Persian Invasion of 480 BC - articles

[hoplite14gr]

Hi Inaki,
The trirems numbers are archeological data that support and "inflate" Herodotus 200 trirems in Salamis.

At the time of the Delion Campaign there was also an army in with Demosthenes and Prokles -30 trirems -roughly 4500 to 6000 men supporting Athens allies in Western Greece (Battle of Olpi) and another 1000 hoplites and 600 archers operating in Chalkidiki. Thukidides gives also these numbers.So we are talking about 3 field armies of Athens at 426 B.C. That makes 10000 hoplites in Marthon more than likely.
There we cities equally big as Athems in Greece at the Persian Wars

So Greeks playing defence in their turf in 480 had access to 100000 defenders. They wouldnt have to move them across the Aegean at leat initially. There was a possibilty for Xerxes to face them all at a given point.
He did all he could to brake the alliances but he was not certain if they brake in the end. So he needed sufficient troops to overcome that number.

The to one superiority for the Attcker is amilitary dictum from the dawn of time.

Also the term companions in many instances has been asociated with elite troops amd royal bodyguards. Why the Persians would be an exception?

Kind regards

[Sean Manning]

Soldiers who are starving will be little if any use in battle. You need strength to shoot a bow or wield spear and shield.

I know, Sean, I've done both.

Then you're one up on me (smile). I agree that reenactment experience can be a great help in understanding ancient warfare, particularly on an issue like the mechanics of combat or the nuisances of living in the field. If this were an issue like that, I would attach great weight to the opinion of somebody who has done the thing in question and not just read about it. As is, I've noted that you seem to think ancient soldiers could stand up to worse conditions than I do, and that you have some experience to justify your views whereas my knowledge is purely scholarly. However, most of the logistical difficulties of supporting a large army fall outside the usual range of reenactment.

If you were Xerxes King of Kings, would you go off to punish the Yauna Beyond the Sea with an army that would be skin and bones by the time it reached Athens?

Of course not, neither does what I wrote earlier support such an interpretation. I would go expecting success to provide me with enough food to allow my army to fight or defeat to remove the necessity of foraging.

I was thinking of this statement below. It implies that you believed that Xerxes could afford to let his troops starve without badly compromising their combat efficiency and ability to intimidate. Xerxes could expect that any battle would be well within Greece, after he had been marching for months, and after his soldiers would have startened to sicken and die if they were recieving inadequate food. Even with the Greeks submitting before him, there is a sharp limit to how much food could be collected by an army column without relying on sea transportation, and that has its own difficulties since his massive fleet needed food and port space. Note how Xerxes split his army into three columns while marching through Thessaly and Macedon, presumably to widen the area they could collect food and recieve submission from. For most of their route, however, and when they wintered in inland Sardis (Hdt. 7.37), they marched in one column. Alexander's 50,000 often weren't easy to supply, even when the enemy submitted before him.

I think slaves and servants in the Persian army would have made a contribution as combatants as well as bearers; I think ancient warriors were accustomed to minimal home comforts when they were at home and therefore were able to cope with great hardships on campaign; I think their generals were quite at ease with the idea that their men might be half-starved and exhausted by the end of a campaign, as this was only to be expected; I think they were also happy to send unfit men into battle, as they were great believers in the theory of the big battalions (i.e., that God is on their side); ...

Grinding grain is slow and tiring,

Know. Done it. Mind you, I had two small girls produce enough flour for a couple of rolls in an hour, last Monday.

What would your lower figure be?

I was probably mistaken here, thinking of armies like the Roman or Macedonian which sharply limited the number of servants. The only figure I can find off-hand is about 10 lbs per hour for a Roman army hand-mill. This would keep a servant busy for hours if he had to feed a tentful or half-file, but not if he only had to feed himself and one or two soldiers.

Were you using a modern mill or a replica?

[Sean Manning]

You think the ancients were better able to withstand privation than early modern peasants?

No, I think they were better able to withstand privation than modern soldiers. I hadn't considered early modern armies as a point of comparison. What exactly do you mean by the term?

By "early modern" I was speaking rather broadly, say the 16th to 18th centuries, with an emphasis towards the end of the period. In this period soldiers were mostly ill-paid professionals raised from the poor, and frequently badly treated as leaders either saw soldiers as expendable or raised more men than they could properly feed and clothe. Marshal DeSaxe's (an 18th century French general) Reveries Upon the Art of War casually assumes that soldiers will be treated badly unless an army undertakes reforms. (The author has some eccentric suggesions). By Napoleonic times several organizational advances had occurred which made somewhat larger field armies possible, while late medieval armies were mostly rich amateurs (eg. Flemish militias, some men-at-arms) or professionals of a rather higher status (eg. English longbowmen, Swiss pikemen, some men-at-arms) and therefore had to treat most of their soldiers reasonably well.

