On this transit from Asia into Europe Herodotus dwells with peculiar emphasis,—and well he might do so, since when we consider the bridges, the invading number, the unmeasured hopes succeeded by no less unmeasured calamity,—it will appear not only to have been the most imposing event of his century, but to rank among the most imposing events of all history. He surrounds it with much dramatic circumstance, not only mentioning the marble throne erected for Xerxes on a hill near Abydos, from whence he surveyed both his masses of land-force covering the shore, and his ships sailing and racing in the strait (a race in which the Phenicians of Sidon surpassed the Greeks and all the other contingents), but also superadding to this real fact a dialogue with Artabanus, intended to set forth the internal mind of Xerxes. He farther quotes certain supposed exclamations of the Abydenes at the sight of his superhuman power. “Why (said one of these terror-stricken spectators[44]), why dost thou, O Zeus, under the shape of a Persian man and the name of Xerxes, thus bring together the whole human race for the ruin of Greece? It would have been easy for thee to accomplish that without so much ado.” Such emphatic ejaculations exhibit the strong feeling which Herodotus or his informants throw into the scene, though we cannot venture to apply to them the scrutiny of historical criticism.
At the first moment of sunrise, so sacred in the mind of Orientals,[45] the passage was ordered to begin: the bridges being perfumed with frankincense and strewed with myrtle boughs, while Xerxes himself made libations into the sea with a golden censer, and offered up prayers to Helios, that he might effect without hindrance his design of conquering Europe even to its farthest extremity. Along with his libation he cast into the Hellespont the censer itself, with a golden bowl and a Persian scimitar;—“I do not exactly know[46] (adds the historian) whether he threw them in as a gift to Helios, or as a mark of repentance and atonement to the Hellespont for the stripes which he had inflicted upon it.” Of the two bridges, that nearest to the Euxine was devoted to the military force,—the other, to the attendants, the baggage, and the beasts of burden. The ten thousand Persians, called Immortals, all wearing garlands on their heads, were the first to pass over, and Xerxes himself, with the remaining army, followed next, though in an order somewhat different from that which had been observed in quitting Sardis: the monarch having reached the European shore, saw his troops crossing the bridges after him “under the lash.” But in spite of the use of this sharp stimulus to accelerate progress, so vast were the numbers of his host, that they occupied no less than seven days and seven nights, without a moment of intermission, in the business of crossing over,—a fact to be borne in mind presently, when we come to discuss the totals computed by Herodotus.[47]
Having thus cleared the strait, Xerxes directed his march along the Thracian Chersonese, to the isthmus whereby it is joined with Thrace, between the town of Kardia on his left hand and the tomb of Hellê on his right,—the eponymous heroine of the strait. After passing this isthmus, he turned westward along the coast of the gulf of Melas and the Ægean sea,—crossing the river from which that gulf derived its name, and even drinking its waters up—according to Herodotus—with the men and animals of his army. Having passed by the Æolic city of Ænus and the harbor called Stentoris, he reached the sea-coast and plain called Doriskus, covering the rich delta near the mouth of the Hebrus: a fort had been built there and garrisoned by Darius. The spacious plain called by this same name reached far along the shore to Cape Serreium, and comprised in it the towns of Salê and Zonê, possessions of the Samothracian Greeks planted on the territory once possessed by the Thracian Kikones on the mainland. Having been here joined by his fleet, which had doubled[48] the southernmost promontory of the Thracian Chersonese, he thought the situation convenient for a general review and enumeration both of his land and his naval force.
