Simviation Forums

Is anyone familiar with this battle?  I was reading a small synopsis of it and it is one of the most incredible stands I have ever heard of!  This is serious Horatius at the Bridge stuff here.  The low estimate was something like 3,000,000 (yes, MILLION) persians being held up by 1000 Greeks long enough to give the Greeks time to mobilize and form a resistance.  And out of those 1000, only 300 were regular soldiers...  :o

Can these numbers be accurate?

Leonidas selected his men on one simple criterion: he took only men who had fathered sons that were old enough to take over the family responsibilities of their fathers. The rationale behind this criterion was that the Spartans knew their death was almost certain at Thermopylae. Plutarch mentions, in his Sayings of Spartan Women, that after encouraging her husband before his departure for the battle field, Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas I asked him what she should do when he had left. To this, Leonidas replied:

Marry a good man, and have good children.

Sparta was a military city-state; at the time, I believe it was co-ruled by three generals. A baby born with a defect wasn't killed but was set out alone on a hillside to fend for itself : if it survived it had won its right to live. Boys were entered into military training at 5 years of age so, basically,  most all citizen Spartans were not only 'regular' but 'professional' soldiers. Many of the other city-states had enlistees in their ranks. The Thebans also managed a valiant part of the defense for a time.
I don't agree with your numbers (other than 300 Spartans), although I'm remembering from, like, prior to 6th grade. The average estimate of the imperial guard, that was finally engaged against the Greeks due to the mounting losses of regulars, I believe was only ten-thousand. There were more reserves and replacements on the way for the latter part of the invasion.
When I was about 9 or 10 I started a sort of camping club and each camp had its own flag and we had our little wars with one another. One of the 1st camps on our property used for training (made our own sling shots, bows, etc. -- no, I never shot anyone with a actual arrow!) was Argos (Argos was the dominant city-state in the Peloponnisos prior to Sparta). In the past I began writing stories, reverting those camps into city-states (we'd actually wound up with more camps than people; interesting aspect for traitorism in our wars). My textures for my WW2 planes in CFS1 have been given insignias respective to those camps.
[Sheesh!:P... great post, Kevin -- look what you made me do ]

Logically, the 3M should be considered way off.  But I seem to somewhere recall 300 Spartans.  There was a PBS doc on this sometime ago which revealed to me the facts that H mentioned re: Sparta.  

Interesting though, wonder what the greatest number of combatants, both sides all, in a given single engagement (or perhaps specific campaign) is?  

Might try to Google this.

Cheers all!!

Herodotus claims a total strength of 3.4 million; today's estimates range from 170,000 to 200,000.

Got this from Wikipedia.com

Interesting though, wonder what the greatest number of combatants, both sides all, in a given single engagement (or perhaps specific campaign) is?

I've heard Stalingrad is the greatest battle in all of recorded human history, with 1 million casualties, let alone combatants (tho' there wasn't much left of the 6th army).  I'm not sure I'd believe it though.  My knowledge of conflict beyond World War II is very limited and a lot of crazy stuff has happened in history.

Herodetus was known for exaggeration, in fact, while he tried to make it accurate, he also tried to make it exciting.
So, I'd agree with the 3 million being inaccurate.
Perhaps 3,000, but even then the Spartans are outnumbered 1: 100....


A.

Numbers for the persian army probably included non-combatants (supply teams, engineers and the like). And i have the slight idea that while the total count of them was probably something like half of that figure (persian empire included everything from iran to turkey on the asian side, and it went down to egypt. add to that a load of mercenaries from the mediterranean area, including greeks...)


For the accuracy of the numbers: while a roman legion has 5000 combat soldiers, when you include all the support personnel it maxes out (depending on season and intent) at around 10000-15000 max.

A raw estimate can be given by dividing the number by 2, and i think that the ratio with the persians was even more in the direction of non-combatants (as they had half the palace with them)

By the way, as you've strangely posted on this particular entry, one of our club camps had your log-on name, Apex.