Ancient army numbers

[MD]

Apropos Thucydides, he has an interesting quote in Book 6.33, in which Hermocrates from Syracuse claims that invaders can never come in greater numbers than the inhabitants of a country and even uses the Persian wars as example. Wouldn't that sound completely ridiculous if the Persian did indeed came with hundreds of thousands men to Greece and the Carthaginians with 300.000 to Sicily just a few decades earlier?

Few indeed have been the large armaments, either Hellenic or barbarian, that have gone far from home and been successful. They cannot be more numerous than the people of the country and their neighbours, all of whom fear leagues together; and if they miscarry for want of supplies in a foreign land, to those against whom their plans were laid none the less they leave renown, although they may themselves have been the main cause of their own discomfort. Thus these very Athenians rose by the defeat of the Mede, in a great measure due to accidental causes, from the mere fact that Athens had been the object of his attack; and this may very well be the case with us also.

[Paralus]

Apropos Thucydides, he has an interesting quote in Book 6.33, in which Hermocrates from Syracuse claims that invaders can never come in greater numbers than the inhabitants of a country and even uses the Persian wars as example. Wouldn't that sound completely ridiculous if the Persian did indeed came with hundreds of thousands men to Greece and the Carthaginians with 300.000 to Sicily just a few decades earlier?

I do hope you have a better result with this than I. When I posted such it was not so much dismissed out of hand (as all arguments have been); rather it was simply ignored. Uncomfortable evidence quite often is in my experience.

[Nikanor]

Do you think it is also plausible that Carthage in 480 BC could raise, feed and pay an army of 300.000 men?

Absolutely.

-> The contemporary source again is Herodotus and then we have a later text by Diodoros Sikelos who compiled works of earlier writers and there we have references for Carthagenian expendition forces rising up to 3000 cargo ships, 200 war ships and 300,000
men. Rough calculations, but they have to be taken as they are, i.e. showing the level of Carthagenian army volumes.
-> There is no heroic inflation of numbers of Carthagenians and heroic deflation of numbers of Greeks: Greek alliance force is also scaled to a 6 digit level at 100,000+ men.
-> In such cases the attacker must always bring at least more than 2/1, unless he has an army of vastly superior quality than the opponent (not the case of Carthagenians).
-> Carthagenians were much aware of their own motley-crew infantry deficit in front of Greek infantries which despite the mentioned existence of low-level victories in the past against fragments of Greeks in western Sicily and in Iberia, they never really faced the proper mass of Greeks anywhere usually receding when Greeks gathered in numbers. Difficult to suggest they would ever attempt attacking with anything less than double the Greek force. In fact, finding a record of an enemy that attacked Greeks with anything less than the double is difficult in antiquity (as in later eras - thus the title fo the other thread about "Greeks outnumbered"; no magic here: refer to geo-position, terrain, attack vs. defense rations, styles of warfare, etc.)
-> Among the big Greek army, Syracusian army only rose to more than 50,000 men and several 100s of ships.
-> Syracuse was a state populated 3 times the Athenian population! If Athens' had a total force of 20,000 troops, Syracuse would have a minimum of 3 times that number.
-> Just a year before, Gelon had proposed to aid mainland Greece for the oncoming Persian invasion with some 28,000 troops (4000 cavalry) and 200 ships. Is it logical to suggest that in that grave crisis time he would had sent anything less than double that force to meet the Carthagenian invasion? Absolutely not.
-> Add to Syracusians, Akragas, Gela and other Sicilian Greek cities that were sufficiently large (larger than the average cities in Greek mainland) to provide massive armies, thus the total Greek army numbers estimates look reasonable.
-> Due to the above, the 300,000 estimate for Carthagenian forces looks normal too given that some of them should had been more logistics than proper military (though due to small distances involved and existence of local allies, logistics pressure was smaller)
-> Carthagenians used all that massive number of cargo ships to tranfer not really supplies (which could be easily trasferred on a daily basis from N. Africa with a smaller number of ships) but to transfer the massive numbers of vassals, mercenaries and allies from N. Africa, Iberia, Gaul, Sardinia, Corsica and Italy. To be noted that the logistics to soldiers ration would be smaller than in the case of the Persian army due to the geo-position of the war.
-> Following the description of overall expendition numbers, the actual number of battle-troops is always a question. In no war, in no battle ever anyone sends in the totality of his army. However it is rational to think that due to the easy logistics for both, more than half the numbers from both sides had some military action with at least a low minimum of the 1/3rd from each taking active part in the main events of the frontline.

So who thinks still of the Carthagenian expendition being much less than 300,000? Based on what evidence? Again on them being non-European and "ancient culture" thus incapable of moving such troops? Or on the "Greek writers' fantasies". Highly naif. This whole negation little game is nothing else than a 19th-20th century invention of downplaying the ancient figures treating the ancient as incapable of distinguishing an army of 20,000 and an army of 200,000. Insulting to say the least, then it comes with direct contrast to all evidence and common logic.

-> In Himera - which itself was a relatively small and unimportant city, in 2008 during works for a railway, there have been found more than 10,000 graves many of which are actually group-graves containing bodies of men, 15 to 25 men of prime age, particular health (average height of 1,75cm) with signs of violent death, each all dating up in the 5th BC century. While the mass graves of civilians point out to the destruction of the city in the late 5th century by Amilcar's grandson Hannibal (who had also sacrificed 3000 prisoners on the place of death of his ancestor), the earlier mass graves of warriors point out to the mass of the dead of Greeks - which of course are noted to have had fewer casualties than the Carthagenians who lost the battle and got slaughtered. They are thus a good indication of what was the real magnitude of the forces participating in the battle of Himera and verify the ancient contemporary reference-claim and not the 19th-20th century suggestion-claim.