[Aryaman2]

Now, the supply line system you mention sounds quite a bit like what Herodotus described, but somewhat reversed, sending supplies ahead instead of following. Xerxes was basically in friendly territory until Thermopylae don't forget. After one season in the area of Athens, maybe 60-70 miles inside of actual enemy territory, the army was in a starving condition as you may remember from other threads. That really gives the appearance of a cartoonishly oversized army. After all, it was assembled for theatre, not battle.

What more do you have to say about the supply line system? How exactly do we know it wasn't used in ancient times? Is it one of those 'absence of evidence being evidence of absence' things?

1) I don´t know if from reading Wikipedia article you realize that those armies were spread on a front of more than one thousand Kms, tracing their supplies from different lines.
2) Xerxes used the supply depots chain system, the same used by Alexander or by Edward I, and the one prefered by any general of those periods, the alternative being foraging. The system works only going through friendly territory, since depots have to be built in advance. The other shortcoming is that your route has to be prearranged.
Supply lines means to have a net of depots in your rear, all linked among them and to a head depot, that has to be always close to the marching army (5 to 7 journeys maxim). The system requires a lot more organizational skills and resources, especially transport assets, but in exhange provides 2 decissive advantages, a continuous flow of supply to the marching army in much larger quantity, making possible to sustain much larger field armies than before, especially in enemy territory, and a the option to select different invasion routes. The main problem of supply lines is that they are vulnerable to be cut, so armies tended to move more slowly.
Now, ask yourself, how was the US army moving into Baghdad being supplied? Did the US army stablished depots in advance? Since mid XVII century all western armies turned to supply lines and abandoned the old supply depots chain system.

[Aryaman2]

Hi Inaki,
The trirems numbers are archeological data that support and "inflate" Herodotus 200 trirems in Salamis.

At the time of the Delion Campaign there was also an army in with Demosthenes and Prokles -30 trirems -roughly 4500 to 6000 men supporting Athens allies in Western Greece (Battle of Olpi) and another 1000 hoplites and 600 archers operating in Chalkidiki. Thukidides gives also these numbers.So we are talking about 3 field armies of Athens at 426 B.C. That makes 10000 hoplites in Marthon more than likely.
There we cities equally big as Athems in Greece at the Persian Wars

So Greeks playing defence in their turf in 480 had access to 100000 defenders. They wouldnt have to move them across the Aegean at leat initially. There was a possibilty for Xerxes to face them all at a given point.
He did all he could to brake the alliances but he was not certain if they brake in the end. So he needed sufficient troops to overcome that number.

The to one superiority for the Attcker is amilitary dictum from the dawn of time.

Also the term companions in many instances has been asociated with elite troops amd royal bodyguards. Why the Persians would be an exception?

Kind regards

1) Demosthenes had with him just 400 Athenians, the rest being Acarnanians and Agraeans (Thucydides 4.101)
The army of Hipocrates at Delium included metics and foreigners (Thucydides 4.90) . The battle was in 424.
2) Athens in 490 had much less resources than in the Peloponnesian War, when it had an empire, so that allied infantry could be used, mercenaries recruited and metics armed to the expenses of the state.
3) I wonder about your calculation of 100.000 greeks at Plataea, even Herodotus gives just 38.700 aggregate, unless you count all souls including servants.
4) According to that dictum, Alexander´s army should have been larger than the Persian army . In fact, the military dictum talks about local superoirity, not global superiority.

[hoplite14gr]

The main Athenian resource in 500 to 480 B.C were the Lavrion silver mines.
And it was the most impotrant resource.
Also by the time of Delion the Loimos (Plague) had causes among others the reduction of army service eligibles.
It mast have been serious for the obnoxious Athenians to get assistance from metoikoi -possibly promishing citizenship.

