05-27-2005, 02:19 PM
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
