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Re: Ancient army numbers - Gaius Julius Caesar - 02-21-2012
I see! :-) Well, you learn something new every day!
Re: Ancient army numbers - Macedon - 02-21-2012
Quote:Yes. Untrained. Athenians even looked down on training as cowardly.
Duh!!! if one reads your posts Roach, one may get the idea that a small band of Persians came guns blazing to Greece, roasted the native effeminate savages and then danced back to Persia, the poor destroyed natives only making up stories of victory to hide their endless shame. Are you sure you even want to take part in threads that have to do with ancient Greece? Your positions are really strange to say the least. Where did you read that the Athenians or the Greeks in general looked down on military training as something cowardly? And I want to ask you again : Are you really 16 years old or is it a mistake in your details?
Re: Ancient army numbers - Paralus - 02-22-2012
Quote: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.
This comparison - without evidence or example - is truly watermelons and cucumbers: yes both are empires and both are totally different (as are the gourds in question). At no stage do you take into account the objectives of either of these states.
I imagine that the Roman conquest of Greece and the Greek East bulks large in your thinking?
Quote: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 [...] 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
There were meany a "Mediser" in GReece. The Persians will have had a fair idea of who would and would not resist. Your numbers are, again, wrong in any case. The deployment numbers of the states who did resist were nothing like 150,000 and the Greeks never mustered 500 ships. Herodotus claims something less than 39,000 hoplites for the final crunch in the field. If the rest are psiloi then they seemingly did very little - especially as the Greeks were under a constant cavalry "bombardment".
Quote: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 [..] none of them back then was known to field an army even ranging as of "average" standards in Greece.
The Persians crushed the Ionian revolt and ensured that the cities remained "unwalled". That last statement is near correct. Macedon famously had no infantry worthy of the name. Clearly thousands of Persians will have been needed to keep this crack force under supervision.
Quote: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
Many of those ships will have been cavalry transports - as Herodotus notes. That 60,000 troops were also carried is, mathematically, impossible.
Are you suggesting an utterly new take on Marathon viz the Persians had only managed to land 30,000 at the time of the attack?
Quote: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
It would not matter what basis or argument was presented as it would be rejected out of hand - as has been the case to date. I won't dignify the "racist" basis of rebuttal.
As I wrote earlier: a tinge of zealotry colours one side of this debate and, against such, no logic will hold. This has been the case throughout.
I'm with Robert: greener fields beckon.
Re: Ancient army numbers - Nikanor - 02-22-2012
Quote:This comparison - without evidence or example - is truly watermelons and cucumbers: yes both are empires and both are totally different (as are the gourds in question). At no stage do you take into account the objectives of either of these states.
Do you claim that Roman oligarchies were less bent on expansion that Greek oligarchies? That would be a novelty. Reality in history says that when one has a differential in military potential he will soon put it to good use. Romans despite their huge numerical differencial contrasting to that of each of their neighbours, they gave the aforementioned low record. Who wants to add more on their military effectiveness? Now if you are trying to find the reasons behind the above then it is another issue altogether, one unrelated to military tactical efficiency and related to politics and diplomacy.
Quote:There were meany a "Mediser" in GReece. The Persians will have had a fair idea of who would and would not resist. Your numbers are, again, wrong in any case. The deployment numbers of the states who did resist were nothing like 150,000 and the Greeks never mustered 500 ships. Herodotus claims something less than 39,000 hoplites for the final crunch in the field. If the rest are psiloi then they seemingly did very little - especially as the Greeks were under a constant cavalry "bombardment".
Does not matter if the more effective side of Greeks were the heavier troops. The bulk of the Persian army were not super-equiped either. Reality is that the allied Greek states did gather in a single battle something close to 100,000 and their overall forces were more than that. Persians would had needed heavy, medium, light troops 3 times those numbers at minimum. And they had them in Platea - no matter if these were actually the left-behind army implying that the initial one was even bigger. Shows Persians had done right their calculations on paper.
Quote: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
Quote:Many of those ships will have been cavalry transports - as Herodotus notes. That 60,000 troops were also carried is, mathematically, impossible.
