aradoxically we have more information on the Spartan breakdown of units in their phalanx than for the Athenian. I say paradoxically because Athenian writers were also used and they too must have been of different strengths. It was also a larger division in Spartan armies with smaller divisions below it. At the battle of Mantinea in 418 BC we are given precise numbers of 512 men for each Spartan (Thucydides 5.68.3 – 32 men in each , four in a of 128 men, four per ). Later, in the fourth century BC, this number per may have dropped to 300 men or less and two made up a of approximately 600 men – a term not used by Thucydides (Xenophon, 6.4.12; 11.4). If this fluctuation in strength was the case in Spartan , then calculating the number in each Athenian over time becomes even more difficult. Of course, various sources give different numbers of men in Spartan too, anywhere from 26–40 and this number changes over the decades of the fifth and fourth century BC where we have enough information to go on.
