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Re: Ancient army numbers - Sean Manning - 02-17-2012
Quote:Hi Robert, thanks for the commentsBefore we start citing the Grand Armee, I think we need to study it and make sure we understand it. From what I have read, it was divided into several columns which marched hundreds of miles apart, and was intended to establish Napoleon's dominance of Europe indefinitely. Despite the Greek feeling that it was the most important thing ever, Xerxes' Yauna campaign was just an attempt to conquer another province and punish those who loved the Lie by supporting rebels and burning temples. The French had fought Russia with mixed success for twenty years; Darius and Xerxes had been generally successful in their Yauna wars, excepting the shock of the Yauna Revolt and the setback at Marathon. And Napoleon had a little thing called a general staff ...
Robert Vermaat post=307084 Wrote:Nikos, when you are reacting to a post, please take care not to 'lecture' or to stray from the text you are reacting to. I can't recall anybody (including myself advocating the statement that the Persians could not mobilise a million men more than 1 million people just because they were "ancient" or... "Asian". Why are you claiming this?
Apologies, I do like to write. But then even when I do play the "specialist" and not the "average layman" and do present facts as written in ancient texts people miss it and concentrate on the rest of debatable things.
I am claiming this because we are ready to accept the size of Grand Armee and we jump on every supposed reason to present objections for the case of Xerxes and his army simply because people are ready to believe Napoleontian records and to dismiss ancient Greek records as if Napoleontian records cannot be wrong or falsified for any given propagandist reason or any common error (i,e. mixing non-combattants and logistics, assuming platoons had the standard number, accepting accounts of allies etc.)... or as if ancient Greeks could not do rough calculations sorting out 100,000 from 1,000,000. If Herodotus a few decades later speaks in the region of 2 million for the overall mobilisation I do accept that he certainly includes all, i.e. land, marine, logistics. Why not? Why would I jump to call him way-off reality?
Historically the only reason that writers jumped to call him erroneous were the reasons I explained above. When seen in details, we have absolutely no valid single reason to dismiss his numbers.
It is naturally to have more documentation and papers and thus establishing better the numbers for the Grand Armee than for an army 2500 years ago that came from a different continent whose culture and historic record was extensively levelled by islamic expansion and it is for this reason we have to employ indirect methods. But that does not mean we have nothing in hands. We have everything in place to have a rough idea of the numbers implicated and everything points that ancient writers' overall calculations referring in the region of millions and not 100,000s like modern ones, were more realistic.
Re: Ancient army numbers - Vindex - 02-18-2012
I think I have just lost the will to live reading this thread... :twisted:
Re: Ancient army numbers - sonic - 02-18-2012
Quote:I think I have just lost the will to live reading this thread... :twisted:
:lol:
Re: Ancient army numbers - Macedon - 02-18-2012
Quote:1. If we are talkin gabout, say, a maximum of 3-400.000 men, which by Ancient standards is still unprecedented, I would agree.
No. I am taking about the possibility of a campaign involving at least 1,000,000 men (of whom about 300,000 in the naval branch). Logistically there would be few problems to sustain such a host for a year, as long as they remained near the sea shore. As for a campaign involving 300-400,000 men having been unprecedented, I can say nothing of the sort. Multiple such accounts exist and I cannot allow myself to just dismiss them without further examination.
