RomanArmyTalk

Quote:You have raised a lot of valid questions Rob. This one is, in my opinion, the most important of all. I wouldn't see that as a problem. The cargo-fleet would easily find the army. First of all, the cargo-fleet would not seek for the army but for the war-fleet.

OK, our points of departure differ. I was thinking of BNikos' proposal of small fleets or single ships providing supplies on a daily basis. One large fleet would not need to seek out the troops each day. I see your point, even though I think it's so easy for captains who may not know the coast very well.

OK, short, Sharp and shouting. :wink:

Quote:Robert, the King of Kings was able to command the entire resources of the Empire. He had the time and the means.

As did any great king and emperor, yet no one ever raised an army of millions.

Are we still discussing that army of 5 million (or even 1 million) here? That was what I was writing about – if you are not supporting such numbers then I’m not sure why you are reacting here?

Quote:It is documented that it was years in the planning. In fact was it not 10 years between Marathon and Thermopolae?

Is it documented? By whom other than Herodotus? Do we have any Persian records of this enormous (I’m still discusssion that million-men army) endeavour?

Quote: They were assembling in the lands which lead up to the Hellespont I imagine, Sardis possilby being the command center?

Then where do we find the area in which this million-men army assembled? It must have taken months. The camp must have been miles and miles across.

Quote:Why not? The harbours of the western coast would only accomodate so many ships each. There are many ports and beaches where fleets can muster.

Back to the command problem. Sure, the coast from Syria to Egypt can harbour a multitude of ships, but how do they coordinate operations?

Quote: How was any pre-modern empire controlled?

The point being? Controlling any pre-modern empire is different from controlling an invasion force. You can give orders as to which fleet sails on which day to which target, but with any delay, any simple storm, it would take days or weeks to re-arrange a plan. Impossible.

Robert, I thought we had all agreed the multiple millions was exaggeration...? :grin:

The point being argued is the fact it was a large army and logistics train.
By sea and land.

i don't think there is anyone arguing the multiple millions case, so why are you still arguing about that?

ICBW of course.

Quote: One last thing.. We cannot make comparisons between Napoleon's expedition and this of Xerxes for many reasons. Xerxes was fortunate enough that :
1. There was a direct sea route that he could use to bring supplies from his supply centers

If we are talkin gabout, say, a maximum of 3-400.000 men, which by Ancient standards is still unprecedented, I would agree.

Quote: 2. The distances are vastly different. You cannot compare a march from Sardis to Athens to one from Paris (or even Warsaw) to Moscow... you just cannot.

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…

Quote: 3. The Persian Empire had many more resources, much more manpower and certainly much more control over its vassals and armies (yes I understand that this is debatable, it is my personal opinion and even without it, the other arguments are still more important).

Indeed debatable.

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.

[quote="Macedon" post=307002] 5. Moscow was landbound. If his goal was Petersburg things would be much easier.

No doubt. But both armies had to march the full distance. I grant you that the *possibility* of logistics was better for the Persians.

Quote: So, would it really be such a huge problem for Napoleon's France to invade Belgium with 1 million men, or Holland through an allied Belgium, especially if Great Britain did not control the sea?

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.

Quote: Robert, I thought we had all agreed the multiple millions was exaggeration...? :grin:

In that case we ahree aon almost everything!!

Quote:The point being argued is the fact it was a large army and logistics train.
By sea and land.

But of course!

Quote:i don't think there is anyone arguing the multiple millions case, so why are you still arguing about that?

Because that was the hypothetical case that was being discussed. I told you to read my posts! :mrgreen:

Yes Robert, I read your posts.
But your arguments were as applicable against my thought train as for the multiple billions too. So, I argued..lol You should know a Greek will always argue (as wil la Scots/Irish Russian...) :wink:

The notion that because the Persian Empire may have been populated by 50 million people it could assemble an army of 400-500,000 seems all pervasive. It matters not how many one can assemble what matters is how one commands and controls such. It also very much matters how one supplies such.The answer to the latter seems to be that because the Empire was large it could provide a huge supply train. The argument is utterly circular and proves nothing.

The sheer numbers of ships Herodotus proposes will have largely denuded the eastern Mediterranean of those who made it function economically: the sailors. The naval history in classical times shows that such crews aren't trained and supplied at the drop of a hat.