Kind regards

[Aryaman2]

I agree with the Plague factor (but by 415, according to Thucydides 6.26, the city had already recovered), but you will agree with me that the general resources of Athens were greater then than in Marathon times. About the expedition to Sicily that year Thucydides said "Indeed this armament that first sailed out was by far the most costly and splendid Hellenic force that had ever been sent out by a single city up to that time" (6.31) so large that they were forced to "dividing the whole fleet into three divisions, allotted one to each of their number, to avoid sailing all together and being thus embarrassed for water, harbourage, or provisions at the stations which they might touch at, and at the same time to be generally better ordered and easier to handle" (6.42) yet the whole force was 5.100 strong. Thucydides gives a very detailed information about its composition "consisting of one hundred and thirty-four galleys in all (besides two Rhodian fifty-oars) of which one hundred were Athenian vessels--sixty men-of-war, and forty troopships--and the remainder from Chios and the other allies; five thousand and one hundred heavy infantry in all, that is to say, fifteen hundred Athenian citizens from the rolls at Athens and seven hundred Thetes shipped as marines, and the rest allied troops, some of them Athenian subjects, and besides these five hundred Argives, and two hundred and fifty Mantineans serving for hire; four hundred and eighty archers in all, eighty of whom were Cretans, seven hundred slingers from Rhodes, one hundred and twenty light-armed exiles from Megara, and one horse-transport carrying thirty horses" (6.43) Note that only 2.200, including Thetes, so less than half. It is difficult to imagine how in the times of Marathon Athens could have mustered so many non Athenians in his army
To sum up, it is probably the best documented army strength of the period, on Thucydides account the largest force ever assembled by greek city, and you can see the number

[Felix]

What technological advances made it possible for Napoleon to move 500,000 men, that Xerxes did not have access to?

The major differences were those that allowed Napoleon to spread out his 500,000 men over a front hundreds of miles wide. The flank armies were considerable distances from the main axis of advance to Moscow. Napoleon's main army operated as corps d'armees, which allowed them to be spread up to a day's march apart. This required roads (although the Russian ones were appalling, I doubt they were worse than ones at the edge of the Persian empire), and bureaucracy enough to operate a staff system, and maps. Writen orders in multiple copies could be distributed to various sub-commander, all with reference to uniformly printed maps, and using the samy military vernacular and terminology. Without these measures, total chaos would ensue unless an army kept to one road - which brings the supply problems we have been discussing. Also, the French armies travelled pretty light by pre-industrial standards, even though there were extra items taken on the Russian campaign (i.e. carts for gathering provisions, etc.) and they kept moving to avoid starvation.

One of the main reasons the French losses were so high was that the retreat went across the same route as the advance - and the land was stripped bare; so starvation ensued.

[Felix]

What technological advances made it possible for Napoleon to move 500,000 men, that Xerxes did not have access to?

You keep confusing global armies with field armies, Napoleon never moved a field army of 500.000, the top was around 130.000, thanks, as I already explained, to the supply lines system, that was unknown before the second half of the XVII century

As I recall, the 130,000 men were Davout's III Corps, oversized for this campaign. Other corps did march with the main force, but as mentioned just above this, they did so spread out up to a day's march apart.

[Felix]

You think the ancients were better able to withstand privation than early modern peasants?

No, I think they were better able to withstand privation than modern soldiers. I hadn't considered early modern armies as a point of comparison. What exactly do you mean by the term?

By "early modern" I was speaking rather broadly, say the 16th to 18th centuries, with an emphasis towards the end of the period. In this period soldiers were mostly ill-paid professionals raised from the poor, and frequently badly treated as leaders either saw soldiers as expendable or raised more men than they could properly feed and clothe. Marshal DeSaxe's (an 18th century French general) Reveries Upon the Art of War casually assumes that soldiers will be treated badly unless an army undertakes reforms. (The author has some eccentric suggesions). By Napoleonic times several organizational advances had occurred which made somewhat larger field armies possible, while late medieval armies were mostly rich amateurs (eg. Flemish militias, some men-at-arms) or professionals of a rather higher status (eg. English longbowmen, Swiss pikemen, some men-at-arms) and therefore had to treat most of their soldiers reasonably well.

I would rather say the situation in the 18th century saw soldiers who were treated carefully (if not humanely) by their masters. After the 30 Years War, armies become professional; the soldiers are low class people, but they have to be paid, even when not in use; which makes them expensive assets. They were harshly disciplined, but not starved. This cost helped to limit the size of armies. Conversely, in the 19th century, armies were raised by nationalism and conscription (which went hand in hand), it was the duty of men to serve and not to desert; so you didn't have to treat them so well. You could draft large numbers of men, and pay wasn't so much of an issue, and if you lost some, you could draft some more. This allowed for larger armies, and more wastage of manpower.