They had cavalry in there (absent in battle). A Greek triiris could carry 170 oarsmen and 30 marines. Phoenician ones were considerably larger. As for the case of Greeks, you have to count that a large number of oarsmen were also soldiers, probably light infantry. To get a number of 60,000 I cut the number of "meaningfully armed men ready to be deployed" to 100 per ship on average. In any case at Marathon not all of them were deployed properly armed in their ranks, but still they should be at least 3 times more the number of the defenders.
Quote:Are you suggesting an utterly new take on Marathon viz the Persians had only managed to land 30,000 at the time of the attack?
Correct and sharp remark. I will detail this further. I do not claim to have absolute numbers for Persian force at Marathon. My line of thinking is going for the minimum. I took a very conservative calculation for a minimal number of men (100 men armed decently and able to fight per ship). And for those implicated in the battle I calculated the half on the basis that they would not be fully and properly deployed (in the proper sense of the word) in the few days they had arrived - and on the basis that following the defeat in the battle, Persians were already ready to depart on their ships proving that they had not really fully deployed there but they were ready to leave on order at any time. So yes, not all of them took part there. I thus took half as a guess, you may wish to prove me wrong and I need to be tested. In such a situation and facing a mere 11,000 on the other side, Persians were not pressured to employ their total force. Had they been ready and multiple times the number of Greeks and ready to attack, they would simply attack as it was to clear out the resistance. But a case of 3 to 1 explains the relative stalemate of the first 4 days. Note also the notable inactivity of cavalry. It was sent elsewhere? It was not ready. Or was it already placed in the ships? I do not remember Herodotus detailing what happened to it, to be honest.
Quote:It would not matter what basis or argument was presented as it would be rejected out of hand - as has been the case to date. I won't dignify the "racist" basis of rebuttal.
No, you have totally missed this. It is not me bringing down the numbers to 1/10 of ancient sources thus it is not me that has to explain anything (though I do have explained everything). Above I have proposed sober suggestions of how to translate the 2 contemporary references to Persian numbers but it is not me rejecting everything and proposing the 1/10th of what is mentioned. Hence it is not me to come up and explain but the one who rejects. Till today noone of those who reject and bring it low has ever come up with a proper argument. The ball was, is and remains on the rejectors side.
The biased-view of ancient history child of the late 18th century which may gave birth to modern history but also set the tone wrongly on many levels, remains still with us. I only have to see your refusal to see the Roman low military effectiveness stats to note that kind of cultural bias yet once again. You cannot accept pure statistics thus for me it is difficult to break this wall and talk to a higher level on how to translate references to Persian numbers.
And there are other issue and other areas where this bias does matter much more than in this issue.
Nikos
Re: Ancient army numbers - Vindex - 02-22-2012
Just removed from my favourites list. :roll:
I admire others stamina though...
Re: Ancient army numbers - MD - 02-22-2012
Quote: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.
Do you think it is also plausible that Carthage in 480 BC could raise, feed and pay an army of 300.000 men?
Re: Ancient army numbers - Paralus - 02-23-2012
Quote:Do you claim that Roman oligarchies were less bent on expansion that Greek oligarchies? That would be a novelty.
I do not claim anything: it is you that claims. I've asked twice for an example of your 50-80 year campaign (the second being a specific question) and you've responded with an irrelevant question.
As for Marathon, it will have taken the Persians no long time to realise what was opposing them. Were there 60,000 (and only half deployed) the other half might easily have sailed to Athens. The Athenians are then meat in a sandwich.
Re: Ancient army numbers - Gaius Julius Caesar - 02-23-2012
I seem to recall the Persians Did attempt to do just that..they were stopped.
And then defeated at Salamis. I suppose next there were only 10 Athenian ships and maybe 15 Persian ships at that engagement.....
This is going nowhere.
