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.