ABSTRACT
The Great Wars were crucial in the history of Western civilization for a number of reasons. In ideological terms, the Great Wars became a symbol of the struggle between slavery and freedom, democracy and authoritarianism, and the West and the East. The multitude of the advancing Persian army on the move to Greece was very much like the swarm of grasshoppers of the enemies of the Egyptians at Kadesh. Hans Delbruck claims that the Greeks at Thermopylae made two serious mistakes: They chose the wrong spot to face the Persian army, and they sent too few soldiers. The soldiers of the Persian Empire came from all corners of the land—Indians from the southeast-ern parts, Bactrians from the northeast, Egyptians and Ethiopians from Africa, Sacae from the Russian steppes, Medes and Persians from the Iranian lands, and even Greeks from Ionia.
