Ancient army numbers

[Macedon]

Oh dear George. There's nothing like ignoring the sources:

Arrian 3.12.3-4: Alexander ordered the cavalry of the Grecian mercenaries under the command of Menidas to attack them. But the Scythian cavalry and the Bactrians, who had been drawn up with them, sallied forth against them, and being much more numerous they put the small body of Greeks to rout. Alexander then ordered Aristo at the head of the Paeonians and Grecian auxiliaries to attack the Scythians; and the barbarians gave way. But the rest of the Bactrians, drawing near to the Paeonians and Grecian auxiliaries, caused their own comrades who were already in flight to turn and renew the battle; and thus they brought about a general cavalry engagement, in which more of Alexander’s men fell, not only being overwhelmed by the multitude of the barbarians, but also because the Scythians themselves and their horses were much more completely protected with armour for guarding their bodies. Notwithstanding this, the Macedonians sustained their assaults, and assailing them violently squadron by squadron, they succeeded in pushing them out of rank.

Where exactly do you see any melee here that does not have to do with the Companions, oh great interpreter of sources? I think you are quoting Arrian as you see fit instead of reading what he says and trying to match it with what I write. None of the bolded or unbolded quotes says anything that refutes anything I wrote.

It would appear you have misread your Arrian. He clearly describes only the Macedonians as assaulting squadron by squadron. Are you claiming the Macedonians rode in and hurled their "javelins" and retreated?

I do not understand what attacking in squadrons has to do with anything. What are you saying? Would my offering, say 10 instances of cavalry arrayed and operating in squadrons make a point? Anyways.. I will give quotes from Arrian regarding how he understands cavalry fighting of the era and then you will be able to easily comment...

Tell that to Parmenion. I'm afraid that is not sustained by the source material. You would have it that the only battle occurred on the far right of the Macedonian line. This is clearly a result of the hero-king, Alexander-centric nature of the source material - something you seem oblivious to. Do you really suggest that Darius only intended to fight the Macedonian right?

I think it is clearly described by Arrian. Skirmish does not mean psiloi hurling some stones or javelins. A skirmish is a combat action in which one or both parts do not come in hand to hand combat but use missiles whether in dense or dispersed formations. This has nothing to do with any "Alexandro-centric" description but with good sense on the part of Darius. His infantry was no match for the Macedonians and he very well knew that. This is why he chose not to engage with it but keep it out of harm's way. I am amazed Michael, that you understand so little about such tactics. Fighting with only one wing (which is anyways not the case here, I sincerely think you should have understood that) was a very valid and not unusual option for any general. I think it is easy to form opinions beforehand and then just anathematize anything that does not conform with such approaches.

And so we come to source criticism. Badian ("Orientals in Alexander's Army"; The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 85 1965, pp. 160-161) long ago observed the following about the "Roman general/governor of Greek nationality":

For one thing, accurate reporting of military matters is not one of Arrian's virtues. The man who - to cite only a few obvious examples - can use the word somatophylake in three different senses (iv 3.2 et al.: the foot agema; vi 27.2: a governor's bodyguard; and the proper technical use for the elite of great nobles, passim); who can contradict himself within a few lines on who led the mounted archers to the junction of Acesines and Hydraotes (vi 5-5; 6.I); and who seriously thought that Alexander meant to defeat Porus' forces with cavalry and archers (v 14.I f.-cf. Hamilton, PACA i (1961) 9)--this man was far from the great military historian of conventional modern encomia.

Arrian does not, necessarily, propagandise. He does, though, reproduce the propagandist figures of his sources. As we know (from Arrian), a king should not lie. What then of Callisthenes or Aristoboulos? These figures reek of court "approved" material.

I am very aware of the Badianic comments on Arrian and I choose to not accept them. It is always easy to explain what one does not understand or agree with with unbased attacks against the source's credibility. In my opinion, Badian has anyways only limited understanding of both the ancient Greek language and ancient military tactics being more of a more broad historian as displayed by these ludicrous comments of his, as if the term somatophylacae should only have one meaning or as if Arrian ever says that the archers he used alongside the cavalry at Hydaspes was some kind of super-weapon that would crush the Indians... Anyways, this all is his personal opinion which you can fully adopt if you wish, no problem with me. If you want more criticism you can also read Bosworth's aticle too (Errors in Arrian, The Classical Quartely, New Series, Vol.26, No.1 (1976), pp.117-139). You will find it much more informative and free of Badian's overaggressive style.

