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The numbers vary wildly - Herodotus who was the prime source, put the figure of the Persian army and navy at 2.5 million. Obviously he had taken the numbers of the entire levy of the Persian empire. Xerxes would obviously not have encumbered himself with unreliable and mostly unusable troops which had to be supported over a difficult supply line at enormous financial cost. There have been many modern rationalisations, the better of which seem to boil down to about 150,000 infantry, 30,000 cavalry and 600 warships (with about 120,000 seamen, rowers and marines). Other estimates based on the organisation and commanders mentioned go as high as 300,000 infantry and 60,000 cavalry. Anything above that is probably unsustainable for many reasons. Of course only a fraction of these was actually engaged in the three-day battle, if for no other reason than space for deployment in the pass, so the superior numbers didn't count for much.

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16y ago

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