[Sean Manning]

I would rather say the situation in the 18th century saw soldiers who were treated carefully (if not humanely) by their masters. After the 30 Years War, armies become professional; the soldiers are low class people, but they have to be paid, even when not in use; which makes them expensive assets. They were harshly disciplined, but not starved. This cost helped to limit the size of armies. Conversely, in the 19th century, armies were raised by nationalism and conscription (which went hand in hand), it was the duty of men to serve and not to desert; so you didn't have to treat them so well. You could draft large numbers of men, and pay wasn't so much of an issue, and if you lost some, you could draft some more. This allowed for larger armies, and more wastage of manpower.

I can't find my sources (several were PDF articles which I have since deleted) and this is off-topic so I won't get into a full discussion of this. Suffice it to say that I agree treatment varied, especially with time and army, and that good generals were stingy with the lives and health of their men outside of battles. Convincing junior officers to do the same, however, was often harder, especially since undersupporting your men could be proffitable. Earlier in the period states often raised armies larger than they could feed and pay for and expected looting to make up the difference.

[Anonymous]

I know. We're not concerned with the Greeks and elites are, by definition, minorities. Which begs the question; How big an army has an elite shock force of 10,000?

Are you implying here the "Inmortals"? Aren´t you aware that they didn´t exist in reality? Herodotus translated wrongly the Persian Anusiya (Companions) as Inmortals, and then made up an story on why they were called thus. Other Western sources quoting Inmortals later derived from Herodotus the name, what BTW indicates how little they knew about the Persian army

When you say "they didn't exist", you actually appear to mean "they weren't called that". Or are you telling me that Xerxes had no elite troops? Or just that we don't know how many? If Herodotos called them Immortals, I don't see why I shouldn't - you clearly know who I mean.

You have clearly done more research than I have and you argue very well from your sources, but too many of your references are to other ages and I don't see any reason to assume that the ancients could not actually be more efficient than some of their successors, and you haven't demonstrated why this should be so. Indeed, I don't see how such a claim could be established.

[Anonymous]

I was thinking of this statement below. It implies that you believed that Xerxes could afford to let his troops starve without badly compromising their combat efficiency and ability to intimidate.

Sorry! Yes, it does give that impression but, as I've said elsewhere, I meant that he was expecting only to need enough food for a short campaign and wouldn't have felt any need to take the possibility of a long campaign on short rations into consideration.

Were you using a modern mill or a replica?

Well. It's a modern mill in the sense that it's probably only about a hundred years old, or less, but it still works on the power of the human arm! (Two stones and a stick, sort of thing.)

[Anonymous]

1) I don´t know if from reading Wikipedia article you realize that those armies were spread on a front of more than one thousand Kms, tracing their supplies from different lines.

But that is not the same as their not constituting a field army.

2) Xerxes used the supply depots chain system, the same used by Alexander or by Edward I, and the one prefered by any general of those periods, the alternative being foraging. The system works only going through friendly territory, since depots have to be built in advance. The other shortcoming is that your route has to be prearranged.
Supply lines means to have a net of depots in your rear, all linked among them and to a head depot, that has to be always close to the marching army (5 to 7 journeys maxim). The system requires a lot more organizational skills and resources, especially transport assets, but in exhange provides 2 decissive advantages, a continuous flow of supply to the marching army in much larger quantity, making possible to sustain much larger field armies than before, especially in enemy territory, and a the option to select different invasion routes. The main problem of supply lines is that they are vulnerable to be cut, so armies tended to move more slowly.

None of this tends to support the view that Xerxes had a very small army.
I'm sorry, Inaki, your reference to sources is very good, but I don't see that any of them prove your point. Unless you have a new reference, from the period in question, or a completely new line of reasoning, I don't see how you are going to persuade anyone who isn't already of the minimalist view.[/quote]

[Aryaman2]

When you say "they didn't exist", you actually appear to mean "they weren't called that". Or are you telling me that Xerxes had no elite troops? Or just that we don't know how many? If Herodotos called them Immortals, I don't see why I shouldn't - you clearly know who I mean.

You have clearly done more research than I have and you argue very well from your sources, but too many of your references are to other ages and I don't see any reason to assume that the ancients could not actually be more efficient than some of their successors, and you haven't demonstrated why this should be so. Indeed, I don't see how such a claim could be established.

What I mean is, Herodotus said that they were called Inmortals because they were 10.000 and they were always kept at that strength by continually replacing losses, but as they were in fact called Companions the whole story about their numbers is clearly a fable. They would be much less than 10.000, that is my point.
I would ask you, why do you think that the ancients were in general more efficient than any of their succesors? What I assume is that they were equally efficient on average, and I don´t see any reason to think otherwise. Let me ask you a question, do you believe Caesar faced 330.000 Helvetians? Do you think Gallic tribes could muster armies in excess of 300.000 while France in 1870 could not, despite railways?