There were two sons of Datis, for instance, in command of the cavalry; and then, of course, the key adviser on everything Greek, there was Demaratus. Even as Xerxes, periodically dispatching his troops into the Hot Gates, continued to probe the defenders of the pass for any suggestion of weakening, he pumped the exiled king for insights into Spartan psychology. Overwhelming force and a mastery of data: the twin characteristics, as they had ever been, of the Persian way of making war. To synthesize these adequately, in order to neutralize a problem such as the one presented by defenders of
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