Histories

This then is the number of soldiers. As for the service-train which followed them and the crews of the light corn-bearing vessels and all the other vessels besides which came by sea with the force, these I believe to have been not fewer but more than the fighting men.

Suppose, however, that they were equal in number, neither more nor fewer. If they were equal to the fighting contingent, they made up as many tens of thousands as the others. The number, then, of those whom Xerxes son of Darius led as far as the Sepiad headland and +Thermopylae [22.5583,38.8] (Perseus) Thermopylae was five million, two hundred and eighty-three thousand, two hundred and twenty.

That is the number of Xerxes' whole force. No one, however, can say what the exact number of cooking women, and concubines, and eunuchs was, nor can one determine the number of the beasts of draught and burden, and the Indian dogs which accompanied the host; so many of them were there. It is accordingly not surprising to me that some of the streams of water ran dry. I do, however, wonder how there were provisions sufficient for so many tens of thousands,

for calculation shows me, that if each man received one choenix of wheat a day and no more, eleven hundred thousand and three hundred and forty bushels would be required every day.[*](The figure is wrong. Reckoning 48 choenixes to the medimnus, Herodotus has of course divided 5,283, 220 by 48. The right quotient is 110,067.083. 5,280,000 divided by 48 produces 110,000; 3220 divided by 48 leaves a dividend, after the first stage of division, of 340, and this for some unexplained reason Herodotus has added to the quotient. The medimnus is the chief Attic unit for dry measure; said to be the equivalent of six gallons.) In this calculation I take no account of the provisions for the women, eunuchs, beasts of burden and dogs. Of all those tens of thousands of men, there was not one, as regards looks and grandeur, worthier than Xerxes himself to hold that command.

The Persian fleet put to sea and reached the beach of the Magnesian land, between the city of Casthanaea and the headland of Sepia. The first ships to arrive moored close to land, with the others after them at anchor; since the beach was not large, they lay at anchor in rows eight ships deep out into the sea.