Persian Immortals

The Immortals were the household infantry of the Achaemenid kings — a corps Herodotus numbers at exactly ten thousand, kept at strength by immediate replacement of any man lost, so that the formation itself never died. The name is probably a Greek's misreading of a Persian title, but the idea it captures — a permanent, full-strength royal guard — was real and unique in its age.

They were the empire's elite in both war and splendor. Herodotus describes spears with silver and gold pomegranate butts, embroidered robes over scale armor, and baggage trains of their own. Their arms were the Persian standard: short spear, powerful composite bow, wicker spara shield, and the akinakes short sword — a combination built for the massed archery-and-shield warfare of the Near East rather than the shock collision of the Greek phalanx.

That difference wrote their most famous chapter: at Thermopylae in 480 BC the Immortals were the force sent over the mountain path to close the trap on Leonidas. They fought through Plataea and remained the guard of kings until Alexander destroyed the empire at Gaugamela in 331 BC. The glazed-brick archers of Susa — perhaps their portrait — remain among the most beautiful military images antiquity left behind.

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