Quote: Is it? From the starting point in East Prussia to Moscow it’s about 700 miles. And from Sardis to Athens it’s about 650 miles. Not counting of courset hat the distance from Paris to Prussia is much shorter than the distance from Persia to Sardis…
Yes, it is. Napoleon's army had to somehow reach Poland first and this was no easy task logisticswise either. Napoleon met his first serious logistical problems once he had entered enemy territory. You want to compare his march from Niemen to Moscow with the march from Sardis to Athens and this is certainly not the same. You could easily compare the first part of Xerxes' march up to Thermopylae with the initial French march into Prussia and even in that part, Xerxes would be at an advantage being supported by ships. After Thermopylae, the Persians again did not have to deal with scorched land tactics, they were still supplied by the sea and their march to Athens was never contested. They also did not suffer from any partisan activity behind their lines or were struck by an epidemic of typhus that obliterated 1/3 of his initial numbers (as were the Carthaginians, the Athenians etc in a number of occasions). Neither did they have to march more than 200 km, which would be roughly 1/3 or 1/4 the distance covered by Napoleon. Why should we equate the march of Xerxes through allied lands with that of Napoleon's columns into a land with no supplies being totally dependent on long supply trains operating in enemy territory? So, actually, Xerxes gave a small battle, marched 200 kms into unsubdued Greece and then returned home. That is certainly very different to what Napoleon encountered or what he indeed planned to face.
Quote: Indeed debatable.
Would make an interesting discussion though wouldn't it?
Quote: 4. The timetable of the expedition was very shorter.[/qoute] Which one, the French. That is correct. But it hardly mattered in terms of losses on the march i think.
It would, because provisions arranged for a campaign are relevant to the projected campaign duration. In the end, if we are to totally trust Herodot (and thus take absolutely maximum numbers for granted), in September Xerxes was already on his way home and in Greece there is no Russian winter, actually, the weather is really hostile only for a few weeks. Plus, I really think that for the Persians it would really be a one season campaign max. They stuck to their plan, in September they gave the most important battle, the one that would decide the whole war. Had the Greeks lost at Salamina, Xerxes would have practically won the war. He would have ensured his supply lines, Peloponnesus would be at his mercy, the Athenians would have sailed to Sicily. Napoleon certainly planned for a much longer campaign. He certainly had to preplan supply throughout the Russian winter and then occupy and protect the lands between Moscow and Poland to be able to get supplies from Russia as he would have to go on with his campaign in an effort to make the Czar surrender. And if he didn't, then.. bad luck... his forces were landlocked in Moscow, with no capability for the supply trains to reach them and a supercold winter to fight against alongside the Russian army. Xerxes never had to face such problems and retreated so that he wouldn't have to.
Quote: Given the distance, the sea would not have mattered. But the French never ever mustered a million men. Even with a population of 30 million in 1800. And even with the armies of their allies, they put 650.000 men in the field. No more.
So, they would have no real problems. The problems started much later, once the French entered enemy territory and were countered by resistance and tactics that the Xerxes never met. The Greek effort, and rightly so, concentrated in the sea. Once they controlled it, the Persians were beaten even though their troops had never been beaten in battle. Napoleon left Russian soil in December, Xerxes main column was out of Greece proper and in allied lands by October, long before Greek winter arrives.
Re: Ancient army numbers - Paralus - 02-18-2012
Quote:Why not trying to see my point. Romans were sending armies of 30 to 40,000 soldiers (and as I commented even bigger if speaking of local allies) to fight against tired enemies torn by incessant in-fighting and social strife and still they were trying for several decades with limited success until success was handed to them as a ripe fruit. Persians wanted it all in the span of 1-years campaign against societies that were in their prime and no matter their internal strife could potentially form a temprarary alliance presenting some of the best armies in the known then world.
I disagree root and branch. You state that The Romans "were sending armies of 30 to 40,000 soldiers (and as I commented even bigger if speaking of local allies) to fight against tired enemies torn by incessant in-fighting and social strife and still they were trying for several decades". Clearly they were an ineffective lot these ROmans. How in the world did they ever conquer an empire?
I imagine you have some examples of these generational conquests?
Quote:Why would you expect them to have brought there any less than 300,000 field soldiers when they could easily calculate that Greeks could present in a battle 100,000?
Why would they bother to bring 300,000 to battle a rabble of disorganised and squabbling city states? Already the north had given "earth and water" and the Thessalians were cooperating. Thebes, too, was unsympathetic to the "allied" cuase. The simple fact is that had Mardonius been able to wait the Greek coalition will have disintegrated; the stress fractures are clearly apparent in Herodotus' narrative. Fact is, due to supply problems, he could not.