Never probably in the history of mankind has there been brought together a body of men from regions so remote and so widely diverse, for one purpose and under one command, as those which were now assembled in Thrace near the mouth of the Hebrus. About the numerical total we cannot pretend to form any definite idea; about the variety of contingents there is no room for doubt. “What Asiatic nation was there (asks Herodotus,[49] whose conceptions of this expedition seem to outstrip his powers of language) that Xerxes did not bring against Greece?” Nor was it Asiatic nations alone, comprised within the Oxus, the Indus, the Persian gulf, the Red Sea, the Levant, the Ægean and the Euxine: we must add to these also the Egyptians, the Ethiopians on the Nile south of Egypt, and the Libyans from the desert near Kyrênê. Not all the expeditions, fabulous or historical, of which Herodotus had ever heard, appeared to him comparable to this of Xerxes, even for total number; much more in respect of variety of component elements. Forty-six different nations,[50] each with its distinct national costume, mode of arming, and local leaders, formed the vast land-force; eight other nations furnished the fleet, on board of which Persians, Medes, and Sakæ served as armed soldiers or marines; and the real leaders, both of the entire army and of all its various divisions, were native Persians of noble blood, who distributed the various native contingents into companies of thousands, hundreds, and tens. The forty-six nations composing the land-force were as follows: Persians, Medes, Kissians, Hyrkanians, Assyrians, Baktrians, Sakæ, Indians, Arians, Parthians, Chorasmians, Sogdians, Gandarians, Dadikæ, Kaspians, Sarangæ, Paktyes, Utii, Myki, Parikanii, Arabians, Ethiopians in Asia and Ethiopians south of Egypt, Libyans, Paphlagonians, Ligyes, Matieni, Mariandyni, Syrians, Phrygians, Armenians, Lydians, Mysians, Thracians, Kabêlians, Mares, Kolchians, Alarodians, Saspeires, Sagartii. The eight nations who furnished the fleet were: Phenicians, three hundred ships of war; Egyptians, two hundred; Cypriots, one hundred and fifty; Kilikians, one hundred; Pamphylians, thirty; Lykians, fifty; Karians, seventy; Ionic Greeks, one hundred; Doric Greeks, thirty; Æolic Greeks, sixty; Hellespontic Greeks, one hundred; Greeks from the islands in the Ægean, seventeen; in all one thousand two hundred and seven triremes, or ships of war, with three banks of oars. The descriptions of costume and arms which we find in Herodotus are curious and varied; but it is important to mention that no nation except the Lydians, Pamphylians, Cypriots and Karians (partially also the Egyptian marines on shipboard) bore arms analogous to those of the Greeks (i. e. arms fit for steady conflict and sustained charge,[51]—for hand combat in line as well as for defence of the person,—but inconveniently heavy either in pursuit or in flight); while the other nations were armed with missile weapons,—light shields of wicker or leather, or no shields at all,—turbans or leather caps instead of helmets,—swords, and scythes. They were not properly equipped either for fighting in regular order or for resisting the line of spears and shields which the Grecian hoplites brought to bear upon them; their persons too were much less protected against wounds than those of the latter; some of them indeed, as the Mysians and Libyans, did not even carry spears, but only staves with the end hardened in the fire.[52] A nomadic tribe of Persians, called Sagartii, to the number of eight thousand horsemen, came armed only with a dagger and with the rope known in South America as the lasso, which they cast in the fight to entangle an antagonist. The Æthiopians from the Upper Nile had their bodies painted half red and half white, wore the skins of lions and panthers, and carried, besides the javelin, a long bow with arrows of reed, tipped with a point of sharp stone.
It was at Doriskus that the fighting men of the entire land-army were first numbered; for Herodotus expressly informs us that the various contingents had never been numbered separately, and avows his own ignorance of the amount of each. The means employed for numeration were remarkable. Ten thousand men were counted,[53] and packed together as closely as possible: a line was drawn, and a wall of inclosure built around the space which they had occupied, into which all the army was directed to enter successively, so that the aggregate number of divisions, comprising ten thousand each, was thus ascertained. One hundred and seventy of these divisions were affirmed by the informants of Herodotus to have been thus numbered, constituting a total of one million seven hundred thousand foot, besides eighty thousand horse, many war-chariots from Libya and camels from Arabia, with a presumed total of twenty thousand additional men.[54] Such was the vast land-force of the Persian monarch: his naval equipments were of corresponding magnitude, comprising not only the twelve hundred and seven triremes,[55] or war-ships, of three banks of oars, but also three thousand smaller vessels of war and transports. The crew of each trireme comprised two hundred rowers, and thirty fighting-men, Persians or Sakæ; that of each of the accompanying vessels included eighty men, according to an average which Herodotus supposes not far from the truth. If we sum up these items, the total numbers brought by Xerxes from Asia to the plain and to the coast of Doriskus would reach the astounding figure of two million three hundred and seventeen thousand men. Nor is this all. In the farther march from Doriskus to Thermopylæ, Xerxes pressed into his service men and ships from all the people whose territory he traversed: deriving from hence a reinforcement of one hundred and twenty triremes with aggregate crews of twenty-four thousand men, and of three hundred thousand new land troops, so that the aggregate of his force when he appeared at Thermopylæ was two million six hundred and forty thousand men. To this we are to add, according to the conjecture of Herodotus, a number not at all inferior, as attendants, slaves, sutlers, crews of the provision-craft and ships of burden, etc., so that the male persons accompanying the Persian king when he reached his first point of Grecian resistance amounted to five million two hundred and eighty-three thousand two hundred and twenty! So stands the prodigious estimate of this army, the whole strength of the Eastern world, in clear and express figures of Herodotus,[56] who himself evidently supposes the number to have been even greater; for he conceives the number of “camp followers” as not only equal to, but considerably larger than, that of fighting-men. We are to reckon, besides, the eunuchs, concubines, and female cooks, at whose number Herodotus does not pretend to guess: together with cattle, beasts of burden, and Indian dogs, in indefinite multitude, increasing the consumption of the regular army.
