T-there were only 300 spartans!

>t-there were only 300 spartans!
Wrong. There were 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians, and 400 Thebans that held Thermopylae during the third day of fighting.
>x-xerxes had a million soldiers!
Wrong. Xerxes cross Hellespont with between 100,000 and 150,000 men.

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The Thebans did not stay the entire fight

The whole point was to stall while the rest of Greece prepared batter defenses. The Spartans stayed to the end so the other Greeks could escape.

Still, 1 against 150, proving that p*rsoids are s*bhuman

I heard there was something like 3000 Spartans, but I can't remember where I read it so

Wikipedia

It doesn't matter when you lose, you fucking retard.

Truly a great Persian victory was had that day which is why it is celebrated all across the east as the day when the west finally made aware of its inferiority.

persian are our only cousins across the middle east
there is the same diference betwen a estonian and persian and estonian and italian
only chechens are more near

i say estonians because they are pure europeans

lol, no there isn't. Language means fuck all. Iranians are mostly related to pre-IE Iranians, not to steppe horsefuckers.

its the genetic distance if we put estonians as the reference (they are nearly 90% european) then persian and italians are at the same distance

eurogenes.blogspot.com.es/2018/01/genetic-maps-featuring-67-ancient.html
download the map with all the populations of the earth and see for yourself

>i say estonians because they are pure europeans


They're not, they carry Siberian admixture.

Outnumbered - it was a good strategy to hold them off while the rest of greece prepared their defense. And on principle it's pretty badass to face certain death head on, which is why the story took on its more mythological details.

they are with the lithuanian the more pure one to shg

In addition, every Hoplite would be accompanied by a Squire. So whatever number of Hoplites were inattendance, double it to get the actual number of greek combatants.

You say they're pure European, but the fact is they carry Siberian (Nganasan) related admixture which isn't European along with other Uralic populations with the exception of Hungarians.

this would be ok if it were true ,the distance of persians is about 1.8 as long as betweenn estonians and italians ,maybe if you take sicilians then it might be true

Did squires fight in battle? Did they use the same armour and weapons?

No this is a meme. They counted on holding the pass.

Dont forfet the pass was protected by the Phocians' wall so it was more like a siege.

Greek perspective
>We held off the Persian advance, we were badass as fuck killing all those dirty barbarians, there were like three dead Persians for every dead Greek!
Persian perspective
>We got held up at this pass for a little bit, lost a tiny fraction of our army, wiped out the Greek forces and killed the Spartan king. We invaded Greece and burned Athens to the ground

Well persia soon after retreated, lost a shitload of men due to starvation, and tried to hold on with a fraction of the military then lost.

The Spartans wanted to hold the pass but when they realized they were being flanked Leonidas stayed behind with 1400 men and dismissed the rest of the force.. which is hard to accurately number. After the pass was lost, Athens fell but then Greece won a free clutch battles and Persia retreated.. again.

The mythical portion of the battle of Thermopylae is entirely based in the last stand. The Greeks knew they were being flanked and would lose the pass, however stayed behind with an inferior fighting force to allow the escape and regroup of the bulk of the soldiers, which despite being a good tactical decision, was also mythologically heroic for Greek storytellers.

the spartans were dorians ?and doryans were pure aryans?

Won a *few* clutch battles

>100-150k
There is no way you can sustain this kind of number in the army with premodern technology and organization. The experience in WW2 showed how awful it was to pull a feat like that -- and that's with radio and everything.

Herodotus claims 2 million men

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Not him, but shield bearers or other servants usually fought, but not in the same manner as hoplites. They would usually have a ranged weapon of some sort, and maybe some very light armor. They'd essentially form up a skirmish screen in advance of the heavy infantry. I wouldn't really call them a squire though like the other user did; squires at least in the knightly traditions were themselves noblemen who were usually training to become knights themselves and hadn't reached that point yet. The guys accompanying hoplites were usually their personal servants or slaves, and carrying the armor was just one of their duties.

Herodotus made many claims, most untrue or exaggerated. Wish they were real though. I want my amazons.

>believing anything Herodotus wrote as fact

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The same shit literally happened with the second arab siege of constantinople (>100,000 strong arab force), confirmed by Arab sources iirc. It's far from impossible, but it's also one of the causes for the catastrophic defeats at both instances.

Us? Is this the Polish again?

Nah I don't believe him, it's just funny that of 100k is not sustainable in the pre-modern world I found it funny the idea that Herodotus claims 2 million men were sustained

It is easily possible to sustain six figures in pre-modern warfare. Difficult and expensive, but possible if the right organization and financial commitment is there. Consider how if you say that Herodotus doubled the size of the Persian fleet, and they really only had 600 vessels, you're already talking about 120,000 people. Consider that much more accurate historians like Thucydides when he's talking about the Peloponesean war; the Sicilian expedition featured over 300 triremes (60,000 men just on the water, nevermind all the troops stomping about in Sicily proper) between Athens and Sparta, and that's two city states, admittedly at the heads of client city-states. Persia has a colossally larger manpower pool and money pool to draw on if they're really serious about crushing Greece. Or you look at battles like Cape Ecnomus, or Philippi for the Romans, and you have 6 figure contingents on each side of the battle lines.

