Topic: military (2)

• ConceptThe Immortals

  The 10,000-strong standing corps of elite Persian foot that guarded the King of Kings and formed the professional heart of the field army, famous under the Greek name Herodotus gave them, 'the Immortals' (athanatoi), because the corps was kept always at exactly ten thousand: a fallen or sick man was at once replaced. Almost everything vivid about them is Greek, and Herodotus above all; the Persian-side evidence is very thin. Their true Old Persian name is unknown, the popular claim that 'Immortals' is a mistranslation of anūšiya ('followers') is a modern conjecture and not established fact, and the celebrated glazed-brick 'archer' frieze from Susa is called 'the Immortals' only by a modern and unproven label. What is secure is the institution: a permanent royal guard, its inner thousand the king's spear-bearing bodyguard whom later writers call the 'apple-bearers' (mēlophoroi).

• Survey essayWarfare & the Army

  A survey of the Achaemenid armed forces under Darius I and his successors: the seasonal levy of the subject nations set beside the standing royal guard the Greeks called the Immortals; the shield-and-bow files, the bow as the national weapon, the cavalry and the scythed chariot; the great ethnic army-list of Herodotus and the modern case against its millions; supply, pay and the navy; fortification and siege; and, throughout, the gap between the Greek image of a vast, soft oriental horde and the professional reality the documents disclose.