Classical Athens could not feed itself: a great amount of its tucker was imported (hence the critical importance of the Hellespont and its fascination with "bread baskets"). Yet we would posit another Athens plonked into the Thessalian or Boeotian plains happily feeding itself.
Quote:Business was revolving around trade cities and traderoutes. Hellenistic monarchs showed little interest to expand their territories they barely controlled anyway with their little for the tasks armies.
You continue - without a shred of evidence - to trundle out nonentities such as "their little for the tasks armies" as if it is widely accepted as fact. It is not. The example of Macedon and the Greeks is no example: this is, clearly and unarguably, the "poorest" of the Hellenistic kingdoms and for good reason.
Hellenistic monarchies were in business, which business was acquisition. Without such the many Friends on those monarchs would find useful gain elsewhere. The entire history of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms (and Macedonia under Philip V given the alliance and proposed carve up by he and Antiochus III of the Lagid empire) is one of wars of expansion and acquisition.
As a start I'd recommend Austin's Hellenistic Kings, War and the Economy, Classical Quarterly 36 (ii) 450-466 (198
Quote:Persians were too an oligarchical class and speaking a non-aramaic language but they were from next door, dressed like them, introduced no foreign culture, employed locals in all mid-ranks and even on higher ranks and as a nation were extensively intermarrying on top (apart inbred royal family) as well as bottom level. Persians had permitted the continuation of local oligarchies and even local royal families continuing business as usual
As has already been pointed out, the Persians were just as foreign to Syrians and those in Mesopotamia and "across the rivers" as were the Greeks. They were resisted as well. Clearly the Egyptians saw them as next of kin; just the sort you'd like to kill.
The Greeks - beginning with the Macedonian conquest - also left local elites well enough alone. Something they also did with local governance and religion. Indeed. Alexander adopted - sometimes in whole cloth - Persian structures already in place. To those locals tilling soil very little changed.
Quote:"Myriads of Persians lost to a few Greeks". That never happened just like that. In Greek mainland they lost due to their own wrong tactical calculations. 1 century later, in their own homeland they lost due to their own inner social strife and again own tactical calculations and fell like all Empires - first from the inside, then from outside...
Whilst the Empire was not that of 480 it was, by the invasion, united. It was defeated militarily and the imperial structures in place - as all the sources show - were almost all kept in place rather broken up. As well, the locals were not only used in armies (of Alexander and his Successors) but trained for the purpose.
Quote:The myth of incapable Persians is just a European-made myth.
Finally something I can agree with. And given that there is no need to posit ridiculous numbers such as 1,000,000; 600,000; 500,000; 300,000 for them to be capable.
But I suspect that a touch of zealotry infuses this debate. Against such no logic prevails.
Re: Ancient army numbers - Ghostmojo - 02-18-2012
Quote:I think I have just lost the will to live reading this thread... :twisted:
Me too! :|
I try to keep my own modest contributions to a paragraph or two. There is something to be said for being succinct and concise ...
Re: Ancient army numbers - Darth_Roach - 02-18-2012
Persians were alien to the Mesopotamians, Syrians and Egyptians indeed. The best way to describe their cultural affinity would be to call them settled Scythians.
Re: Ancient army numbers - Vindex - 02-18-2012
Quote: I try to keep my own modest contributions to a paragraph or two. There is something to be said for being succinct and concise ...
And I thought it was supposed to be about logistics not just numbers because in real terms the practicalities of one makes the ridiculous nature of the (proposed)other patently obvious!! :roll:
Re: Ancient army numbers - Robert Vermaat - 02-18-2012
Quote:Me too. I'm out. This is getting more silly by the day.Vindex post=307106 Wrote:I think I have just lost the will to live reading this thread... :twisted:Me too! :|
I try to keep my own modest contributions to a paragraph or two. There is something to be said for being succinct and concise ...
