-fight and then marched away to Boeotia by the road by which they had come. Mardonius wanted to give the king safe conduct and thought the time of year unseasonable for war; it was better, he thought, to winter in Thessaly, and then attack the Peloponnese in the spring. When they had arrived in Thessaly, Mardonius first chose all the Persians called Immortals, save only Hydarnes their general who said that he would not quit the king's person, and next, the Persian cuirassiers and the thousand horse and the Medes and Sacae and Bactrians and Indians, alike their infantrymen and the rest of the horsemen. These nations he chose in their entirety; of the rest of his allies he picked out a few from each people, the best men and those whom he knew to have done some good service. The Persians whom he chose (men who wore torques and bracelets) were more in number than those of any other nation and next to them the Medes; these indeed were as many as the Persians, but not such stout fighters. Thereby the whole number, together with the horsemen, grew to three hundred thousand men.
Rich Marinaccio
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Whoops!! I stand corrected for the Imortals.
But I think I got it right for the cavalry. Medians and Sakae (Skythians) had a good cavalry tradition and Bactria produced quality heavy horse. Later in history (not this time though) Bactrian catafracts are mentioned.
Herodotus says 300000 but 200000 seem more likey to me, given tha logistical problem. Still I am speculating on that but 200000 could make the 100000 Greeks aprehensive.
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Stefanos
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I must say that in spite of raw size, Herodotus' numbers are very consistent with each other. It really makes me wonder about the word 'myriad'. I wonder if it had the same meaning in his time, or if some later translator erroniously updated the measure originally used that was no longer in use, and used 'myriad' when he should have used something else.
Rich Marinaccio
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murios, -a -on has a few meanings. According to Liddell and Scott. It often means countless, numberless or infinite. Homer and Pindar use it this way. It is the largest number expressed by one word in ancient Greek. It can have this infinite quality about it.
However, when it is used with another definite number, we can take it as 10,000. Both Herodotus and Xenophon use it this way. So there could be a slight bit of confusion in a few instances. However, in the passages under consideration we can be confident that Herodotus meant it to mean 10,000.
I should look and see if Thucydides uses the word. If so, how.
Kevin
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ΜΥΡΙΑΣ MYRIAS or ΜΥΡΡΙΑΣ MYRRIAS = 10000
Countless = AMETRITOS ΑΜΕΤΡΗΤΟΣ
Infinite = APIROS ΑΠΕΙΡΟΣ
Numberless = ANARITHMITOS or POLYARITHMOS (TH as in Thurday)
ΑΝΑΡΙΘΜΗΤΟΣ ΠΟΛΥΑΡΙΘΜΟΣ
Greek language is very specifiv in this things.
Herodotos when he doesn´t mean specific numbers uses the term:
PLITHOS APIRON = multitute of things - people
ΠΛΗΘΟΣ ΑΠΕΙΡΟΝ
If you want to se the tems in Greek pleas use Greek windows 1253 encoding.
Liddel & Scott have the opinion of Pindaros using ΜΥΡΙΑΣ MYRIAS or ΜΥΡΡΙΑΣ MYRRIAS metaforically but it is their opinion.
Herodotus simply overdid his numbers.
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Stefanos
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I was wondering, what if we had other sources besides Herodotus to compare? the ideal of course would be Persian documents, but even other Greek writers would do fine to show the inconsistencies of ancient sources. I recalled Granikos for instance, where on the numbers of the Persian army Arrian (1.14.4) gives 'about' 20000 horse and somewhat fewer foot, Justin (11.6.11) a wildly exaggerated all-in total of 600000 (!); Diodoros (17.19.5) gives 'over' 10000 horse, and an improbable 100000 foot. Wer are left with the impression that ancient writers just had no idea of the real numbers.
AKA Inaki
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I agree, ancient writers might be found to contradict each other.
In some case they might even write the number at one's disposal not the ones actually fielded. 10000 horsemen are not unlikely in Granicos. 20000 possibly if we assume that the Persians used something like the Thematic system that one province's good troops are sent to aid a province in trouble that feilds all the troops that it can spare. I am inclined to accept up to 60000 troops in Granicus but not 600000. The cavalry that was the most reliable element in the Persian Army so it might have been numerus.
So far I don´t know any site quoting original Iranian text about this period.
Does any body know? My knowledge so far is about the Persian army uniforms and levies but not logistics in detail.
Somewhere I read at the time of ChosroesII, Greek literature was translated in Iranian. Did any Sassanid scholars texts with comments survive?
Any historian Archaologist in the forum please?
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Stefanos
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I read from googling that the earliest manuscript of the histories comes from the 800s A.D. That's pretty remarkable.
Rich Marinaccio
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My opinion is that they are all unreliable, and that you can´t really take one or another just because it seems plausible. I am writing a paper on the subject of military logistics in premodern armies and my conclusion is that literary evidence is so unreliable as to better forget most of it.
I have made a survey on the bibliography for the size of Xerxes army in several well known scholars
De Sanctis: 90.000
Beloch:60.000
Tarn:60.000
Bury: 180.000
v Fischer:40.000
Giannelli:300.000 (including camp followers)
Wilcken:100.000
So, between 40.000 and 150.000? fighting men, not an inconsiderable gap.
AKA Inaki
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Funny that it is such a wide range from the scholars. I'd like to read their arguments for the estimate. I guess when it comes to these extremely ancient stories, where we have no other source, perhaps the important thing is to *know* the stories rather than *believe* the stories.
We are told that the Romans were descended from Aeneas and that Romulus and Remus were raised by a she-wolf. That's the story and it's all we got. What really happened is something we will really never know, because even if we dig up another ancient story that's different and more plausible, we still don't know if it has any resemblance to the truth.
In the case of impossible numbers though, we do at least have the option to scale them down to something *possible*. I think there may be knowledge to be gained by trying to solve the problem, even if failure is certian. What is the biggest possible army that Xerxes could have brought over? Forget about what actually happened, but how far off is the story from the realm of possibility? What steps would we take to answer this question?
Rich Marinaccio
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There are a number of works that deal with logistics in premodern armies, I am right now reading one on the Ottoman Empire. There are 3 different types of maximum numbers for armies
1) Maximum number that can be raised
2) Maximum number that can be mobilized (Rhoads Murphey, using the very detailed accounts of the Ottoman Imperial government, puts it at around 70% of 1)
3) Maximum number that can be fielded as a single army (a fraction of 2). Xerxes army is number 3, and that is one of the reasons I am on the minimal numbers, however after taking a look at Delbruck I must say I feel rather maximalist, he puts the Persian army at around 25.000
AKA Inaki
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