Re: Ancient army numbers - Sean Manning - 02-23-2012
Quote:I seem to recall the Persians Did attempt to do just that..they were stopped.No. Centuries after the battle, there were speculations that the Persians had been boarding the ships at the time of the battle (I think this is in the Suidas and Cornelius Nepos; its definitely in some 20th century historians). After the battle the Persians sailed to Athens, but the army at Marathon came back in time to stop them. All that Herodotus book 7 tells us is that the Athenians attacked with a line deep on the wings and thin on the center that was about as long as the Persian lines, that they encircled the Persian center after defeating the wings, and that the Persians escaped by sea losing seven ships and 6400 men.
Re: Ancient army numbers - Darth_Roach - 02-23-2012
Quote:Duh!!! if one reads your posts Roach, one may get the idea that a small band of Persians came guns blazing to Greece, roasted the native effeminate savages and then danced back to Persia, the poor destroyed natives only making up stories of victory to hide their endless shame. Are you sure you even want to take part in threads that have to do with ancient Greece? Your positions are really strange to say the least. Where did you read that the Athenians or the Greeks in general looked down on military training as something cowardly? And I want to ask you again : Are you really 16 years old or is it a mistake in your details?
Actually, if you bothered to read Thucydides you'd see what I am talking about. He says that the Athenians preferred to go to war with an easy mind, instead of with laborious training, with natural, rather than state-induced courage.
As for my posts, they don't give such an idea at all. If you think anything less than your accepted figure of several hundred thousand is "a small band" it's your problem, not mine. I think millenia of glorifying the war have taken their toll on our perception of what are acceptable figures. To make comprehension easier, we can sum the Achaemenid army up as a late medieval English army on a much larger scale: consisting of a core of landholder infantry, mostly bowmen, supported by an elite of feudal cavalry and auxiliaries from the subject peoples as well as mercenaries.
Re: Ancient army numbers - Macedon - 02-23-2012
Quote:Actually, if you bothered to read Thucydides you'd see what I am talking about. He says that the Athenians preferred to go to war with an easy mind, instead of with laborious training, with natural, rather than state-induced courage.
As for my posts, they don't give such an idea at all. If you think anything less than your accepted figure of several hundred thousand is "a small band" it's your problem, not mine. I think millenia of glorifying the war have taken their toll on our perception of what are acceptable figures. To make comprehension easier, we can sum the Achaemenid army up as a late medieval English army on a much larger scale: consisting of a core of landholder infantry, mostly bowmen, supported by an elite of feudal cavalry and auxiliaries from the subject peoples as well as mercenaries.
I prefer to learn from you, you seem to have a better grasp of Greek warfare than Thucydides, Xenophon or any other source I of course haven't read... So, what are the words of Thucydides that tell us that the Athenians looked down on military training as something cowardly? I honestly do not remember as can be the case when anyone mentions something he claims he read in the original and does not provide the quote. Then, maybe, you could also tell me how you came to the conclusion that this is what the Greek army was like. I think that if I ever found the time to read Thucydides, I could find a good many quotes that would say the contrary, even though the quotes would be for a time later than the one in question, some here might argue. The choice of words is important when making a point. You might consider using milder vocabulary when talking history. As for the numbers of the Persians or anyone else, you of course are entitled to your opinion as is everyone.
I guess that for the Persians "invading a bunch of disunited city states" with an army of "untrained militiamen who thought that training was cowardly" would be a piece of cake. How did they lose? Or didn't they and all this story about the Persian Wars are simple propaganda in an effort to encourage a vassal Greece?
Re: Ancient army numbers - diegis - 02-23-2012
Quote:Robert Vermaat post=306506 Wrote:How large were the largest Roman expeditionary armies?Roman army numbers are also, I believe, commonly inflated. I've argued here, for example, that the figures of hundreds of thousands of men suggested for Trajan's Dacian campaigns are probably mistaken - the actual total for the force was more likely 50-60,000.
Well i think Romans was able to field actualy easily over 100,000 soldiers during Dacian wars (maybe not 200,000 as some says, but somewhere betwen)
And this because Trajan prepared the war for few years, the supply lines was relatively short (Dacian capital, Sarmizegetusa, was at i think less then 200 km from the Roman border), and Romans might even bring more supplies easily from Panonia, using the Danube fleet.