To admit this overwhelming total, or anything near to it, is obviously impossible: yet the disparaging remarks which it has drawn down upon Herodotus are noway merited.[57] He takes pains to distinguish that which informants told him, from that which he merely guessed. His description of the review at Doriskus is so detailed, that he had evidently conversed with persons who were present at it, and had learned the separate totals promulgated by the enumerators,—infantry, cavalry, and ships of war, great and small. As to the number of triremes, his statement seems beneath the truth, as we may judge from the contemporary authority of Æschylus, who in the “Persæ” gives the exact number of twelve hundred and seven Persian ships as having fought at Salamis: but between Doriskus and Salamis, Herodotus[58] has himself enumerated six hundred and forty-seven ships as lost or destroyed, and only one hundred and twenty as added. No exaggeration, therefore, can well be suspected in this statement, which would imply about two hundred and seventy-six thousand as the number of the crews, though there is here a confusion or omission in the narrative which we cannot clear up. But the aggregate of three thousand smaller ships, and still more, that of one million seven hundred thousand infantry, are far less trustworthy. There would be little or no motive for the enumerators to be exact, and every motive for them to exaggerate,—an immense nominal total would be no less pleasing to the army than to the monarch himself,—so that the military total of land-force and ships’ crews, which Herodotus gives as two million six hundred and forty-one thousand on the arrival at Thermopylæ, may be dismissed as unwarranted and incredible. And the computation whereby he determines the amount of non-military persons present, as equal or more than equal to the military, is founded upon suppositions noway admissible; for though in a Grecian well-appointed army it was customary to reckon one light-armed soldier, or attendant, for every hoplite, no such estimate can be applied to the Persian host. A few grandees and leaders might be richly provided with attendants of various kinds, but the great mass of the army would have none at all. Indeed, it appears that the only way in which we can render the military total, which must at all events have been very great, consistent with the conditions of possible subsistence, is by supposing a comparative absence of attendants, and by adverting to the fact of the small consumption, and habitual patience as to hardship of Orientals in all ages. An Asiatic soldier will at this day make his campaign upon scanty fare, and under privations which would be intolerable to an European.[59] And while we thus diminish the probable consumption, we have to consider that never in any case of ancient history had so much previous pains been taken to accumulate supplies on the line of march: in addition to which the cities in Thrace were required to furnish such an amount of provisions, when the army passed by, as almost brought them to ruin. Herodotus himself expresses his surprise how provisions could have been provided for so vast a multitude; and were we to admit his estimate literally, the difficulty would be magnified into an impossibility. Weighing the circumstances of the case well, and considering that this army was the result of a maximum of effort throughout the vast empire, that a great numerical total was the thing chiefly demanded, and that prayers for exemption were regarded by the Great King as a capital offence, and that provisions had been collected for three years before along the line of march,—we may well believe that the numbers of Xerxes were greater than were ever assembled in ancient times, or perhaps at any known epoch of history. But it would be rash to pretend to guess at any positive number, in the entire absence of ascertained data: and when we learn from Thucydides that he found it impossible to find out the exact numbers of the small armies of Greeks who fought at Mantineia,[60] we shall not be ashamed to avow our inability to count the Asiatic multitudes at Doriskus. We may remark, however, that, in spite of the reinforcements received afterwards in Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly, it may be doubted whether the aggregate total ever afterwards increased; for Herodotus takes no account of desertions, which yet must have been very numerous, in a host disorderly, heterogeneous, without any interest in the enterprise, and wherein the numbers of each separate contingent were unknown.
Ktesias gives the total of the host at eight hundred thousand men, and one thousand triremes, independent of the war-chariots: if he counts the crews of the triremes apart from the eight hundred thousand men, as seems probable, the total will then be considerably above a million. Ælian assigns an aggregate of seven hundred thousand men: Diodorus[61] appears to follow partly Herodotus, partly other authorities. None of these witnesses enable us to correct Herodotus, in a case where we are obliged to disbelieve him. He is, in some sort, an original witness, having evidently conversed with persons actually present at the muster of Doriskus, giving us both their belief as to the numbers, together with the computation, true or false, circulated among them by authority. Moreover, the contemporary Æschylus, while agreeing with him exactly as to the number of triremes, gives no specific figure as to the land-force, but conveys to us, in his Persæ, a general sentiment of vast number, which may seem in keeping with the largest statement of Herodotus: the Persian empire is drained of men,—the women of Susa are left without husbands and brothers,—the Baktrian territory has not been allowed to retain even its old men.[62] The terror-striking effect of this crowd was probably quite as great as if its numbers had really corresponded to the ideas of Herodotus.
