wall built on the line to the height of a man's waist;
within the enclosure thus made all the troops in turn entered, and each
time that the enclosure appeared to be full, ten thousand were supposed
to be within it. Estimated in this way, the infantry was regarded as
amounting to 1,700,000. It is clear that such mode of counting was of
the roughest kind, and might lead to gross exaggeration. Each commander
would wish his troops to be thought more numerous than they really were,
and would cause the enclosure to appear full when several thousands
more might still have found room within it. Nevertheless there would be
limits beyond which exaggeration could not go; and if Xerxes was made to
believe that the land force which he took with him into Europe amounted
to nearly two millions of men, it is scarcely doubtful but that it must
have exceeded one million.

The motley composition of such a host has been described in a former
chapter. Each nation was armed and equipped after its own fashion, and
served in a body, often under a distinct commander. The army marched
through Asia in a single column, which was not, however, continuous,
but was broken into three portions. The first portion consisted of the
baggage animals and about half of the contingents of the nations; the
second was composed wholly of native Persians, who preceded and followed
the emblems of religion and the king; the third was made up of the
remaining national contingents. The king himself rode alternately in
a chariot and in a litter. He was preceded immediately by ten sacred
horses, and a sacred chariot drawn by eight milk-white steeds. Round
him and about him were the choicest troops of the whole army, twelve
thousand horse and the same number of foot, all Persians, and those too
not taken at random, but selected carefully from the whole mass of the
native soldiery. Among them seem to have been the famous "Immortals"--a
picked body of 10,000 footmen, always maintained at exactly the same
number, and thence deriving their appellation.

The line of march from Sardis to Abydos was only partially along the
shore. The army probably descended the valley of the Hermus nearly to
its mouth, and then struck northward into the Caicus vale, crossing
which it held on its way, with Mount Kara-dagh (Cane) on the left,
across the Atarnean plain, and along the coast to Adramytium (Adramyti)
and Antandros, whence it again struck inland, and, crossing the ridge
of Ida, de