Herodotus’ Persian Infantry

The Persian infantry – we have a pretty good idea of what they looked like and how they fought, or at least we think we do. They were big fans of Smurf hats, basically unarmoured and no match for Greek hoplites, arrows that could blot out the sun – or some of our popular depictions might even show them as slaves being driven forward with whips, or dehumanised, incompetent, orc-like goons. 

What does Herodotus, one of our best literary sources for the Persian infantry, have to say about them? Surprisingly, a lot of what we said just now is based loosely on Herodotus. But with a more careful reading, supported by other literary and artistic sources, we might come away with a different picture.

Let’s now look at what Herodotus said about the Persian infantry. Firstly, what did they look like? To quote Herodotus:

They wore on their heads loose caps called tiaras, and on their bodies embroidered sleeved tunics, with scales of iron like the scales of fish in appearance, and trousers on their legs; for shields they had wicker bucklers, with quivers hanging beneath them; they carried short spears, long bows, and reed arrows, and daggers that hung from the belt by the right thigh. [Herodotus VII.61]

How did they fight in battle? Let’s look at four battles: Marathon, Thermopylae, Plataea, and Mycale:

[At the Battle of Marathon] When the Persians saw them running forward they prepared to receive them, thinking the Athenians frenzied to their utter destruction, since they appeared to be so few but were still charging them at speed, and they had no horsemen nor archers. Such was the imagination of the barbarians; but the Athenians, closing all together with the Persians, fought admirably; for they were the first Greeks, to my knowledge, who charged their enemies at a run, and the first who endured the sight of Median garments and the men wearing them; till then, the Greeks were terrified by the very name of the Medes. For a long time they fought at Marathon; and the barbarians overcame the middle part of the line, against which the Persians themselves and the Sakae were stationed; here the barbarians prevailed and broke the Greeks. [Herodotus VI.113]

[At the Battle of Thermopylae] The Medes bore down upon the Greeks and charged them; many fell, but others attacked in turn; and though they suffered grievous defeat yet they were not driven off. But they made it plain to all and chiefly to the king himself that for all their number of human creatures there were few men among them. This battle lasted all day. The Medes being so roughly handled, they were then withdrawn from the fight, and the Persians whom the king called Immortals attacked in their turn, led by Hydarnes. It was thought that they at least would make short and easy work of the Greeks; but when they joined battle, they did neither better nor worse than the Medes, fighting as they were in a narrow space and with shorter spears than the Greeks, where they could make no use of their numbers. But the Spartans fought memorably. They were skilled warriors against unskilled; and it was among their many feats of arms, that they would turn their backs and pretend to retreat; and the barbarians seeing this would chase after them with shouting and noise; but when the Spartans seemed like they would be overtaken they turned upon the barbarians, and so rallying killed many Persians, though some of the Spartans themselves were slain. So when the Persians, attacking by companies and in every other fashion, could yet gain no inch of the approach, they drew off out of the fight.

[On the final day of the battle] many of the barbarians were there slain; for their captains came behind the companies with whips and drove all the men forward with lashes… there was a great struggle between the Persians and Spartans over Leonidas’ body, till the Greeks of their valour dragged it away and four times put their enemies to flight… In that place they defended themselves with their swords, as many as they still had, and with fists and teeth; till the barbarians overwhelmed them with missile weapons, some attacking them in front and throwing down the wall of defence, and others standing around them in a ring. [Herodotus VII.210-211, 223-225]

[At the Battle of Plataea] many of the Greeks were slain and by far more wounded (for the Persians set up their shields as a barricade, and shot uncountable showers of arrows)… [then the Spartans charged at the Persian line] and the Persians met them, throwing away their bows. And first they fought for the barricade of shields; and when that was down, thereafter the battle raged fierce and long about the temple of Demeter itself, till they grappled and thrust; for the barbarians laid hold of the Spartan spears and broke them short. Now the Persians were neither less valorous nor weaker; but they had no armour, and moreover they were unskilled and no match for their adversaries in craft; they would rush out singly and in tens or in groups great or small, hurling themselves on the Spartans and so perishing… For what chiefly brought them harm was that they wore no armour over their garments, and fought as it were naked against fully armed men… [Herodotus IX.61-63]

[At the Battle of Mycale, the Persians] set their shields close to make a barricade. While the Persians’ shields stood upright, they defended themselves and held their own in the battle [but when the Athenians breached the shield line] immediately the face of the fight was changed. Breaking down the shields the Athenians and their allies charged all together into the midst of the Persians, who received the advance and stood their ground for a long time, but at last fled within their wall… [Herodotus IX.99, 102]

Now that is a lot of text — let’s try to make something of it. Let’s try to reconstruct what Herodotus might’ve been saying about the Persian infantry, how they might’ve looked and fought.

If we look at all the accounts, Herodotus seems to make it clear that a Persian infantry formation was not a disorganised rabble, and possibly was in fact a well-organised machine. But let’s start with how the Persians fought at Marathon — there was a clear centre manned by the Persians and the Sakae, and clear enough wings that were overwhelmed by the Athenians and Plataeans. And remember Herodotus tells us that the Battle of Marathon went on for a long time; it’s hard to imagine a disorganised rabble going toe to toe with a hoplite phalanx for a long time, even if the Persians did outnumber the Greeks about two to one. And the Persians weren’t just hanging back and shooting at the Greeks either, since Herodotus says that the Greeks charged right at the Persians.

