The Battle of Thermopylae

The Battle of Thermopylae was a hard fought battle between Greece and Persia. The battle lasted three days and the Greeks put up a tough fight, but Xerxes’ army outnumbered the Greeks and won the battle. Persia had a great number of men fighting in this battle, but the exact number is open to debate. Research suggests the number of Persian soldiers in Xerxes’ army was as little as 10,000 to as high as 2.5 million, although the higher number seems to be greatly exaggerated to support the ego of the victor.
Documents A, B, C, and D all state a different number of Persian soldiers in the Battle of Thermopylae. I believe Document B is correct for a couple of reasons. First of all, Document A says there were about 2.3 million Persian soldiers in this battle which is very unrealistic because it doesn’t logically make sense. Secondly, to get to the Battle site you have to go through a narrow path so having more than 100,000 men is going to make it difficult to transport all the men to the battle site. Therefore, Documents C and D, which say there were anywhere from 210,000 men to 350,000 men, wouldn’t make sense either because it would be hard to transport that many men to the battle site. Document B says there was 10,000 men which does make sense because you would be able to transport them through the narrow path. Lastly, they were battling Greece who had a smaller army at the battle so there would be no need for hundreds of thousands of men.
The 4 documents all have different points of view. Document A is written by Herodotus who was a young boy during the Battle of Thermopylae, to get his information he interviewed Greek Veterans of the battle. Ctesias of Cnidus wrote Document B, he worked for the king of Persia. He claimed to have had access to the official Persian archives, which he used to write his own history of the Persian War. Document C was written by Ernle Bradford who was an English Historian. He did not give us any information on where he got the...