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Supply Depot

Food stores laid up along Xerxes' road through Thrace and Macedonia, about 483-480 BCE

In the game: Level 9: The Canal

Before Xerxes invaded Greece in 480, his officials laid up food for the army at chosen points on the Thracian coast and in Macedonia. Herodotus names the sites. The depots let a very large force march through poor country without starving, and they show how far ahead the Persian administration could plan.

In the game: The game's depot is filled by carts bringing barley from the granaries, four to a load, and its stores feed only the army. Herodotus (7.25) says the food came by ship from across Asia, so the cart supply is a simplification.

Stores along the Thracian road

Ancient account

Herodotus says that while the Athos canal was being dug, Xerxes had provisions gathered so that neither the army nor its pack animals would go hungry on the march. The sites were chosen after inquiry, and the food was shipped from all parts of Asia in merchant ships and transports. The largest store was at Leuke Akte in Thrace, and others were at Tyrodiza near Perinthus, at Doriscus, at Eion on the Strymon and in Macedonia.

Herodotus 7.25

The ration system behind the depots

In the record

The Persepolis Fortification tablets, written between about 509 and 493, record barley, flour, wine and beer issued day by day to workers, officials and travellers who carried sealed authorisations. They show storehouses, suppliers and accountants working on a large scale. The tablets say nothing about the Greek campaign, but they show the kind of administration that could stock depots in Thrace.

R. T. Hallock, Persepolis Fortification Tablets, 1969

Cities that fed the King

Ancient account

Herodotus says the towns on the route also had to feed the army and lay on a dinner for the King, gathering grain and livestock for months beforehand. He reports that Antipater of Thasos spent 400 talents of silver feeding the host on behalf of the Thasian towns on the mainland. He adds a joke by Megacreon of Abdera, who told his people to thank the gods that Xerxes ate only once a day.

Herodotus 7.118-120

How much food was needed

Disputed

Herodotus puts the whole force, with servants and crews, at over five million people, and reckons that at one choenix of wheat a head it ate more than 110,000 medimni a day. Historians reject these figures as greatly exaggerated. The limits of supply by depot and ship are a main argument for a much smaller force. Many modern estimates put the land army at perhaps 100,000 to 200,000, with the fleet's crews besides, but there is no agreement.

Herodotus 7.186-187; P. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 2002