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Translated by G. Macaulay.
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100 pages - You are on Page 30
60. Now of the number which each separate nation supplied I am not able to give certain information, for this is not reported by any persons; but of the whole land-army taken together the number proved to be one hundred and seventy myriads:[53] and they numbered them throughout in the following manner:--they gathered together in one place a body of ten thousand men, and packing them together[54] as closely as they could, they drew a circle round outside: and thus having drawn a circle round and having let the ten thousand men go from it, they built a wall of rough stones round the circumference of the circle, rising to the height of a man's navel. Having made this, they caused others to go into the space which had been built round, until they had in this manner numbered them all throughout: and after they had numbered them, they ordered them separately by nations.
61. Now those who served were as follows:--The Persians with this equipment:--about their heads they had soft[55] felt caps called /tiaras/, and about their body tunics of various colours with sleeves, presenting the appearance of iron scales like those of a fish,[56] and about the legs trousers; and instead of the ordinary shields they had shields of wicker-work,[57] under which hung quivers; and they had short spears and large bows and arrows of reed, and moreover daggers hanging by the right thigh from the girdle: and they acknowledged as their commander Otanes the father of Amestris the wife of Xerxes. Now these were called by the Hellenes in ancient time Kephenes; by themselves however and by their neighbours they were called Artaians: but when Perseus, the son of Danae and Zeus, came to Kepheus the son of Belos[58] and took to wife his daughter Andromeda, there was born to them a son to whom he gave the name Perses, and this son he left behind there, for it chanced that Kepheus had no male offspring: after him therefore this race was named.
53. i.e. 1,700,000.
54. {sunnaxantes}: a conjectural emendation very generally adopted of {sunaxantes} or {sunapsantes}.
55. {apageas}, i.e. not stiffly standing up; the opposite to {pepeguias} (ch. 64).
56. {lepidos siderees opsin ikhthueideos}: many Editors suppose that some words have dropped out. The {kithon} spoken of may have been a coat of armour, but elsewhere the body armour {thorex} is clearly distinguished from the {kithon}, see ix. 22.
57. {gerra}: cp. ix. 61 and 102.
58. Cp. i. 7.
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