After the numeration had taken place, Xerxes passed in his chariot by each of the several contingents, observed their equipment, and put questions to which the royal scribes noted down the answers: he then embarked on board a Sidonian trireme, which had been already fitted up with a gilt tent, and sailed along the prows of his immense fleet, moored in line about four hundred feet from the shore, and every vessel completely manned for action. Such a spectacle was well calculated to rouse emotions of arrogant confidence, and it was in this spirit that he sent forthwith for Demaratus, the exiled king of Sparta, who was among his auxiliaries,—to ask whether resistance on the part of the Greeks to such a force was even conceivable. The conversation between them, dramatically given by Herodotus, is one of the most impressive manifestations of sentiment in the Greek language.[63] Demaratus assures him that the Spartans most certainly, and the Dorians of Peloponnesus probably, will resist him to the death, be the difference of numbers what it may. Xerxes receives the statement with derision, but exhibits no feeling of displeasure: an honorable contrast to the treatment of Charidemus a century and a half afterwards, by the last monarch of Persia.[64]
After the completion of the review, Xerxes with the army pursued his march westward, in three divisions and along three different lines of road, through the territories of seven distinct tribes of Thracians, interspersed with Grecian maritime colonies: all was still within his own empire, and he took reinforcements from each as he passed: the Thracian Satræ were preserved from this levy by their unassailable seats amidst the woods and snows of Rhodopê. The islands of Samothrace and Thasus, with their subject towns on the mainland, and the Grecian colonies Dikæa,[65] Maroneia, and Abdêra, were successively laid under contribution for contingents of ships or men; and, what was still more ruinous, they were further constrained to provide a day’s meal for the immense host as it passed: for the day of his passage the Great King was their guest. Orders had been transmitted for this purpose long beforehand, and for many months the citizens had been assiduously employed in collecting food for the army, as well as delicacies for the monarch,—grinding flour of wheat and barley, fattening cattle, keeping up birds and fowls; together with a decent display of gold and silver plate for the regal dinner. A superb tent was erected for Xerxes and his immediate companions, while the army received their rations in the open region around: on commencing the march next morning, the tent with all its rich contents was plundered, and nothing restored to those who had furnished it. Of course, so prodigious a host, which had occupied seven days and seven nights in crossing the double Hellespontine bridge, must also have been for many days on its march through the territory, and therefore at the charge, of each one among the cities, so that the cost brought them to the brink of ruin, and even in some cases drove them to abandon house and home. The cost incurred by the city of Thasus, on account of their possessions of the mainland, for this purpose, was no less than four hundred talents[66] (equal to ninety-two thousand eight hundred pounds): while at Abdêra, the witty Megakreon recommended to his countrymen to go in a body to the temples and thank the gods, because Xerxes was pleased to be satisfied with one meal in the day. Had the monarch required breakfast as well as dinner, the Abderites must have been reduced to the alternative either of exile or of utter destitution.[67] A stream called Lissus, which seems to have been of no great importance, is said to have been drunk up by the army, together with a lake of some magnitude near Pistyrus.[68]
Through the territory of the Edonian Thracians and the Pierians, between Pangæus and the sea, Xerxes and his army reached the river Strymon at the important station called Ennea Hodoi, or Nine-Roads, afterwards memorable by the foundation of Amphipolis. Bridges had been already thrown over the river, to which the Magian priests rendered solemn honors by sacrificing white horses and throwing them into the stream. Nor were his religious feelings satisfied without the more precious sacrifices often resorted to by the Persians: he here buried alive nine native youths and nine maidens, in compliment to Nine-Roads, the name of the Spot:[69] moreover, he also left, under the care of the Pæonians of Siris, the sacred chariot of Zeus, which had been brought from the seat of empire, but which doubtless was found inconvenient on the line of march. From the Strymon he marched forward along the Strymonic gulf, passing through the territory of the Bisaltæ, near the Greek colonies of Argilus and Stageirus, until he came to the Greek town of Akanthus, hard by the isthmus of Athos, which had been recently cut through. The fierce king of the Bisaltæ[70] refused submission to Xerxes, fled to Rhodopê for safety, and forbade his six sons to join the Persian host. Unhappily for themselves, they nevertheless did so, and when they came back he caused all of them to be blinded.