Again, why is it that Antiochus III, the "Great King", thought he could defend his empire with 70,000 when a former Great King failed with 600,000 and 1,000,000? Had the population of the former Persian Empire (which could supply 100s of thousands) been decimated?

Again, the answer is Antiochus' figure is in the realms of reality; Herodotus' (and the Alexander historians')figures are not.

Quote:You should know a Greek will always argue (as wil la Scots/Irish Russian...) :wink:

Apparently!!

Quote:Again, the answer is Antiochus' figure is in the realms of reality; Herodotus' figures are not.

My thoughts exactly.

Quote:The notion that because the Persian Empire may have been populated by 50 million people it could assemble an army of 400-500,000 seems all pervasive. It matters not how many one can assemble what matters is how one commands and controls such. It also very much matters how one supplies such.The answer to the latter seems to be that because the Empire was large it could provide a huge supply train. The argument is utterly circular and proves nothing.

The sheer numbers of ships Herodotus proposes will have largely denuded the eastern Mediterranean of those who made it function economically: the sailors. The naval history in classical times shows that such crews aren't trained and supplied at the drop of a hat.

Again, why is it that Antiochus III, the "Great King", thought he could defend his empire with 70,000 when a former Great King failed with 600,000 and 1,000,000? Had the population of the former Persian Empire (which could supply 100s of thousands) been decimated?

Again, the answer is Antiochus' figure is in the realms of reality; Herodotus' figures are not.

Hi Paralus

Quote:The notion that because the Persian Empire may have been populated by 50 million people it could assemble an army of 400-500,000 seems all pervasive.

Absolutely not. On the contrary, the notion that Persians could not assemble a half a million army by mobilising more than 1 million people just because they were "ancient" or... "Asian" is more than pervasive! Asian nations were the first to gather vast numbers!

During the previous century, Persians had already built on a pre-existing Median and Lydian Empires which in their turn had built over the Babylonian-Assyrian Empires. Each Empire succeded the other by overtaking leadership over long pre-existing governance structures and not by destroying these structures and then trying to re-invent the wheel. Persians were heirs of a long integration process in the Middle East and Eastern Minor Asia, thus every structure was in place, the cake was ready-made, Persians were adding only the cherry. For Persians, the Empire was all about a working low-level self-governance that ensured regional stability so as to enable a working inter-region infrastructure, well-guarded trade-routes, a seamless flow of trade, and thus a centralised tax-system, a post-office and other governmental structures, and of course the possibility to move big armies swiftly from the one edge of the Empire to the other. Certainly they would not do it every year or something but if Persian kings could not master assembling, feeding and leading 500,000 soldiers with the possibility to move them around and feed them, they had better go run a MacKebabs... not run an Empire!
- 500 BC Persians had everything in place to govern and move around 500,000 soldiers.
- 1800 AD French clearly had not, but they had their try and fared some kilometers.

Quote:It matters not how many one can assemble what matters is how one commands and controls such. It also very much matters how one supplies such.The answer to the latter seems to be that because the Empire was large it could provide a huge supply train. The argument is utterly circular and proves nothing.

But that is not an argument that they did not! Every single point out there points out that they had all the money, all the means, all the facilities and all the good reasons to gather a very big army for that campaign.

Quote:The sheer numbers of ships Herodotus proposes will have largely denuded the eastern Mediterranean of those who made it function economically: the sailors. The naval history in classical times shows that such crews aren't trained and supplied at the drop of a hat.

Yes, by all means. Such a campaign was not meant to last 50 or 80 years like a Roman campaign. It was supposed to be an one-off campaign that should deal with the "issue" swiftly and decisevely in the span of months. Of course for a short period it drained the Persian Empire and the Eastern Mediterranean world but then Phoenicians who were the chief-magnates of the Persian Empire had all the interest to undertake that investment. Yes a huge investment but the pay-back would be 'huger' and would certainly not come by the fragmented Greek states but by the total geopolitical control of that part of Eurasia that "mattered". Guess why Carthagenians gathered a similarly large army of more than 300,000 soldiers to attack western Sicily. Does "monopoly" strikes any chord?

Quote:Again, why is it that Antiochus III, the "Great King", thought he could defend his empire with 70,000 when a former Great King failed with 600,000 and 1,000,000?