Re: Ancient army numbers - Macedon - 02-19-2012
Hmm... I do not know if I should agree or just be offended...
. It seems that sometimes we are too set on our minds to not become angry and disappointed when others do not readily embrace our undebatable truths... Anyways.. I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion and I want to thank everyone for contributing their opinion.
Re: Ancient army numbers - Nikanor - 02-21-2012
Hi to all and relax! - texts may get long indeed if we answer point by point, but then that is the interesting thing about the issue, getting to cover more details as possible rather than the generic empty talk springled with a random empty reference to some ancient document (the best way to tell a lie). Up to here we talk pure numbers filtered out of ancient texts as well as underlying reality.
Quote:Clearly they were an ineffective lot these ROmans. How in the world did they ever conquer an empire?
Paralus I will repeat it again and again, pay attention to my point: the reference is to the military tactical efficiency on which Romans are measured having a very low one (employed massive armies, lost most first contact battles, lost at times 40K soldiers/battle, kept on efforts of 50-80 years per region, took more than 300 years to Empire building etc.). It is pure mathematics and nothing else. Romans built their Empire over a long long process employing far above everything else their supreme political-diplomatic skills.
Quote:Why would they bother to bring 300,000 to battle a rabble of disorganised and squabbling city states? Already the north had given "earth and water" and the Thessalians were cooperating.
This is a valid point you make for us to sit down and have a discussion. I do see your point of view but then I do keep on making the maths.
1st: Persians even before sending their envoys must have had a rough idea of who is friendly, neutral, resisting. If one claims they would not have had a clue, then actually my argument of the need of Persians gets even stronger. But certainly one cannot claim that Persians would have expected the majority of Greeks to have obeyed them. So the 1/3rd of cities that finally resisted them would had been something totally foreseen by Persians. Only these cities could amass troops of more than 150,000 soldiers on total thus theoretically they could easily present in a single battle troops half that number or they could keep sending waves of armies of 1/4er of that. In any case Persians being the attackers would had needed to field much more than that.
2nd: Persians could not even rely on the Greek "allies". Having only recently coped with the huge Ionian revolt that costed them the upheaval of a whole region and its capital Sardeis (totally grounded), they knew that they could hardly rely on Ionians "behaving" and certainly they could not count on the effectiveness of Macedonian disgruntled vassals nor to opportunist Thessalians who were there merely to short out ridiculous local conflicts with their direct neighbours all while the only serious ally, the Thebans, who potentially eyed a broader domination over Greek affairs were still politically divided as to their stance. To drag around that sad lot of Greek vassals (Ionians and Macedonians) and allies (Thessalians and Thebans) one would need a far bigger army to be even in position to convince them come with you let alone continuing yielding control over them. Let alone being based on their effectiveness: none of them back then was known to field an army even ranging as of "average" standards in Greece.
3: For any attacker who wishes to clear out a campaign in a year (and not in 50-80 years...), to face a total estimated force of resisting locals of many more than 100,000 men and many more than 500 ships, he has to bring not just the double but actually at least 3 times that. A basic understanding which was perfect-clear for Persians because of no4 and no5
4: As mentioned in Herodotus, Persians had already awareness of Greeks at Ionia and knew already that 1 Greek equalled 2 of theirs. It would be naive to suggest the opposite. Just like earlier Egyptians, they were already employing mercenary Greeks as their own special forces. We can see this in the discussion of Persian king, generals and Greek consultants.
5: no4 was actually recently measured mathematically in the battle of Marathon. Persians had brought there 600 Phoenician ships which could transfer a fighting force of more than 60,000 troops, had landed about 30,000 troops which were beaten - slaughtered best described - by half the force of a single city, Athens, aided by a small unimportant nearby city, Platea totalling a mere 11,000 - which were not even the most reknowned around in the region! Persians would sit down and do the according maths proven by the fact that they never tried again to assault directly amphibiously but only marching cautiously on a step by step approach from the north.
