Persian Immortals

Origins

The Immortals were the household infantry of the Achaemenid kings of Persia, whose empire stretched from Egypt to India by about 500 BC. Almost everything we know about them comes from the Greek historian Herodotus, writing a generation after Xerxes invaded Greece. Herodotus gives their number as exactly ten thousand, kept at strength by immediate replacement of any man who died or fell sick, so that the formation itself never died. The name "Immortals" may be a Greek misunderstanding of a Persian title. Some scholars think the Persian word meant "companions" or "followers." The idea behind it, a permanent, full-strength royal guard, was real and rare in its age.

Organization & Training

According to Herodotus, the Immortals were chosen men, Persians and their close kin the Medes, commanded in 480 BC by Hydarnes. Herodotus also says Persian boys were taught three things: to ride, to shoot the bow and to tell the truth. The Immortals were probably drawn from noble families like these. Herodotus says that a thousand of them carried spears with golden pomegranates on the butt instead of spikes, while the other nine thousand had silver pomegranates. The thousand were the king's closest guard. The corps traveled in style, with covered wagons carrying their women and servants, and camels and other animals bringing their own food.

Weapons & Equipment

They were the empire's elite in both war and splendor. Herodotus describes Persian infantry wearing soft felt caps, colorful sleeved tunics over armor of iron scales, and trousers. Their arms were the Persian standard: a short spear, a powerful bow with cane arrows, a wicker shield called a spara, and the Persian Akinakes, a short sword or dagger worn on the right thigh. This was a combination built for the massed archery-and-shield warfare of the Near East. Against the heavily armored Greek hoplite, with his Greek Aspis and long Hoplite Dory, it was at a clear disadvantage in close combat.

Notable Actions

That difference wrote their most famous chapter. At the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, Xerxes sent the Immortals against the narrow pass after his first attacks failed, and they too were thrown back by Leonidas and the Spartans. Then a local Greek showed the Persians a mountain path around the pass. Hydarnes led the Immortals over it by night, and their arrival behind the Greek position closed the trap. After Xerxes withdrew from Greece, Herodotus says, the general Mardonius kept the Immortals with his army, and they fought at Plataea in 479 BC, where the Persians were defeated. See Greco-Persian Wars for the wider conflict.

Legacy

A royal guard of elite spearmen, the "apple-bearers" named after their golden pomegranates, still surrounded Darius III when Alexander the Great destroyed the Persian Empire at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC. The glazed-brick frieze of archers from the palace at Susa, now in the Louvre, may show members of the guard, and it remains one of the most beautiful military images of the ancient world. The name has been borrowed since, most recently by the Imperial Guard of the last shahs of Iran.

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