As soon as the expedition of Xerxes had crossed the Hellespont and arrived safely on the European side, as narrated in the last chapter, it became necessary for the fleet and the army to separate, and to move, for a time, in opposite directions from each other. The reader will observe, by examining the map, that the army, on reaching the European shore, at the point to which they would be conducted by a bridge at Abydos, would find themselves in the middle of a long and narrow peninsula called the Chersonesus, and that, before commencing its regular march along the northern coast of the Ægean Sea, it would be necessary first to proceed for fifteen or twenty miles to the eastward, in order to get round the bay by which the peninsula is bounded on the north and west. While, therefore, the fleet went directly westward along the coast, the army turned to the eastward, a place of rendezvous having been appointed on the northern coast of the sea, where they were all soon to meet again.
The army moved on by a slow and toilsome progress until it reached the neck of the peninsula, and then turning at the head of the bay, it moved westward again, following the direction of the coast. The line of march was, however, laid at some distance from the shore, partly for the sake of avoiding the indentations made in the land by gulfs and bays, and partly for the sake of crossing the streams from the interior at points so far inland that the water found in them should be fresh and pure. Notwithstanding these precautions, however, the water often failed. So immense were the multitudes of men and of beasts, and so craving was the thirst which the heat and the fatigues of the march engendered, that, in several instances, they drank the little rivers dry.
The first great and important river which the army had to pass after entering Europe was the Hebrus. Not far from the mouth of the Hebrus, where it emptied into the Ægean Sea, was a great plain, which was called the plain of Doriscus. There was an extensive fortress here, which had been erected by the orders of Darius when he had subjugated this part of the country. The position of this fortress was an important one, because it commanded the whole region watered by the Hebrus, which was a very fruitful and populous district. Xerxes had been intending to have a grand review and enumeration of his forces on entering the European territories, and he judged Doriscus to be a very suitable place for his purpose. He could establish his own head-quarters in the fortress, while his armies could be marshaled and reviewed on the plain. The fleet, too, had been ordered to draw up to the shore at the same spot, and when the army reached the ground, they found the vessels already in the offing.
The army accordingly halted, and the necessary arrangements were made for the review. The first thing was to ascertain the numbers of the troops; and as the soldiers were too numerous to be counted, Xerxes determined to measure the mighty mass as so much bulk, and then ascertain the numbers by a computation. They made the measure itself in the following manner: They counted off, first, ten thousand men, and brought them together in a compact circular mass, in the middle of the plain, and then marked a line upon the ground inclosing them. Upon this line, thus determined, they built a stone wall, about four feet high, with openings on opposite sides of it, by which men might enter and go out. When the wall was built, soldiers were sent into the inclosure-just as corn would be poured by a husbandman into a wooden peck-until it was full. The mass thus required to fill the inclosure was deemed and taken to be ten thousand men. This was the first filling of the measure. These men were then ordered to retire, and a fresh mass was introduced, and so on until the whole army was measured. The inclosure was filled one hundred and seventy times with the foot soldiers before the process was completed, indicating, as the total amount of the infantry of the army, a force of one million seven hundred thousand men. This enumeration, it must be remembered, included the land forces alone.
This method of measuring the army in bulk was applied only to the foot soldiers; they constituted the great mass of the forces convened. There were, however, various other bodies of troops in the army, which, from their nature, were more systematically organized than the common foot soldiers, and so their numbers were known by the regular enrollment. There was, for example, a cavalry force of eighty thousand men. There was also a corps of Arabs, on camels, and another of Egyptians, in war chariots, which together amounted to twenty thousand. Then, besides these land forces, there were half a million of men in the fleet. Immense as these numbers are, they were still further increased, as the army moved on, by Xerxes's system of compelling the forces of every kingdom and province through which he passed to join the expedition; so that, at length, when the Persian king fairly entered the heart of the Greek territory, Herodotus, the great narrator of his history, in summing up the whole number of men regularly connected with the army, makes a total of about five millions of men. One hundred thousand men, which is but one fiftieth part of five millions, is considered, in modern times, an immense army; and, in fact, half even of that number was thought, in the time of the American Revolution, a sufficient force to threaten the colonies with overwhelming destruction. "If ten thousand men will not do to put down the rebellion," said an orator in the House of Commons, "fifty thousand shall."
Herodotus adds that, besides the five millions regularly connected with the army, there was an immense and promiscuous mass of women, slaves, cooks, bakers, and camp followers of every description, that no human powers could estimate or number.
But to return to the review. The numbers of the army having been ascertained, the next thing was to marshal and arrange the men by nations under their respective leaders, to be reviewed by the king. A very full enumeration of these divisions of the army is given by the historians of the day, with minute descriptions of the kind of armor which the troops of the several nations wore. There were more than fifty of these nations in all. Some of them were highly civilized, others were semi-barbarous tribes; and, of course, they presented, as marshaled in long array upon the plain, every possible variety of dress and equipment. Some were armed with brazen helmets, and coats of mail formed of plates of iron; others wore linen tunics, or rude garments made of the skins of beasts. The troops of one nation had their heads covered with helmets, those of another with miters, and of a third with tiaras. There was one savage-looking horde that had caps made of the skin of the upper part of a horse's head, in its natural form, with the ears standing up erect at the top, and the mane flowing down behind. These men held the skins of cranes before them instead of shields, so that they looked like horned monsters, half beast and half bird, endeavoring to assume the guise and attitude of men. There was another corps whose men were really horned, since they wore caps made from the skins of the heads of oxen, with the horns standing. Wild beasts were personated, too, as well as tame; for some nations were clothed in lions' skins, and others in panthers' skins-the clothing being considered, apparently, the more honorable, in proportion to the ferocity of the brute to which it had originally belonged.