So doing the 1,2,3,4,5 maths it is not difficult to imagine that Persians, given their target to conquest in a single year or so, the whole region, would feel the pressure to field a massive number of soldiers.
Could they do it? Yes they could. They had the money, they had the means. Did they have the interest? Yes, particularly the main instigators, Mardonius and his Phoenician friends who gave most of logistics all while their friends in the west were attacking South Italy - a totally interconnected event (employing massive numbers too) that few of you ever commented. Above me and Macedon and others have presented a full line of argumentation - that by the way nobody ever succesfully contested here - that they could actually do and they could do it much more easily, much more efficiently than what the best early 19th century European army could. What we mention, the full logic of logistics and motion of army and navies agrees with the general lines of Herodotus narrative of events with the Persian army moving (however you have wanted it to move, in successive parts of whatever size) for the most coastally and in parallel with the navy which was passing from an opened channel for reduction of time and increased security - which precisely rose the resisting Greeks to stop the descend in strategic points both land and sea in parallel.
Nikos
Re: Ancient army numbers - Nikanor - 02-21-2012
I am really pressing on the issue - and while it seemingly has fatigued a lot of people here and are passing to other greener fields - only to show the amount of 1) miscalculations 2) unjustified and totally unfounded disrespect for the accounts ancient writers 3) ignorance on the capacities of ancient armies 4) racial prejudice (yes, by all means) - i.e. 19th-20th century European historians accepting nonchalantly the feasibility of the Grand Armee supported by carriages, not ships in a harsh cold environment, and rejecting without any base the feasibility of the huge Persian army moving supported by ships. All that just because Persians were an ancient Asian kingdom - because apparently there is no other argument.
There is not a single argument of those who insist on the "low-numbers theory" to support their insistence. All we hear is the same "they could not had done it" - and it is the same them that accept that Napoleon did what he did in Russia, totally contradicting themselves and showing the total poverty of their argumentation and capacity of thinking, let alone paying respect to the historical account.
Speaking on numbers, what we should view first is what 5th century sources have written on the field. All the rest is really of lesser importance if not nonsensical. These are primarily Herodotus, Simonides and Ctesias. We can argue that Simonides was a poet, he may have thrown a number he heard somewhere for impressions. So let us comment mostly on Simonides and Ctesias who both spoke on details and the latter even claimed to have access to Persian material while the former had lots of material from the Greek sources (then being an Ionian he could have also info from the other side - let us not forget that in antiquity Herodotus was seen as too barbarophile which implies he also read some foreign sources too).
1. Herodotus makes reference to 2,5 million and includes an exhaustive list of land troops and navies from the vast array of ethnic groups, vassals and allies, that were grouped by the Persians. Then he doubles the number to include the logistics which is a rational guess.
2. Ctesias some decades later mentions particularly the gathering at Doriskos at about 800,000 men.
Remark: No matter who writer is the father of lies more than the other, the 2 accounts are NOT contradicting themselves: Herodotus speaks of the overall mobilisation. Ctesias speaks only of 1 major gathering in which we can understand very well that there would not be but only a part of the overall Persian mobilisation. From there on, Ctesias account - if it ever included only land-based troops could be the rough equivalent of an army of 300 to 400,000 men of fighting-only duties supported by another 400-500,000 men. The rest - as per Herodotus descriptions could have been assigned to any other type of activities in the greater region given that strategic Thrace was under freshly-achieved control.
Herodotus speaks of roughly 2,5 million army doubled by support. Too big? Could he ever make an error? Yes. OK, what could be the most common error?
Suggestions:
1st suggestion: Mistranslate the overall mobilisation for fighting force (i.e. he mistakenly took the numbers of each sub-army as total fighting force while it could be total fighting-plus-some-logistics force) and then going on to calculate the double to include logistics. Herodotus was certainly not there to count who was carrying weapons and who not, he just consulted plain numerical accounts and then added his logistics calculations.
