hem. This was all good propaganda. Anything that made his navy and his army seem larger than it really was suited his design of intimidating as many Greeks as possible from taking up arms against him. One may reasonably surmise that Greek intelligence was bamboozled into thinking that the numbers of ships and of men were vastly in excess of the real figures. Naturally enough, after the campaign was over, no Greek, whether soldier or sailor, was likely to reduce the number of ships and men that had come against him. With the passage of years, of course, especially when oral tradition was still the standard method of transmitting information, the numbers were certain to increase, not diminish. (It is only since the Second World War, when the records of both sides have been published, that the reality of the numbers of aircraft engaged in the Battle of Britain, and the casualties inflicted, have proved how erroneous were the reports issued by both sides at the actual time.) It is a natural instinct of man to exaggerate, especially when comparing his prowess with that of an enemy. Herodotus went to such sources as he could find, when he wrote TheHistories, and it is hardly surprising that the figures he received were usually inflated.
Another reason why, whether exaggerated or not, the numbers of ships involved on the Persian side have seemed excessive to scholars is that so many of them have overlooked the ships involved in supporting the two floating bridges. Even allowing for the fact that the first of these bridges was smashed up in a storm, Herodotus states with conviction that the number of ships required for the second, successful, bridging of the Hellespont was 674. Deducting this figure from the overall 1327 vessels, one is left with 65 3 ships before the subsequent engagement at Artemisium. Storm losses (quite apart from those in battle) left the Persians with a fleet that, when it came to the ultimate test at Salamis, was little superior in numbers to that which the Greeks had mustered.
Even after the necessary reductions in the numbers of ships and men in the army and fleet of Xerxes it is still true that to any Greek, whose island or city-state counted its inhabitants in a few thousands, the host of the Great King seemed so prodigious as to invite a terrified response. The Persian army justified the lines written by
A. E. Housman:
The King with half the East at heels Is marched from lands of morning.
His fighters drink the rivers up,
Their shafts benight the air… .
Before the invasion of Europe began and the army started to cross the Hellespont bridges Xerxes decided to hold a review of his forces. Herodotus implies that he reviewed the whole army and navy in a day, but this is clearly impossible. The army itself, when it was on the march, moved in columns, baggage train ahead, with half the infantry as escort; then came two brigades of Xerxes’ noble guards, the Immortals; the sacred chariot of Ahuramazda drawn by ten stallions, then the Great King, followed by two further brigades of crack infantry and cavalry; the rest of the Immortals; and finally all the other infantry divisions. The whole array, it has been calculated, would have taken seven days to cross the bridges from Asia Minor into Europe. It is clear that what Xerxes witnessed was a selection of the host, together with a few picked squadrons of
ships which put on a display of nautical skills just offshore. The throne of white marble, from which he witnessed this evidence of his power and might, was set up at Abydos on the eastern side of the Dardanelles. Here, on a day early in May, while the main body of the army together with all the animals was assembling for the crossing, Xerxes ‘saw the whole Hellespont covered in ships, and all the beaches and plains of Abydos filled with men’.
Xerxes, not unnaturally, was filled with exultation at the sight before him - the strait studded with ships, the great bridges, the dust cloud of the assembling army, the brilliant march past of the Immortals and other selected troops, the gleam of spring sunlight on cav