Moesia was anyway a fairly rich province too, regarding agriculture or so.
I do however think that Persian army that invaded Greece was not near as big as some Greek ancient chronicars said, it was hard to supply very big armies back then, at distance from their bases and concetrated in a kinda poor terrain
Re: Ancient army numbers - Darth_Roach - 02-23-2012
Quote:I prefer to learn from you, you seem to have a better grasp of Greek warfare than Thucydides, Xenophon or any other source I of course haven't read... So, what are the words of Thucydides that tell us that the Athenians looked down on military training as something cowardly? I honestly do not remember as can be the case when anyone mentions something he claims he read in the original and does not provide the quote. Then, maybe, you could also tell me how you came to the conclusion that this is what the Greek army was like. I think that if I ever found the time to read Thucydides, I could find a good many quotes that would say the contrary, even though the quotes would be for a time later than the one in question, some here might argue. The choice of words is important when making a point. You might consider using milder vocabulary when talking history. As for the numbers of the Persians or anyone else, you of course are entitled to your opinion as is everyone.
I guess that for the Persians "invading a bunch of disunited city states" with an army of "untrained militiamen who thought that training was cowardly" would be a piece of cake. How did they lose? Or didn't they and all this story about the Persian Wars are simple propaganda in an effort to encourage a vassal Greece?
First of all, you are arguing with a strawman of my argument. My argument is that most hoplites were not really trained (not that training was terribly common), they were a militia of well armed and armored men. See this:
Quote:'If then we prefer to meet danger with a light heart but without laborious training, and with a courage which is gained by habit and not enforced by law, are we not greatly the gainers? Since we do not anticipate the pain, although, when the hour comes, we can be as brave as those who never allow themselves to rest; and thus too our city is equally admirable in peace and in war
Re: Ancient army numbers - Lyceum - 02-23-2012
Actually in general there seems to be a sort of...ideaology in ancient Greek civic culture against training until the Macedonians kick the crap out of everyone.
We must NOT take this to mean they didn't train, far from it. Though their training methodology may have looked different from a modern military. We can talk briefly of the Athenians.
1) The ultimate ideal was essentially the citizen/farmer/soldier sort of hybrid. Your own excellence and inborn arete made you able to defend your city. There is a gigantic emphasis in most early civic cultures on this sort of thing. We can think of Sokratis harassing...was it Xariton? I can't remember, in one of of Plato's dialogues about whether sophos and arete can be taught and the debate behind that. For more aristocratic ideology you of course have the Homeric corpus and Pindar.
2) I think it's Periklis' funeral oration where he points out how the Spartans have to train etc but the Athenians don't.
There's lots of crap like that. There's your cultural facade.
Now look at how civic life worked, think of military parades, the ephebes, the rise of career fighters as early as Miltiadis...the heavy emphasis on gymnastic culture amongst the hoplite classes etc...
The Greek outlook denigrated training solely as part of a civic ideology, shutting out the mercenaries etc etc...complex web of associations there. The reality of course was that the Greeks in general, especially the Athenians, tended to have a well oiled social machinery that enabled training anyway. That's before you consider actual actions being fought and veterans being made etc.
Re: Ancient army numbers - Macedon - 02-23-2012
Quote:First of all, you are arguing with a strawman of my argument. My argument is that most hoplites were not really trained (not that training was terribly common), they were a militia of well armed and armored men. See this:
Thucydides_2.39 Wrote:'If then we prefer to meet danger with a light heart but without laborious training, and with a courage which is gained by habit and not enforced by law, are we not greatly the gainers? Since we do not anticipate the pain, although, when the hour comes, we can be as brave as those who never allow themselves to rest; and thus too our city is equally admirable in peace and in war
Exactly what I thought... you are taking an extract of Thucydides completely out of context and from it you produce the conclusion that the Athenians (whose military ability Thucydides often praises in his work) were an untrained militia... This passage has nothing to do with Athenian or Greek military training. It is a comparison between the totally militaristic life in Sparta and the freer, less laborious, "lazy" life in Athens which nevertheless does not make men sloth on the battlefield, according to Th.