Looking at Herodotus’ description of the Battle of Thermopylae seems to confirm the idea that the Persians were not a disorganised mob; and actually we could draw some surprising conclusions. 

Think back to this passage — notice how Herodotus singles out two weaknesses of the Persians: their spears were shorter than those of the Greeks, and they kept falling for the Spartans’ feigned retreats. Let’s lay out the scene: the Persians, forced together by the terrain into close formation, try to get to grips with the Spartans, and when they see the Spartans retreat, they abandon their formations and charge forward, only for the Spartans to turn around and slaughter them. When we lay this out, the Persians actually look like the more organised force; contrast that with the Spartans, who were possibly fighting in a looser formation, almost like the old Homeric warbands — and just as a side note, this could either be a reflection of reality, since the Spartans were known for being more old-fashioned among the Greeks, but also it might be a literary trope, since Herodotus talks about the Spartans and Persians fighting over Leonidas’ dead body in a very Homeric kind of away, or it could be both of those things! — This is maybe not what we expected: suddenly it’s the Spartans who seem to be fighting in a more fluid way, confusing the tightly-packed Persians, who are possibly more used to the kind of toe to toe slugfest that we saw at Marathon. 

So far then, looking at Marathon and Thermopylae doesn’t tell us much, but we do have something: the Persians were probably used to fighting in an organised formation, and they fought with spears that were shorter than those of the Greeks. When we look at the Battles of Plataea and Mycale, we can add a bit more detail to the picture; but in the meantime let’s do a detour to the gear of the Persian infantry.

Let’s look back at Herodotus’ description of their gear — some of it can be taken at face value, some we need to be a bit more careful with. The most questionable part is the fish scale armour: no doubt the Persian infantry did wear armour, but it seems to flat out contradict what Herodotus later claims, that at the Battle of Plataea the Persians were unarmoured. But let’s deal with that when we get to Plataea; for now let’s just say that most Persian infantry probably did wear armour, just not as heavy as that of the Greek hoplites. Did they all wear fish scale armour then? Firstly, Herodotus also claims that the Persians wore ‘the Egyptian cuirass in war’ in I.135.1, so probably something made of quilted cotton. But more importantly, this is where context matters: remember how we talked about Herodotus channelling a bit of Homer in his description of the Battle of Thermopylae? Think of the grand story arc of Herodotus’ Histories as a love letter to Homer. Herodotus is trying to portray the wars between the Greeks and Persians as epically as he can, and it doesn’t get much more epic than Homer and the Trojan War. So when Herodotus writes this catalogue of nations who send warriors to march with Xerxes against the Greeks, and his description of the Persians is part of this catalogue, he’s actually mimicking the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad; he’s playing with all this exotic imagery stretched across so many nations to try to portray Xerxes as some kind of mirror Agamemnon. So when he claims that all the Persians wore fish scale armour, we probably should take that with a grain of salt; Herodotus is playing it up as characteristically Persian, and the most well-armoured Persian infantry would wear this, but probably not all of them. Strangely enough Herodotus also consciously points out that the Persian infantry didn’t wear helmets; should we also see this as part of his whole Homeric trope? It’s tempting to, but at the same time, as far as we know, there are no ancient sources, literary or artistic, suggesting that Persian infantry wore helmets. And when it’s that consistent, possibly it’s more than just Herodotus being a bit too poetic. Possibly the Persian infantry right down to the 4th century BC just didn’t feel the need to equip themselves with helmets — and when we look at the Battles of Plataea and Mycale, maybe we’ll see why. 

Oh, and one more thing about Persian gear: the shields. Many English translations say that they carried wicker bucklers. The Greek word is gerrha, meaning a wicker shield. Later on we’ll see the Persians set up these gerrha as a kind of defensive barricade, which means they’d have to be pretty big, which almost certainly rules out these violin-type shields (or dipylon shields) that you see Persian guardsmen carrying in the Persepolis friezes. These gerrha were almost definitely the large, rectangle, wicker spara shields, not bucklers.

So what’s our picture of the Persian infantry so far? Maybe surprisingly organised, used to formation fighting, weirdly helmetless, probably mostly armoured, and armed with large wicker shields and short spears, but also bows and arrows… except how could they have enough hands to use shields, spears, bows and arrows all at the same time? We certainly don’t see any Persian sources, literary or artistic, showing infantrymen carrying all of those things. Is Herodotus just making things up then? Let’s now look at the Battles of Plataea and Mycale to see how this might’ve worked.

The first thing we can conclude is that the Persians fought in groups of ten. Look back at our Plataea passage: the Persians set up a barricade of shields, and then shot arrows from behind them. What happened when the Spartans breached this barricade? The Persians rushed at them, sometimes alone, or in groups of ten or more. This is actually massively useful because it corroborates what we know from Persian documents; according to those, the Persian military followed the Mesopotamian tradition of decimal organisation. A unit of a thousand men was called a hazarabam, a hundred was a satabam, and ten men formed a dathabam. Persian ration documents suggest that each dathabam was led by a dathapatis, like a squad leader, who had a deputy officer called a pascadathapatis, literally a rear-dathapatis. 