2nd suggestion: Herodotus and other Greeks did a mistake on translation of Persian terms for 1000 and 10,000. So he could had indeed 10folded the total numbers. Possible? Yes possible. But not as possible as 1 since in that way he would had very probably inflated totally the numbers of insignificant tribes too, however the relative numbers (in between the ethnic groups) make sense.
3rd suggestion: (as suggested by so many recent historians - and I take their average): He lied himself or most probably he listened to over-exagerrations from the victorius Greek side or the over-propagandisation of the Persians prior to the campaign: the Persian army should had been much less than an overall 600,000 men land and ships and this gives about 200,000 of land-based fighting force.
1st hypothesis? I find it probable. Herodotus wrote years after the events so such errors could had been propagated by his time. In any case it would be difficult for Greeks to know the real distinction of combattants vs. non combattants among Persians and they could as well rank them all as army. THen Herodotus could grab that and make his doubling mistake. Possible.
2nd hypothesis? Probable but much less. An irrelevant south Italian Dorian Greek maybe but an Ionian Greek would not make such a basic mistake, particularly Herodotus who consulted various sources and not all Greek ones.
3rd hypothesis? Highly improbable. Certainly not for the region of 1/10. 1/2, 1/3 yes but not 1/10. Not even the hugest boasters ever claimed such and frankly Herodotus who tried to keep a less hellenocentric stance would no t abide by a suspicious 1/10 inflation. I thus find this hypothesis as totally unfounded as it is based on no contemporary element, no archaeological finding, i.e. nothing at all.
When you have people accepting the fact that Napoleon - no matter the difficulties - could move an army of more than half a million mostly combattants only on land, in cold Russia, it is unacceptable to dismiss a similar and even bigger army of combattants organised by Persians and supporting it with a massive force of logistics behind as all ancient sources imply. One must have a lot of 1) imagination 2) historic-bigotry to suggest that the one could and the other could not when ALL elements point out that the other could much more easily achieve that kind of mobilisation.
Personally I do accept that there has to be an amount of miscalculation and natural over-exagerration fulled by both pre-war Persian propaganda and post-war Greek pride but I cannot accept without any basis anything lower than a minimum of 300,000 land troops supported by 2 to 3 times their numbers in ships-logistics ending up in an overall considerably more-than-a-million mobilisation. Given their target, their enemies, the landscape and past history, and the set timetable, Persians were imposed to bring not any lower that that. Based on their Empires' wealth, ressources and organisation, and again on proximity, sea-access and logistics, they could amass that number much more easily that what Napoleon had tried to do in Russia. And I cannot accept just like that, that Napoleon had to present anything far superior to ancient Persians in terms of organisation. The ball was, is and still remains to the other side thus.
Nikos
Re: Ancient army numbers - Darth_Roach - 02-21-2012
Quote:4: As mentioned in Herodotus, Persians had already awareness of Greeks at Ionia and knew already that 1 Greek equalled 2 of theirs. It would be naive to suggest the opposite. Just like earlier Egyptians, they were already employing mercenary Greeks as their own special forces. We can see this in the discussion of Persian king, generals and Greek consultants.:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
They crushed a rebellion on the very edge of their empire, not losing a single battle, and somehow they figured that every untrained militiaman equaled two of their full-time trained soldiers? Not to mention that Herodotus never says this. Hell, he even includes a story about Xerxes boasting that any of his guardsmen could take down any two Greeks mano-a-mano, with the guy whom he told it to not disagreeing.
Re: Ancient army numbers - Gaius Julius Caesar - 02-21-2012
Untrained? :lol: :lol: :lol:
Re: Ancient army numbers - Darth_Roach - 02-21-2012
Yes. Untrained. Athenians even looked down on training as cowardly.