Furthermore, as long as they control the water, they don't really need to live off the land in Greece itself, as they can resupply over the Aegean. It's no surprise that after losing Salamis, then the Persians suddenly downsize their force and leave a much smaller contingent, heavily reinforced by local allies, under Mardonious.

>it's just funny that of 100k is not sustainable in the pre-modern world
You keep asserting this. What the hell are you basing it on? Why were their cities of over 100,000 people if gathering food and delivering it to one spot in that quantity is impossible?

I wasn't the one who made that claim. Again, all I did was just find the numbers funny. T'is all user

>>t-there were only 300 spartans!Wrong.
>There were 300 Spartans

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The posters in
Make a very positive claim that 100k troops in the ancient world is unsustainable. Back that up.

Babby's first iconoclasm.

I'm 4367208 and I made a typo, I meant to say "if" not "of," so I wasn't making a claim. I was saying "if it was X numbers," not it was X numbers. Again, all I found funny were the inflated Herotodus numbers. Take it up with

Thats not true, Persians are closer to South Asians, Greeks are European.

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What makes ANE okay to have but not Siberian?

Persians had superior culture and big multicultural army with high number of cavalry and low motivation, but Greece is poor and mountinous country so its hard to find use for cavalry there.

Greks on the other hand had inferior culture and government, but better army with superior weaponry, heavy shields, long spears and good armor which makes persians very vulnerable during fight, also they had very good motivation, for sure persians were brave soldiers with very good army organization and logistics, but greeks were simply better on tactical or even personal soldier lvl.

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Still makes them purer than central and south europeans who are tainted by middle eastern genetics

Maybe you should take a look at Chinese history.

Arab sources written more than a century ago.
>trusting numbers in premodern sources
I don't need to make a positive claim against a fairy tale like that. D-Day alone showed how mind-bogling the logistics are for campaigns like that. If a medieval historian said that some horses have wings would you still believe it, just because it's a 'primary source'?

No, but you're a fool if you think that the logistical needs of a modern army and the ones of an ancient army are the same. The biggest supply guzzlers of a modern force are POLs, followed by ammunition. Neither of those are necessary for an ancient force, which is primarily concerned with food and water.

Again, you're offering nothing other than your own stupid skepticism. We have very reliable archeological evidence of cities numbering well over 100,000 people existing in numerous occasions. If it's so impossible for food to be delivered to a location, how did any of those cities exist?

>Arab sources written more than a century ago.
Actually more than a millennium ago, but the whole point is that it removes the underdog bias herodotus had for the greeks and their enemies. Both byzantine and arab sources claim similar numbers. Arguing that all pre-modern estimates for army numbers is inaccurate is insane.

>Persian army consists of brutish slaves whipped by their masters into fighting
>Greeks fight for their freedom and everyone elses in the Aegean

Always tought they were complete autists rulled by their wifes but it seems otherwise when they win the Peleponese war and refuse to destroy Athens and also at this battle

Ancient armies had extensive royal baggage.
So a fighting force of 10000 might mean a lot more mouths and horses to feed than just 10000 men

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>superior weaponry, heavy shields, long spears and good armor
The Persians had that too. Their own immortals wore armor of iron scales and carried tall wicker shields. Some of the levies were noted by the Greeks to be armed just like them such as the Assyrians. I do agree that morale was a key factor in their homeland, especially at Plataea were the Greeks won by attrition and refusing to give up.

Still, the Persians were more than capable of taking on the Greeks. They did so during the Ionian revolt and their infantry managed to hold off against the Greeks. During the invasion of Greece the Greeks didn't fight the Persians on some fair game. At Marathon they made a surprise attack on the Persians by waiting days until making a sudden charge at them. At Thermopylae they rebuilt a wall and fought from there while guarding a pass. At Plataea they retreated to irregular ground after Athenian archers took down the Persian cavalry commander and the horsemen made a charge which they managed to repel.

Also at Plataea the Persians had challenged the Spartans to a fight to settle the whole fight right there, in which the Spartans refused. Which may show that both sides may have been matched in number or even that the Persians might have been outnumbered.

Even during the Spartan's campaign in Asia Minor the Greeks fought the Persian by using tricks and deception instead of fighting the Persians in an open and fair battle at the plains.

>Open and fair battle
Yeah battles got a lot more fair later on user.. you're so right.

The rest of your post is alright. These were just military campaigns and they were fighting with each other for over 100 years. Persia could have won any of these but the powers in charge sucked at warfare every time they tried. Greek tactics won. Then Greece would go on the offensive and botch it just like the Persians.

It's harder to fight on land that isn't your own, I gather.

>No this is a meme
People respect Sparta because other Greeks living at the same time respected Sparta. Why would they just give a random city an undeserved reputation? why must you alter history to suit your agenda?

Ancient armies we're structured hierarchically just like modern ones. You aren't talking a horse and general per man.

>Greece prepared batter defenses
Sounds delicious.