So the Persian infantry, far from being a disorganised mob, were probably meticulously organised into ten-man squads. How were they laid out? Well Persian infantry, much like later Greek hoplites, probably weren’t organised by ranks, instead they were organised by files. In other words this isn’t how a squad was laid out, this is how a squad was laid out. Remember the pascadathapatis? If we take the ‘rear’ part literally, he might well have been the guy stationed at the rear of each file, a position called the file-closer, and it would have been his job to keep everyone in front of him in position. And remember how Herodotus claims that the Persian officers whipped their men forward with lashes? Possibly he was talking about these file-closers, who did whatever they had to to keep the men in formation. The imperial Romans had something similar; officers called optiones carried large staves to keep the men in line.

So our picture according to Herodotus is getting clearer and clearer: the Persian infantry were organised by files, probably ten-men deep, with the file leader in front protected by a large wicker shield. Now we might make more sense of the claim that the Persian infantry carried spears, shields, and bows: the leading man in each file, probably the dathapatis, was equipped with a spara and spear, probably fish scale armour too, and probably set the spara into the ground; if each file leader in a formation did this, then you really would have a shield barricade as Herodotus described. Each of the file leaders would then use a spear to defend this barricade, and each man behind him, at least eight — nine counting the file-closer — would have shot arrows at incoming attackers, relying on the file leader for protection. This would explain Herodotus’ description of the Persians forming a barricade and shooting storms of arrows from behind it at Plataea. 

It would also explain why — and here’s where things really start to come together — the Persians couldn’t put up a fight once the shield barricade was breached, something that Herodotus records for both Plataea and Mycale. Remember when we discussed Herodotus’ claim that the Persians at Plataea were unarmoured? Either he’s contradicting himself, or possibly he’s describing everyone standing behind the dathapatis in each file in the infantry formation, in other words he’s describing the archers. But were they wearing armour? I’d say probably yes, but we could hold off on calling Herodotus a self-contradicting, senile, old hack, by looking at the Greek words he used for unarmoured: ἄνοπλοι and ἔρημος ἐοῦσα ὅπλων. In both cases possibly the meaning is that the Persian infantry weren’t equipped like hoplites, didn’t have good helmets and sturdy shields, which makes a lot of sense if Herodotus is in fact talking about archers who wouldn’t be expected to fight in close combat, since that was the job of the file leader. Which would also explain why these unshielded, poorly-armed archers had to take on the Spartan spears with little more than their bare hands, assuming that the armoured file leaders had already gone down along with the shield barricade. Suddenly it makes a lot of sense why the Persians, once the shield barricade was breached, were then slaughtered by the Greek hoplites, both at Plataea and Mycale. 

Why did the Persians let this happen? Because they were weak? Because they were bad at fighting? Well in a poetic way, we can actually refer back to our first passage for a clue: as long as the Greek hoplites were standing still, they were vulnerable to Persian arrows, but no amount of Persian arrows could stop a hoplite advance, not at Marathon, not at Plataea, not at Mycale — remember their targets were heavily armoured men with big shields, as Herodotus goes out of his way to emphasise again and again. And it wasn’t a failure of bravery either, as Herodotus emphasises twice in his account of Plataea, since the Persians were willing to stand and fight anytime they were charged by hoplites — instead it seems like a bigger-picture failure, the failure of a meticulous, maybe even over-engineered formation, one that wasn’t flexible enough to adapt to the challenges posed by its Greek opponents. It seems that at Plataea and Mycale (and possibly Marathon), the Persians were counting on a storm of arrows to stop their enemies dead in their tracks; when this didn’t happen, they had no good response. Or think back to the Persian infantry at the Battle of Thermopylae, and how they were left scratching their heads when the Spartans did their feigned retreats, and paid heavily for not adapting to the enemies’ more fluid tactics. Did the Persians bring the same shield and archer formations to Thermopylae? Did they abandon their shield barricades when they saw the Spartans run, and were then cut to ribbons when the Spartans turned around and pounced on their pursuers, who were about nine-tenths archers? If that’s the case, it’s less a failure of bravery and more a failure of imagination by the Persians, a failure to adapt to their enemies’ ways of war. Which sounds about right for the proud, invading army of a proud, imperial monarch who thought he could just steamroll his way over a bunch of savages.

So that’s our picture of the Persian infantry then according to Herodotus: not a rabble of peasants or a horde of orcs, but rather a sophisticated, highly-organised force that brought a very refined way of war against the Greeks; but possibly too refined, because as proud, imperial forces often do, the Persians underestimated their enemies, failed to adapt to their tactics, and paid the price. At least that’s the story that Herodotus tells us when he explains why Xerxes’ invasion failed. Which fits the mostly nuanced and even sometimes sympathetic way he talks about the Persians in his book. And that, to me, is a much more interesting, real, and human story than the story we usually tell of the Persians.