You compare apples with oranges.
Persians were not foreigners but "Middle-east kids". Herodotus describes nicely how Persians viewed themselves as the apex of humanity and then saw all others' hierarchical position in coincentric circles, i.e. their brothers Medians as second best, Lydians and Babylonians as 3rd best and so on - the more you moved out of the heart of the Empire the more you descended in the pyramid. In that way, not just Persians but the mass of the center had importance in the Empire. This builts a natural loyalty and this loyalty can do wonders when assembling large forces.
This was not the case for Greek monarchs who were foreigners and saw themselves as superior and their direct subjects as inferior as any barbarian on earth, preferring to recruit for the 100% of top (and even mid) jobs Greeks only. But they could not recruit more than 15-20,000 Greeks at one go, not only due to enormous costs but due to availability as these were mostly fellow Macedonians, Epirots and Aetolians and for navies Corinthians, Syracusians, Athenians and other mariners - certainly you could not find millions of them around in Greece and South Italy of Hellenistic Era where most citizens were by then not receiving military training!
If Greek monarchs wanted to gather a 200,000 army they would mathematically end up in a situation of 20,000 Greeks guiding 180,000 local "barbarians" and no matter the absence of training and proper armaments of the latter, the risk of dangerous rebellions would be enormous. Maintaining armies of a high-maximum 80,000 with 1 highly-trained progessionally armed Greek for every 3 to 4 lowly-trained half-armed local barbarians ensured overall security.
The fact that all hellenistic kingdoms faced the same challenges combined with the fact that anyway their needs were not enormous as they mostly fought among themselves border-line business-type wars revolving around sieges of cities and take-up of ports meant that small forces were more than enough for the job. A 30,000 army on campaign was already big for Hellenistic standards while for earlier Persian standards this would be a small regional expendition task-force.

Nikos

Quote:Yes, by all means. Such a campaign was not meant to last 50 or 80 years like a Roman campaign. It was supposed to be an one-off campaign that should deal with the "issue" swiftly and decisevely in the span of months.

Excuse me? I'm certain there's a point to that but it entirely eludes me. Presumably because Roman campaigns were of fifty to eighty years duration they were supplied with smaller armies; armies that were clearly generational as the sons took over from the fathers.

Quote:Again, why is it that Antiochus III, the "Great King", thought he could defend his empire with 70,000 when a former Great King failed with 600,000 and 1,000,000?

Quote:You compare apples with oranges.

It's hard to know where to begin with that which follows this statement. Perhaps, as I need to go to bed, just the most glaring.

Quote:The fact that all hellenistic kingdoms faced the same challenges combined with the fact that anyway their needs were not enormous as they mostly fought among themselves border-line business-type wars revolving around sieges of cities and take-up of ports meant that small forces were more than enough for the job. A 30,000 army on campaign was already big for Hellenistic standards while for earlier Persian standards this would be a small regional expendition task-force.

I'd suggest that you might need to read some more Hellenistic history. Even given the capricious source preservation of the period, two of the largest attested land battles were fought by these Hellenistic states - and we've precious little of the campaigns of Antiochus III in the east. They most certainly bore no resemblance to sieges or "take-up" of ports.

The Persians faced exigencies little different that these "superior" Greco-Macedonians. The Persians ruled an empire for near three centuries: this was not rule by brotherhood of man no matter how accepting they may have been of religious and some other practices. Subject populations were drafted and used and Persians formed a nucleus of these armies. No different than the Hellenistic kingdoms where "Greco-Macedonians" (diluted by intermarriage) formed a nucleus. In fact, such gives a strong indication for Persian army numbers.

Seleucus Nikator created his kingdom with an army that can only have consisted of native troops in the greater part. Alexander had trained (at a minimum) 30,000 of these.

The continuing constructs for myriads of Persians defeated by few manly Greeks never cease to amaze.

So let me sum up:

- Did Persian Empire had the population to raise a huge army?

Yes. If them not then nobody in history!! If 19th century 30-40 million France, following revolutions and upheavals and social strife could raise half a million army along with...its 'frenemies', then 5th BC century Persia with its 50-60 million population and general relative stability certainly could do it.

- What about ressources and logistics

Persian Empire had multiple times the French ressources, a multiple times better infrastructure, could move armies faster, could move more easily bigger armies, it was bordering with the enemy and could employ ships, a basic 'must' in military logistics. 1 ship can feed 100,000 for a day. If the army moved in parts of 80,000 then for each part a weekly arrival of 10 ships (and Persians could do much better than that) sufficed to sustain them solely on imported provisions without need for stocks or looting which also was on the programme of course.

