Calliope   

barbarian. The light-armed troops consisted of the thirty-five
thousand ranged with the Spartans, seven in attendance upon each,
who were all well equipped for war; and of thirty-four thousand five
hundred others, belonging to the Lacedaemonians and the rest of the
Greeks, at the rate (nearly) of one light to one heavy armed. Thus the
entire number of the light-armed was sixty-nine thousand five hundred.
The Greek army, therefore, which mustered at Plataea, counting
light-armed as well as heavy-armed, was but eighteen hundred men short
of one hundred and ten thousand; and this amount was exactly made up
by the Thespians who were present in the camp; for eighteen hundred
Thespians, being the whole number left, were likewise with the army;
but these men were without arms. Such was the array of the Greek
troops when they took post on the Asopus.
The barbarians under Mardonius, when the mourning for Masistius
was at an end, and they learnt that the Greeks were in the Plataean
territory, moved likewise towards the river Asopus, which flows in
those parts. On their arrival Mardonius marshalled them against the
Greeks in the following order:- Against the Lacedaemonians he posted
his Persians; and as the Persians were far more numerous he drew
them up with their ranks deeper than common, and also extended their
front so that part faced the Tegeans; and here he took care to
choose out the best troops to face the Lacedaemonians, whilst
against the Tegeans he arrayed those on whom he could not so much
depend. This was done at the suggestion and by the advice of the
Thebans. Next to the Persians he placed the Medes, facing the
Corinthians, Potidaeans, Orchomenians, and Sicyonians; then the
Bactrians, facing the Epidaurians, Troezenians, Lepreats, Tirynthians,
Mycenaeans, and Phliasians; after them the Indians, facing the
Hermionians, Eretrians, Styreans, and Chalcidians; then the Sacans,
facing the Ambraciots, Anactorians, Leucadians, Paleans, and
Eginetans; last of all, facing the Athenians, the Plataeans, and the
Megarians, he placed the troops of the Boeotians, Locrians, Malians,
and Thessalians, and also the thousand Phocians. The whole nation of
the Phocians had not joined the Medes; on the contrary, there were
some who had gathered themselves into bands about Parnassus, and
made expeditions from thence, whereby they distressed Mardonius and
the Greeks who sided with him, and so did good service to the
Grecian cause. Besides those mentioned above, Mardonius likewise
arrayed against the Athenians the Macedonians and the tribes
dwelling about Thessaly.
I have named here the greatest of the nations which were
marshalled by Mardonius on this occasion, to wit, all those of most
renown and account. Mixed with these, however, were men of divers
other peoples, as Phrygians, Thracians, Mysians, Paeonians, and the
like; Ethiopians again, and Egyptians, both of the Hermotybian and
Calascirian races, whose weapon is the sword, and who are the only
fighting men in that country. These persons had formerly served on
board the fleet of Xerxes, but Mardonius disembarked them before he
left Phalerum; in the land force which Xerxes brought to Athens
there were no Egyptians. The number of the barbarians, as I have
already mentioned, was three hundred thousand; that of the Greeks
who had made alliance with Mardonius is known to none, for they were
never counted: I should guess that they mustered near fifty thousand
strong. The troops thus marshalled were all foot soldiers. As for
the horse, it was drawn up by itself.
When the marshalling of Mardonius' troops by nations and by
maniples was ended, the two armies proceeded on the next day to
offer sacrifice. The Grecian sacrifice was offered by Tisamenus, the
son of Antiochus, who accompanied the army as soothsayer: he was an
Elean, and belonged to the Clytiad branch of the Iamidae, but had been
admitted among their own citizens by the Lacedaemonians. Now his
admission among them was on this wise:- Tisamenus had gone to Delphi
to consult the god concerning his lack of offspring, when it was
declared to him by the Pythoness that he would win five very