Darius realized that this seemingly helpless people of philosophers, artists, poets, writers and others, was capable of anything if it threatened their liberty. Therefore, to return its military forces home, was careful not to meddle with Europe until it was ready enough. Ten years would pass for that to happen. a After the battle of Marathon and at the death of Darius, the new King of Kings was Xerxes, his son and successor. The powerful Persian had been instructed by his father to take revenge on the importance of this constellation of Western men and now, all adult, had in mind only that. I wanted to bring the invasion to the whole Greece, engulfed in one bite, quickly and directly. This brought huge troops brought from the ends of his vast empire (which were terrible and famous division of the ten thousand immortals), elephants, magicians, archers, heavy infantry and light cavalry corps, thousands of ships, and so on.
Xerxes, in one of the largest operations in military history, spared no expense or resources for their ambitious undertaking because was sure to succeed. What happened next, however, would destroy any logic. to prepare the king of kings departed from Sardis in the spring of 480 BC, perhaps mobilizing the most powerful army in the world. While landing on Greek land, ordered the construction of two giant bridges over the Hellespont where they could spend their considerable forces with arms and baggage. Here we pause a moment to clarify the amount of impact. According to Herodotus (the father of History) he makes mention of an army of nearly six million, which for long was considered truthful.
However, current researchers dismiss the old calculations and rather believe that because of the complicated logistics that would need such a large number (the time had come to Thermopylae, the last units, the new starting point would be the height of Sardis) the total skirt a maximum of 250 thousand Persians, a truly significant figure for the time. a While this was happening Persian side, the disorganization of the Greeks spread. Only an Athenian, Themistocles, could have foreseen the disaster and asked again that the Athenian government approved the construction of a powerful naval fleet, under the pretext of an imminent Persian invasion. As for the Spartans, they were troubled at the huge number of Persian troops who were already on Greek territory. The disappointment was huge because he had never seen so great military force. Xerxes, who began to distribute his forces in the t, a specialist in history, with extensive experience in research on global wars and conflicts.