- Wouldn't the campaign of say half a million soldiers and more than the double support personel, drain the Empire?

If Alexander had found only in one treasury 120,000 talents at a time Persia was in decline, certainly Persia of 5th century would had at least 3 times that. Compare for example this with Athenians who themselves and robbing all their allies had accumulated a mere 10,000 talents (all while raising armies of 10,000 soldiers casually and sending them often out of the Aegean). Even if costs soar geometrically as armies get bigger, Persians had largely the money to invest in such a campaign which was meant to be swift and decisive.

- What about inherent security issues related to absence of the majority of overall Persian military force abroad


First, it was mostly the mass of soldiers that were delocalised. Most among the vast numbers of support-functions were naturally manned from the nearby coastline regions and mostly from Phoenice and these were working in shipping, thus they were not delocalised nor doing anything else other than their everyday peacetime normal job (i.e. insteading of carrying wheat from Scythia to Minor Asia, they carried wheat from Scythia to some temprary coastal-station in Greece where the Persian army was campaigning.

In terms of borderline threats, that was a period when Persians faced only minor threats elsewhere in the Empire. Bying up minor potential raiders would be piece of cake or dealing with them with 1 year delay when the main mass of the army would be back was a reasonable calculation.

Now, speaking of absence of soldiers in relation to the most dangerous inner threat of rebellion, we have to think that there was absence of soldiers of Persians but then there would be absence of soldiers for wannabe-rebels too!!! It is more than certain that among their army Persians took trouble makers too. In such a huge army they would not rebel plus they could be potentially consumed during the campaign. Romans later did such a strategy to the maximum.

Contrary to French who had only recently solidified their national consciousness and only recently fought a civil war, Persia had an already established situation with a higher % of intensely faithful partners such as Phoenicians (who organised it all in this campaign), Medians, Lydians, Phrygians etc. In fact some of the least motivated guys in that campaign had been the traditionalist Persian aristocratic fraction! Many others and particularly Phoenicians who organised it all under Mardonius, wanted desperately that head-on confrontation! Hence, there was little fear of any major rebellion outbreak in the center of the Empire and if any such happened in the eastern or northern borders, it would be dealt swiftly as soon as the army came back - Empires always worked under that plan anyway - not forgetting that the campaign was meant to last a few months not 50-80 years like Roman 'conquest campaigns' lasted.

- Why don't we find any remains of the camps of that huge campaign


Primarily because nobody ever cared to seaerch for them. We have not a lot on Napoleontian Grand Armee camps set only 200 years ago, guess if speaking of 2500 years ago! Camps generally leave few remains as they are generally "moving circuses" set with short-life cheap materials and ending dismantled with materials re-used. Camps are not temples or graves meant to last for as long as possible. However, where we searched we do find the traces. Eg. we do have measured signs of terraforming at the third peninsula of Chalkidiki referring to the canal - which was of course meant to serve only for the expendition's logistics and not to be maintained for any other commercial use.

- Why would Persians need such a big army. Romans built and maintained an Empire and they did campaigns with a fraction of that

Romans sent casually 30,000 troops in regions where they had already relatively reliable allies facing enemies torn down socially and militarily by incessant in-fighting. And still no such campaign ever did anything - in reality Romans for each campaign took more than 50 years, if not whole centuries, on average to subdue meaningfully any given region. It was a long long arduous game of attrition. Note also that Romans casually omitted the overall numbers implicated in their campaigns and only referred to their own troops sent by the center. Real numbers were actually double at minimum and I am only referring to side-troops employed in the guarding of routes and supplies, not even referring to logistics themselves! Romans sometimes omitted the presence and action of allies in battles. For all battles Romans gave in Greece, Romans omitted characteristically the repeated failures of their own legionaire-type soldiers as contrasted to the success of the local-employed light troops, not to mention treachery among the enemy ranks.

Persians too certainly had friends among Greeks but since - contrary to Romans who had to offer a lot to Greek oligarchies both landowners and magnates - them they aimed at destroying the local shipping industry and commerce for the benefit of Phoenicians and thus they could only attract few mostly landbased and minor oligarchies and some minor powers thirsty of getting the upper hand all while dragging others as vassals. Thus they could rely on their friendship only as long as themselves brought an extraordinary force to convince them or force them being on their side.

