We will use page 16 and 17.
Minoans
Mycenaeans
Homer
Iliad and Odyssey
city-state
polis
acropolis
aristocracy
monarchy
democracy (direct)
oligarchy
Golden Age
Philosophers
Architecture
Athens and Sparta
How many Persians were at the Battle of Thermopylae?
Using the documents, fill out the Graphic Organizer. Then decide on your final claim. How many do YOU think were there? You MUST use historical evidence to support your claim.
Document C: Ernle Bradford
Ernle Bradford is an English historian specializing in the ancient
Mediterranean world. The following is an excerpt from his book
The Year of Thermopylae, published in 1980.
Although it is true that Herodotus . . . had access to all the records
available, it is impossible to accept the figures that he gives for
the size of the Persian army and of the fleet. . . .
General Sir Frederick Maurice, who had the opportunity of
covering the area of the march of the Great King not long after the
First World War, came up with the conclusion that the total of the
Persian army was about 210,000. Unlike most desk-bound
scholars he [Maurice] had the opportunity to travel the whole
area, and had excellent military and logistical knowledge of the
terrain. He based his conclusion particularly on his observation of
the water supplies available. . . . It seems that there is no
possibility of the army of Xerxes having exceeded 250,000 men.
Even this number . . . would have been sufficient to exhaust the
water resources at a number of places along their route.
Source: Ernle Bradford, The Year of Thermopylae, 1980, p. 34.
Document D: Rupert Matthews
Rupert Matthews is an English author and politician. He has
written over 200 books on history. The following is an excerpt
from his book The Battle of Thermopylae: A Campaign in Context,
published in 2006.
No aspect of the Thermopylae campaign has given rise to greater
controversy than the size and composition of the army led by
Xerxes into Greece. . . .
. . . Herodotus puts the strength of Xerxes’ army at around two
million men and says that they drank the rivers dry as they
advanced. . . . As usual, Herodotus does not tell us where he got
this information from, but it does bear all the hallmarks of being an
official document. . . . Whatever the source of information given
by Herodotus, it is quite clear that the list is not an accurate
record of the army Xerxes led into Greece. It would have been
physically impossible to march that many men along the roads
available to them and keep them supplied.
We know that Xerxes sent an advance guard of laborers and
engineers forward to prepare the route for his invasion. . . . While
it is not recorded exactly what these men did, it is clear that they
were undertaking construction work that would aid the army. If
streams were dammed to create reservoirs of water, Xerxes
would have been able to move an army considerably larger than
the 210,000 men that General Maurice [see Document C] thoughtthe land could support. Even so, it is unlikely that the increase
could have been more than around 50%, say a total of 300,000 to
350,000.
Source: Rupert Matthews, The Battle of Thermopylae: A
Campaign in Context, 2006, p. 10-15.
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