Xerxes / Makers of History

by Jacob Abbott

The army accordingly halted, and the necessary arrangements were made for the review. The first thing was to ascertain the numbers of the troops; and as the soldiers were too numerous to be counted, Xerxes determined to measure the mighty mass as so much bulk, and then ascertain the numbers by a computation. They made the measure itself in the following manner: They counted off, first, ten thousand men, and brought them together in a compact circular mass, in the middle of the plain, and then marked a line upon the ground inclosing them. Upon this line, thus determined, they built a stone wall, about four feet high, with openings on opposite sides of it, by which men might enter and go out. When the wall was built, soldiers were sent into the inclosure—just as corn would be poured by a husbandman into a wooden peck—until it was full. The mass thus required to fill the inclosure was deemed and taken to be ten thousand men. This was the first filling of the measure. These men were then ordered to retire, and a fresh mass was introduced, and so on until the whole army was measured. The inclosure was filled one hundred and seventy times with the foot soldiers before the process was completed, indicating, as the total amount of the infantry of the army, a force of one million seven hundred thousand men. This enumeration, it must be remembered, included the land forces alone.

The cavalry.
Corps of Arabs and Egyptians.
Sum total of the army.

This method of measuring the army in bulk was applied only to the foot soldiers; they constituted the great mass of the forces convened. There were, however, various other bodies of troops in the army, which, from their nature, were more systematically organized than the common foot soldiers, and so their numbers were known by the regular enrollment. There was, for example, a cavalry force of eighty thousand men. There was also a corps of Arabs, on camels, and another of Egyptians, in war chariots, which together amounted to twenty thousand. Then, besides these land forces, there were half a million of men in the fleet. Immense as these numbers are, they were still further increased, as the army moved on, by Xerxes's system of compelling the forces of every kingdom and province through which he passed to join the expedition; so that, at length, when the Persian king fairly entered the heart of the Greek territory, Herodotus, the great narrator of his history, in summing up the whole number of men regularly connected with the army, makes a total of about five millions of men. One hundred thousand men, which is but one fiftieth part of five millions, is considered, in modern times, an immense army; and, in fact, half even of that number was thought, in the time of the American Revolution, a sufficient force to threaten the colonies with overwhelming destruction. "If ten thousand men will not do to put down the rebellion," said an orator in the House of Commons, "fifty thousand shall."

Herodotus adds that, besides the five millions regularly connected with the army, there was an immense and promiscuous mass of women, slaves, cooks, bakers, and camp followers of every description, that no human powers could estimate or number.

Various nations.
Dress and equipments.
Uncouth costumes.

But to return to the review. The numbers of the army having been ascertained, the next thing was to marshal and arrange the men by nations under their respective leaders, to be reviewed by the king. A very full enumeration of these divisions of the army is given by the historians of the day, with minute descriptions of the kind of armor which the troops of the several nations wore. There were more than fifty of these nations in all. Some of them were highly civilized, others were semi-barbarous tribes; and, of course, they presented, as marshaled in long array upon the plain, every possible variety of dress and equipment. Some were armed with brazen helmets, and coats of mail formed of plates of iron; others wore linen tunics, or rude garments made of the skins of beasts. The troops of one nation had their heads covered with helmets, those of another with miters, and of a third with tiaras. There was one savage-looking horde that had caps made of the skin of the upper part of a horse's head, in its natural form, with the ears standing up erect at the top, and the mane flowing down behind. These men held the skins of cranes before them instead of shields, so that they looked like horned monsters, half beast and half bird, endeavoring to assume the guise and attitude of men. There was another corps whose men were really horned, since they wore caps made from the skins of the heads of oxen, with the horns standing. Wild beasts were personated, too, as well as tame; for some nations were clothed in lions' skins, and others in panthers' skins—the clothing being considered, apparently, the more honorable, in proportion to the ferocity of the brute to which it had originally belonged.

Various weapons.
The lasso.

The weapons, too, were of every possible form and guise. Spears—some pointed with iron, some with stone, and others shaped simply by being burned to a point in the fire; bows and arrows, of every variety of material and form, swords, daggers, slings, clubs, darts, javelins, and every other imaginable species of weapon which human ingenuity, savage or civilized, had then conceived. Even the lasso—the weapon of the American aborigines of modern times—was there. It is described by the ancient historian as a long thong of leather wound into a coil, and finished in a noose at the end, which noose the rude warrior who used the implement launched through the air at the enemy, and entangling rider and horse together by means of it, brought them both to the ground.

Dresses of various kinds.

There was every variety of taste, too, in the fashion and the colors of the dresses which were worn. Some were of artificial fabrics, and dyed in various and splendid hues. Some were very plain, the wearers of them affecting a simple and savage ferocity in the fashion of their vesture. Some tribes had painted skins—beauty, in their view, consisting, apparently, in hideousness. There was one barbarian horde who wore very little clothing of any kind. They had knotty clubs for weapons, and, in lieu of a dress, they had painted their naked bodies half white and half a bright vermilion.