And of course Persians did not plan to wage war for 50-60 years Roman-style. What they wanted was to clear out the situation in 1-2 years.

For any army attacking, even the most efficient ones, it is always sensible to have at least 2 to 3 times the number of the defending army. If the terrain is mountainous like it is in Greece then one has to put even more. Now if the defender has proven in the past that he has better quality troops then even more!
And in Persians'case, they had to attack a mountainous region whose armies on average where of proven better quality than theirs - themselves were using Greek armies consistently in their Imperial forces as special units - and these were Ionians who were seen by mainland Greeks as lesser-men in warfare!!! Persians knew all that.

Given that that mainland Greece should have no less than 5 million souls, i.e. 2,00 0,000 men out of which 1 million men in fighting age and conditions (Greek men would fight as soon as turned 14 and up to 60 - phalanx-style warfare permitted that) and that Persians would had calculated the case where even 50% or more of Greeks ally and campaign a gainst their invading army in that mountainous Greek terrain i.e. they would have calculated the possibility of meeting an overall force rising to half a million men. Certainly they would not meet all of them in 1 battle but maybe in successive battles. Even when news came out that 1/3rd of Greeks allied to them, 1/3rd of Greeks remained conviently neutral and only 1/3rd of Greeks allied among themselves to defend their freedom, Persians knew that that 1/3rd contained some of the best Greek armies, among them Athenians who had beaten them already and the best of Greeks, the Spartans as well as the biggest mainland Greek navies of Athens and Corinth amassing several 100s of ships - will all Greek allied land force rising to more than 100,000 men and all together to 200-300,000 people. You know very well that 100,000 men showed up in Plataies, in a single battle!

So how one can estabish that Persians who knew most if not all of these basic facts would dare take the risk campaigning with anything smaller than 300,000 land based army and an analogous navy and logistics, it really escapes my imagination. And taking this risk while taking the precaution to cut a canal? And taking such a risk while parading their own king like a circus!!! Absolutely ridiculous to even suggest so. Persians did all this because they were sure of their victory based on the extraordinarily massive army and massive money and effort they had gathered there. Anything lower than 300,000 fighting men would be madness, wasted money, wasted effort.

Nikos

Hi Nikos

Quote: On the contrary, the notion that Persians could not assemble a half a million army by mobilising more than 1 million people just because they were "ancient" or... "Asian" is more than pervasive! Asian nations were the first to gather vast numbers!

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?

We sure do theorise a lot in this thread, but even so, some proof for statements is wanted. So if you sate that "500 BC Persians had everything in place to govern and move around 500,000 soldiers" I expect you can back that up with hard facts from the study of Persian sources or archaeology?

Quote:But that is not an argument that they did not! Every single point out there points out that they had all the money, all the means, all the facilities and all the good reasons to gather a very big army for that campaign.

I see the ball in the other court. Sure, the fact that no other power in ancient times managed to put an army in the field of 500.000 (let's forget that million-fast!) is indeed no argument, like you say, that it could not have happened. However, despite vehemently stating that the Persian 'should' have been able to do just that, you have still not given any argument to back that up. So although it's a tie, it's a tie favouring the 'no proof' side, as far as I'm concerned. If they had all the means and the facilities, as you say they had, at least give us one piece of evidence that they, at least once, actually did so!

Quote:Such a campaign was not meant to last 50 or 80 years like a Roman campaign.

You speak in enigma's. Roman campaigns took 50 or 80 years? Which campaign was that? And you state it as a rule?? hock:

Quote:You compare apples with oranges. Persians were not foreigners but "Middle-east kids".

I'm afriad you're wrong. Persians were not "Middle-east kids" like the rest of them, they were as foreign to the inhabitants of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Anatolia and all the other lands under their domination as Antiochus would have been. Their (Indo-Iranian) language differed from most languages spoken there, their gods were different, their background differed. It would be a great misunderstanding to see them as 'one and the same' with all other peoples in the Near East. To them, it matter little whether the king who called the shots was a pharaoh from the Nile, a Great King from Persia or an emperor from Rome. All 'bl..dy foreigners'. :wink:

Quote:Excuse me? I'm certain there's a point to that but it entirely eludes me. Presumably because Roman campaigns were of fifty to eighty years duration they were supplied with smaller armies; armies that were clearly generational as the sons took over from the fathers.

