[65].
The Indians wore garments of tree-wool, and carried
reed bows and iron-tipped reed arrows. Such was their equipment; they were
appointed to march under the command of Pharnazathres son of Artabates.
....
[70].
The Ethiopians above Egypt and the Arabians had Arsames for commander,
while the Ethiopians of the east (for there were two kinds of them in the
army) served with the Indians; they were not different
in appearance from the others, only in speech and hair: the Ethiopians
from the east are straight-haired, but the ones from Libya have the woolliest
hair of all men. [2] These Ethiopians of Asia were for the most part
armed like the Indians; but they wore on their heads the skins of horses'
foreheads, stripped from the head with ears and mane; the mane served them
for a crest, and they wore the horses' ears stiff and upright; for shields
they had bucklers of the skin of cranes.
....
[86].
The Median cavalry were equipped like their infantry, and the Cissians
similarly. The Indians were armed in the same manner
as their infantry; they rode swift horses and drove chariots drawn by horses
and wild asses. The Bactrians were equipped as were their foot, and the
Caspians in the same manner. [2] The Libyans, too, were armed like
the men of their infantry, and all of them also drove chariots. In the
same manner the Caspians and Paricanians were armed as the men of their
infantry. The Arabians had the same equipment as the men of their infantry,
and all of them rode on camels no less swift than horses.
....
[187]. That is the number of Xerxes' whole force. No one, however, can say what the exact number of cooking women, and concubines, and eunuchs was, nor can one determine the number of the beasts of draught and burden, and the Indian dogs which accompanied the host; so many of them were there. It is accordingly not surprising to me that some of the streams of water ran dry. I do, however, wonder how there were provisions sufficient for so many tens of thousands, [2] for calculation shows me, that if each man received one choenix of wheat a day and no more, eleven hundred thousand and three hundred and forty bushels would be required every day.1 In this calculation I take no account of the provisions for the women, eunuchs, beasts of burden and dogs. Of all those tens of thousands of men, there was not one, as regards looks and grandeur, worthier than Xerxes himself to hold that command.
FROM BOOK EIGHT:
[113].
Those who were with Xerxes waited for a few days after the sea-fight and
then marched away to Boeotia by the road by which they had come. Mardonius
wanted to give the king safe conduct and thought the time of year unseasonable
for war; it was better, he thought, to winter in Thessaly, and then attack
the Peloponnese in the spring. [2] When they had arrived in Thessaly,
Mardonius first chose all the Persians called Immortals, save only Hydarnes
their general who said that he would not quit the king's person, and next,
the Persian cuirassiers and the thousand horse and the Medes and Sacae
and Bactrians and Indians, alike their infantrymen
and the rest of the horsemen. [3] These nations he chose in their
entirety; of the rest of his allies he picked out a few from each people,
the best men and those whom he knew to have done some good service. The
Persians whom he chose (men who wore torques and bracelets) were more in
number than those of any other nation and next to them the Medes; these
indeed were as many as the Persians, but not such stout fighters. Thereby
the whole number, together with the horsemen, grew to three hundred thousand
men.