Spartan Mora regiments at Battle of Plataea

[Paullus Scipio]

Ghostmojo/Howard wrote:

On another subject though, I am not certain, however, Herodotos forgot about the Perioikoi at Thermopylai (as I have said elsewhere on this forum). I'm not convinced they were there in the first place. Leonidas was able to take his personal bodyguard with him as an advance force. He was not able to mobilise the whole army - nor did he have the power to do so. I take that as being an inability to mobilise the Perioikoi as well - unless he merely picked up volunteers along his march (which seems unlikely to me). The Spartan state decided on mobilisation of its citizenry and upon those who were foresworn to follow - i.e. the Lakonian dwellers around, some of whom were yeomanry hoplites like much of the rest of central and southern Greece. Why would they necessarily follow without being forced to by their Spartan masters (unless seized by some panhellenic spirit)? Surely that missing 1000 could be accounted for elsewhere and especially with Diodorus not being entirely reliable. If the Perioikoi had been persuaded, I think a matching figure of 300 might have been more likely - like for like as at Plataia? Is it not also possible approximately 1000 men came from no especially definable origins - just various smaller places within the Peloponnese, and possibly elsewhere, en route to the pass?

....this seems like an attractive idea at first sight, but alas, there are a number of major objections to it. Firstly the 'Constitution' tells us that the King's power was paramount in war, so he had the power to mobilise as many as he thought necessary... and that this was so at this time is proven by Diodorus' anecdote:

Leonidas, when he received the appointment, announced that only one thousand men should follow him on the campaign. And when the ephors said that he was leading altogether too few soldiers against a great force and ordered him to take along a larger number, he replied to them in secret, ....... There were, then, of the Lacedaemonians one thousand, and with them three hundred Spartiates, while the rest of the Greeks( actually Peloponnesians) who were dispatched with them to Thermopylae were three thousand.

Leonidas, then, with four thousand soldiers advanced to Thermopylae. The Locrians, however, who dwelt in the neighbourhood of the passes had already given earth and water to the Persians, and had promised that they would seize the passes in advance; but when they learned that Leonidas had arrived at Thermopylae, they changed their minds and went over to the Greeks. And there gathered at Thermopylae also a thousand Locrians, an equal number of Melians/Malians, and almost a thousand Phocians, as well as some four hundred Thebans of the other party; for the inhabitants of Thebes were divided against each other with respect to the alliance with the Persians. Now the Greeks who were drawn up with Leonidas for battle, being as many in number as we have set forth, tarried in Thermopylae, awaiting the arrival of the Persians.

[translation courtesy Lacus Curtius site]
.....thus Herodotus' missing thousand are almost certainly these 'perioikoi', and it should be noted that the Lakedaemonian Kings had more power over the 'perioikoi' than over Spartans....in a very real sense they were "King's men".
The unknown ( probably Ephorus) source drawn on by Justin, Diodorus and Trogus preserves accurate detail in parts, more than Herodotus who drew largely on Athenian sources, and so is reliable here, especially as it accords in numbers ( 4,000) with the epigram recorded by Herodotus ........