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.

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?

Quote:I'd suggest that you might need to read some more Hellenistic history. Even given the capricious source preservation of the period, two of the largest attested land battles were fought by these Hellenistic states - and we've precious little of the campaigns of Antiochus III in the east. They most certainly bore no resemblance to sieges or "take-up" of ports.

Not phrased precisely by my part perhaps. The main idea is there. Warfare among Hellenistic kingdoms was all about controlling strategic points. It was not about total conquest. I will only give the example of the city of Corinth which was successively passing from the one kingdom to the other (namely Macedonia and Egypt), sieged repeatedly, but never really 'conquered' or 'destroyed' as the idea was to control and use, not to conquer and rule. Most of Hellenistic warfare was all about sorting out business, not conquests. 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.

Quote:The Persians faced exigencies little different that these "superior" Greco-Macedonians. The Persians ruled an empire for near three centuries: this was not rule by brotherhood of man no matter how accepting they may have been of religious and some other practices. Subject populations were drafted and used and Persians formed a nucleus of these armies. No different than the Hellenistic kingdoms where "Greco-Macedonians" (diluted by intermarriage) formed a nucleus. In fact, such gives a strong indication for Persian army numbers.

Totally totally disagree. When Arabs invaded Egypt in 640s AD what they found was the so called Romans, i.e. a Greek-speaking (and apparently, if non-christian, Greek-conscious) population over-class ruling and resented by the masses of disaffected Egyptians and other Middle Easterners who embraced the islamic change, explaining the success of the then still mediocre and small Arab armies. Nice harmonious social standing 1000 years after? Not really.

Now if that was the case following 1000 years and 600 years of Roman occupation imagine what was the situation in 300 and 200 BC when local Middle Easterners and Egyptians (though them initially were happy) suddenly saw Greeks enterring and getting not only all top-positions but also most of mid-positions. It is just striking the absence of inclusion of locals into all parts of political and social life apart the naturally occuring case of intermarriages of Greeks with local women (this including aristocrats in the case of the Seleucian Empire). One only needs to remember that no Greek there ever learnt the local languages and that queen Cleopatra was the rare exception in the Ptolemean royal family for learning Egyptian to understand how the situation was radically different. I am not saying that Persian oligarchy learnt Aramaic but then Persians lived in their home and ruled next door, they had not come from afar imbedded in a foreign mass.

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 - just compare this to the totally foreign Greeks who simply deleguated most top and mid ranks among locals and replaced them with incoming Greek immigrants them often being the Greek mainland underclass! You have to note that for most Middle Easterners the passing from Assyrians-Babylonians to Medes and from Medes to Persians was a socially gradual natural transition despite the raging wars and conquests but the Hellenic conquest was socially and culturally a much more intense transition during which a totally foreign to them culture established over them, refused to talk with them, refused to socialise with them, refused to even speak with them unless they were willing to hellenistically-educate themselves to perfection giving all top and most mid-jobs to a constant flux of Greek immigrants-invaders in the region. By all means on details, Greeks may have favoured the one local tribe more than the other and even among specific tribes some were pro-Greek some were anti-Greek but in the overall Greeks never managed to have the touch Persians had with Middle Eastern populations simply because they never aimed to have one such in the first place. Case of medieval Egypt is simply shocking. If 1 out of 10 local Middle Eastern aristocrats dreamt of surfing among local tribalism and rebelling against Persians, then that number must had been above 6 or 7 in Hellenistic times no matter if those potential rebels had accepted (forced by surrounding realities) a whatever degree of Hellenic cultural elements. The reason that most rebellions in the Seleucian Empire for example, were led by Greek local rulers leaders obviously showed that the strategy of not integrating and employing properly locals into the armies (but only raising local armies briefly for short periods and then disengaging them) maintaining only the Greek cores, worked actually perfectly. It only backfired when Romans came in and found extremely small core-armies surrounded by bunchies of dis-interested half-trained/half-armed troops.

The case of Persian Empire? Not really.

Quote:The continuing constructs for myriads of Persians defeated by few manly Greeks never cease to amaze.

