Infomation from a website taht contains an insight to the numbers and allies of each army.

This information is very contradictive of other sites, and vice versa.

 

However provides me with a more vast array of possibilities as to who may have been with the Persians. And what they where armed with.

 

Xerxes spent more than four years gathering soldiers and stockpiling supplies from every corner of his empire. The resulting host amounted to a colossal cosmopolitan army of armies. In it were Persians, Medes and Hyrcanians, all wearing felt caps, tunics, mail and trousers, and armed with short spears, light wicker shields and deadly, powerful composite bows. Assyrians joined them, protected by bronze helmets and shields, and bearing spears, daggers and iron-studded wooden clubs. Bactrians, Parthians and Chorasmians added short bows and spears. The Scythian Sacae, in their tall pointed hats, bristled with bows, daggers and axes. Cotton-wearing Indian auxiliaries were armed with bows that shot iron-tipped arrows. There were Paricanians, Pactyans, Arabs, Ethiopians, Libyans, Paphlagonians, Ligyans, Matieni, Mariandynians, Syrians, Phrygians, Lydians, Thracians, Pysidians, Cabalians, Moschians, Tibareni, Macrone and Mossynoeci. The list, even in abbreviated form, reads like a catalog of lost peoples. Together, they formed an army that the Greek historian Herodotus estimated at 1.7 million, excluding the navy. When he added ship-borne fighters and European allies to the total, he came to a sum 2.6 million, a figure that he reckoned would have to be doubled to account for servants, crews and camp followers.

 

This gives me an insight to some more of the Greek states that joined the alliance to resist Persia

 

The Greek force that now raced to Thermopylae was ridiculously small for the challenge that awaited it: 300 Spartans, 80 Myceneans, 500 Tegeans, 700 Thespians and so forth, totaling about 4,900. The Athenians voted to evacuate their city. Their men of military age embarked on ships, while women and children were sent to the safer territory of the Peloponnesus. As Xerxes’ army drew closer, a Persian scout rode to survey the Greek camp. What he saw astonished him the Spartans, many of them naked and exercising, the rest calmly combing their hair. It was common practice for the Spartans to fix their hair when they were about to risk their lives, but neither the scout nor his king could comprehend such apparent vanity.

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~ by jabourjoseph on August 8, 2008.

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