As for the sources he uses, I have never read them, alas they are gone... Again it is very easy to just attack them as wishing to glorify Alexander and thus deliberately lie, but there is absolutely no such proof or even evidence thereof. Just a maniac wish to discredit anything that has been written about Alexander. How do you know that they "reeked of court approved material"? What I wouldn't give to go through Callisthenes' work... In what little Polybius has preserved of this work, actually attacking him for his alleged errors, may be the best described march to battle of a Macedonian phalanx, a text that actually makes Polybius' criticism look bad. Seriously now... if you really think that "court approved" material spoke of 100 dead at Gaugamela and "non-approved" material about 500, we are in grave disagreement. There is no glory conferred by this difference. A text that would be written to really praise Alexander would look like Plutarch's "On the Fortune and Virtue of Alexander." Many wrote about Alexander and I do not dismiss any ancient source as incredible when describing earthly things. 100 or 500 dead against 1,000,000 or 500,000 is practically the same to me. A complete victory whose tactics I try to interpret and decipher in a broader sense. What I am interested in is what Arrian's, Polybius' or Xenophon's contemporaries thought of when confronted with such numbers in literary works. Whether they thought such numbers were incredible and ludicrous exaggerations or whether they thought that they were realistic. This understanding is much more important to draw helpful conclusions for their eras. Are there authors who were accused of bias, sucking up to their patrons, outright lie? We have countless such accusations, although not for the works in question. Are they rightly accused? We cannot say... What I can say with relative certainty is that when we have a number of sources relating the same incident in roughly the same way, then this, at least, is something that was generally believed to have been the truth, even if it was not. So, again... if your problem are the numbers, I have countless times declare, I take no other position as only supporting that huge numbers were possible to muster, supply and command. I DO NOT say that they were, I DO NOT say that any of these battles is 100% accurately given.

What, then , happens when "the Great" is dead? What of the wars after? The greatest army we hear of is that of Antigonus. This is entirely understandable and tops at some 80,000. The silly notion that it is only made up of mostly Greco-Macedonians is just that: silly. Here we have - even if via an intermediary - the "sober" historian Hieronymus as a source. It is alarming how the numbers then shrink.

I guess that anyone reporting numbers close to what you personally deem realistic is sober and those who do not are not... I do not agree with such a line of thinking. Strategic and tactical traditions and rules to follow can be very different. The Romans of the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC usually fielded 20,000 men and that in no way meant that the 70,000 Seleucids on the field were a fairy tale. Why would a Hellenistic preference to such numbers mean that the Persians never fielded hundreds of thousands? As I wrote someplace else in these forum, the assertion that ALL accounts of huge armies are untrue is as ludicrous as the assertion that ALL were true. The problem is that we do not know which ones were and which were not... We can argue, fight, dismiss and accept, but in the end, some of those reports will have been true and some false... This is why I prefer talking about probability instead of making bold statements regarding such issues.

In any case George, let Arrian's (non-propagandising!) figure of 300,000 be killed by the Macedonians at the "skirmish" of Gaugamela. How then can you describe it as such? If you allow the battle to have taken six hours (oh dear, more than a "skirmish") then that amounts to some 834 Persians killed per minute.

As they say out west in the US, you'll have to excuse me all to hell George...

First, a skirmish remains a skirmish even when it lasts more than 6 hours... How would you basically describe Carrhae? Second, the 300,000 dead, certainly an incredible number if the Persians had the chance to make a somewhat effective retreat could be made :

1.if in their panic they trampled each other
2.if the phalanx actually reached the rear lines in flight as their way would be obstructed by other troops and throngs of hopeless men marching leaderless
3.if orders were given and actually obeyed to even some troops to prohibit the retreat of lines in front of them
3.if the call to spare the enemies and start taking prisoners was given after 1-2 days
4.if the men in flight retreated into their respective camps and there were trapped or engaged in looting of their own possessions.

etc.

The actual terrain being relatively level and without thick vegetation would actually hamper flight.

Were there so many dead? Most probably not... Is it possible? Yes, I think it is.