"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: in their case this simply happened in an accelerated fashion because they had the bad luck to face the best army ever till mid-19th century. Tough luck. Then, for a couple of centuries Greek oligarchs floated around over the disorganisation of the area and the initial shock of breaking the former imperial structures not to mention the general purposeful de-militarisation of populations of the whole Middle Eastern center with only the Greek-core armies moving around. As soon as Persians (by then their Parthian part of the Iranian nation) set it right establishing a proper army, they were back again challenging everybody, by then the Romans whom they beat successively again and again and often at humilating degree.
The myth of incapable Persians is just a European-made myth.

Hi Robert, thanks for the comments

Quote: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.

Agreed, I love to write something more but them when I present a hard case none-wants to comment. But let me ask you in turn:

Quote:We sure do theorise a lot in this thread, but even so, some proof for statements is wanted. So if you sate that "500 BC Persians had everything in place to govern and move around 500,000 soldiers" I expect you can back that up with hard facts from the study of Persian sources or archaeology?

Where are the hard facts for the Grand Armee? French documents? I dismiss them for their inaccuracy, factual errors, deliberate errors, propaganda and total inability of the half-educated French officers to count properly. I also dimiss any Russian reference for obvious post-victory propaganda reasons.

Ok, I cut the joke, I do not dismiss most of the above because I have no serious reason to doubt. What I ask is people who have doubts of Herodotus (not speaking of later writers who could write whatever) to state why they have doubts. And people come up with things like

1) Herodotus likes to tell a nice lie
2) Persians could not have done this because this and that

Are the above hard facts or arguments? Of course not!

I have presented a full line of points difficult to break that establish the feasibility of the campaign - the mere existence of the Grand Armee being the best proof.
I established not only how feasible it was for Persians to do such a mobilisation but actually how strictly necessary given the balance of the situation.

So what you really ask me is to bring hard evidence to verify it - what? a Persian text naming 1 by 1 all Persian soldiers? or signs of the perimetry of the totality of Persian camps?.

And here I return the argument by saying
"Why did we find such hard facts to establish Persians were not that many"?

I do ask:
Where are the hard facts to tell us that Persians had brought into Greece, say, less than 300,000 land troops and less than 800,000 mariners and logistics/support.

Quote:You speak in enigma's. Roman campaigns took 50 or 80 years? Which campaign was that? And you state it as a rule?? hock:

The Persian invasion was not to punish the Athenians or something but to invade and conquer Greece. It was an invasion for conquest. That is clear to most if not all ancient and modern analysts and it is on this basis I do comment.
I used explicitly the term "campaign" to bring into comparison the Persian effort of conquest of Greece to the later Roman effort of conquest of Greece (and other regions). I compared the efforts and explained why I do believe that Persians would never leave Persia and go have an adventure in Greece with anything smaller than several (more than 3) 100,000s of soldiers backed up by the necessary logistics behind let alone the military navy to back up that logistics in turn. I have no reason to believe Persians would had miscalculated their effort and to hear someone say so I would ask him on what basis does he claim so.

Quote:Persians were not "Middle-east kids" like the rest of them, they were as foreign to the inhabitants of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Anatolia and all the other lands under their domination as Antiochus would have been. Their (Indo-Iranian) language differed from most languages spoken there, their gods were different, their background differed. It would be a great misunderstanding to see them as 'one and the same' with all other peoples in the Near East. To them, it matter little whether the king who called the shots was a pharaoh from the Nile, a Great King from Persia or an emperor from Rome. All 'bl..dy foreigners'. :wink:

In that sense Assyrians too were non-Aramaic people speaking another language who turned later to Aramaic. Soumerians were non-Aramaic people who converted later. Middle Eastern is not just Aramaic Semitic people. In the periphery lots of non-Aramaic people lived, Armenians to name one. Elamites in the coastal Persian gulf were not Aramaic nor Iranian.

When i did this comment was to put the contrast between the socio-cultural gap of Greeks to locals as compared between Persians and locals. In the first case it was bigger. It was meant to explain how Persians would show some trust and importance over locals, Greeks rarely to never. Thus the need for restraining locals from being occupied effectively in the armies. Thus there is no case of Hellenistic monarchs not having the means to manage bigger than 100,000 armies but not having the motive. Persians had it.

I do accept though your objection on Egyptians who equally viewed all as foreigners (and were not very affectionate towards Persians).