2021 will be the 2,500th anniversary of the Battle of the Hot Gates

[Tim]

Hopefully by August or September 2021 we will be out of lockdown.

Despite what the ignoramuses in the Greek Government might proclaim, that will be the 2,500th anniversary of the Battle of Thermopylae (there has never been a Year 0 - other than in Pol Pot's Cambodia - so it is not in 2020).

I have Spartans. I don't have Persians but can't think of a better excuse to get a pro-painted 15mm Persian army. At DBM/M scale 15 bases of Greeks would be facing 10,000 or so bases of Persians if we believe H (which we don't!) If we believe Delbruck it might be a slightly smaller number, however that is based on research that is over 100 years old. Have we moved on from there? What is the place to go to get the most up to date informed thinking on the size/composition of the Persian army? Do the classicists here have an opinion?

(Remember that rather like in chess once you have stated your position the same twice in successive posts we declare it a draw.)

[RichT]

http://soa.org.uk/sm/index.php?topic=3327.0

Currently number four in the all time longest thread league, behind the ongoing 'currently reading/painting/playing' ones).

Executive summary - on this forum, only one person believes Herodotus' numbers, but nobody has anything concrete to replace them with so we can only guess. I don't think any of the recent Persian army studies came up with anything better. Numbers in the 150,000 range are usually offered as they are large enough to be very large and impressive and give Greeks an impression of countless myriads, but not disproportionately large compared with the rest of human history.

In the case of Thermopylae it's easy - even if there were 2.5 million Persians they wouldn't all have fitted in the pass, so all you need is enough to fill the width of the pass, with unlimited replacements. I might go for 20,000 - 10,000 in front, 10,000 making the flank march.

As to the Anniversary - 2020 years of AD, plus 480 years of BC, gives 2500. So why is it not the 2500th anniversary?

[Erpingham]

Probably best to disregard Delbruck on this occassion - his critique is overly harsh.  If you could bear to read any of the thread, it does contain references to more reasonable critiques, though you need to pick them out.  Fortunately, the referencing of critiques IIRC is toward the beginning, before it stagnates and turns into an attritional battle.

One thing I think the argument did teach me is to avoid the orientalising tendency to view the Persians as a locust like horde.  OK, it is a tendency we actually get from the Greeks, but if we think of the Persians as a force carrying out a well-prepared plan, using naval and land power, it is perfectly easy to imagine forces in six figures being involved.  For example, the size of the Persian fleet is recorded independently of Herodotus with around 600 triremes.  That would take 120,000 men to man.  So an army of similar size, allowing for the fact that Herodotus says it had huge numbers of servants so a lower number of effectives, is not impossible. 

As to anniversaries, there are six named battles of Thermopylae to chose from, so I'm sure it must be the anniversary of one of them

[RichT]

As to the Anniversary - 2020 years of AD, plus 480 years of BC, gives 2500. So why is it not the 2500th anniversary?

Let me answer my own question - you wouldn't normally count the year the event took place in itself, so it should be 479 years of BC. Fair enough. (But - rampant pedantry )

[aligern]

one can adopt a reasonable approach.  The Persians have an army. it has to get to Thermopylae  and fight . Ithis battle we coukd reasonably expect say 2000 casualties. It moves on to Athens, tgen Xerxes leaves a force tgat fights tge Greeis at Platea.  If the evidence is that the Greeks had 30,000 men at Platea then we could  reasonably assume  that Mardonius has 50,000,/still a crushing superiority.
Xerxes leaves and there is the battle of Mycale.  ( well possibly.) Suppose Mycale has 20,000 Persians and 10,000 Greeks ( might both be much smaller.)
Xerxes himself legs it home  with say 25,000 guards, again might be less, but he has to have enough to avoid a coup picking him off on the way. lets allow 30,000 for servants and 10,000 for the hostage contingents . thogh there is a degree of doubt whether any of these actually arrived in Greece, more trouble that their value.Thats:
2,000
50,000
20,000
25,000
10,000
Servants 30,000
That gives a round figure of 110,000 soldiers and 30,000 servants. I am sure that rereading the long trail of posts on this site offers the likelihood of refining  the numbers, but I feel that balancing the numbers against the tasks the divisions are set gives a reasonable guide to numbers but that is based on a belief that outnumbering an opponent by 50% is enough to get a battle and not so much that the opponent will not fight.
Roy

[Tim]

Thanks. Might just go with D for the fun of it but all the answers are variations of 'lots' and 'loads more than the Greeks'.

[Tim]

As to the Anniversary - 2020 years of AD, plus 480 years of BC, gives 2500. So why is it not the 2500th anniversary?

Let me answer my own question - you wouldn't normally count the year the event took place in itself, so it should be 479 years of BC. Fair enough. (But - rampant pedantry )

Thank you.

[stevenneate]

So I can keep the armoured rhino then?  And the herd of elephants?  I'll be gaming it as correctly depicted in the movie '300' so won't need as many Persians as I am expecting the rhino to break straight through to victory. 

[Erpingham]

I think you only get the rhino in the HOTT version.

[Imperial Dave]

So I can keep the armoured rhino then?  And the herd of elephants?  I'll be gaming it as correctly depicted in the movie '300' so won't need as many Persians as I am expecting the rhino to break straight through to victory.

only if you field the misshapen troglodyte as well...

[Prufrock]

only if you field the misshapen troglodyte as well...

You called? 

[Imperial Dave]

only if you field the misshapen troglodyte as well...

You called?