You have to understand that the peak of the Carthagenian military had not been the later Romanocarthagenian wars but the wars between Carthage and Syracuse in the 5th and 4th centuries. Carthage was also the biggest naval force in the Mediterranean in those times. The 200 warships mentioned is actually a mediocre number showing that its use was mostly to guard the passage of the cargo ships transferring the land troops - i.e. a clear sign of the actual intentions of Carthagenians to conquer rather than to play business-games as some suggested. The amasing 3000 cargo fleet are a fleet that Carthagenians and their outposts (colonies, usually small ports that functioned as businesses rather than cities - each easily managing 50 cargo ships of various sizes) could had amassed in a total war like that. Note that cargo ships were big but sailing on sails (oars were for military ships) thus required a lower number of sailors - these carried a mass of soldiers and provisions.

And what was the Carthagenian aim if not waging total war. The pretext was ridiculous (defending a fallen tyrant of Himera) but the target clear - Carthagenians had been for years preparing that campaign and they stroke simultaneously with the Persian attack in mainland Greece. The parallel waging of war along with Persians who were of course led by Mardonius, friend of Phoenicians, based on the Phoenician navy is more than blatant and one has only to marvel at the active effort of modern historians to downplay the Cathagenian-Syracusian conflict and describe it as a localised business-war when Carthagenians along with brothers Phoenicians were clearly in a war maybe not of genocide of all of Greeks as suggested excessively by some but certainly of total destruction of the Greek maritime powers proven by the fact that in the east they targeted offensively mainly the Ionian maritime powers and in the west the Dorian maritime powers while trying to use the lesser-maritime powers (Macedonians-Aeolians-Boetians in east and Ionians in the west).

If one cannot see that in the 1st millenium BC the major clash had always been the one between Phoenician and Greek commercial navies then he really has understood nothing out of ancient history. As for the... "numbers": whoever disregards whatever ancient writers note, it will be HIM the responsible to present his points and defend his irrational and baseless position. Next time you are inclined to say "they could not be that many because they were... ancient", think it twice.

Nikos

[Nikanor]

Apologies for the long text but it contains a large number of points that support the ancient numbers given by ancient writers and which had to be deployed to end up this "negation little game". I would hope anyone that does have a different view to the above, to be in position to present even the 1/3rd of the above points to counter-argue. Failure to do so, ends up in the verification of the above, just as in the previous case of the aforementioned Persian campaign.

I must also underline that I sincerely not only do not mind people being critical of ancient references but I indeed encourage people to do so - I did it too in the aforementioned cases. But one must do so with a certain logic and being based on a certain basis.

Nikos

[Darth_Roach]

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.

And? There is a lot of difference between saying that they were untrained and that they were bad. What I am pointing out is that there was no training regimen in most city states, so no "uberwtfpwn enlightened super soldiers Greeks vs a bunch of slavish Barbarians".

[Macedon]

And? There is a lot of difference between saying that they were untrained and that they were bad. What I am pointing out is that there was no training regimen in most city states, so no "uberwtfpwn enlightened super soldiers Greeks vs a bunch of slavish Barbarians".

What are you saying?

1. The text does not say that the Athenians were untrained, it says that they did not live the uebersoldierly life of the Spartans, so the "untrained" part is anyways grossly off as a remark unless you can back it up with more sources.

2. A second mistake you make is that you compare apples to oranges... You say that because the Athenians were not as trained as the Spartans, they were nothing but an "untrained militia", as if the Spartans are the norm, when you should make the comparison with the Persians and their allies and say how trained they were in comparison with the Greeks of your choice.

3. A third mistake is that you only speak of the Athenians as though the "uebersoldierly" Spartans were not present in the battles...

4. And of course your most important mistake again lies in the choice of words... A comment that has some state have an army that is an "untrained militia" certainly implies that this army is "bad", inefficient, crap, a bunch of farmers, even though you did not say the word "bad".

5. A fifth mistake is that you grab an out-of-context quote and base a whole argumentation which is wrong to begin with. The Athenians had a perfectly well organized standing army, military service was compulsory, the reserves (those who had completed their official military service) were very often called to further training and service.

Your whole argumentation is wrong and completely lacks any comparison between the two recruitment-training-reserve systems. And if you want to make a point, then make it clearly, some of us are simply not as clever as necessary to read between the lines and understand which parts are points and which "humor".

[Darth_Roach]

1. The text does not say that the Athenians were untrained, it says that they did not live the uebersoldierly life of the Spartans, so the "untrained" part is anyways grossly off as a remark unless you can back it up with more sources.

The text is quite clear that Athenians don't train much. If at all. Since most forces in history have been untrained anyway, do you have any sources that say Athenian hoplites were trained and drilled troops?

2. A second mistake you make is that you compare apples to oranges... You say that because the Athenians were not as trained as the Spartans, they were nothing but an "untrained militia", as if the Spartans are the norm, when you should make the comparison with the Persians and their allies and say how trained they were in comparison with the Greeks of your choice.

Most sources are quite clear that Persians underwent a training program, all learning to shoot a bow and presumably drilled, before serving several years in the regular army, after which they retired to the patches of land the king granted them, being eligible for a levy in case the king needed them. The cavalry was certainly well trained as well, being feudal troops. It is most likely that the core citizens of the empire - Persians, Medes, Elamites, Kassites and Hyrcanians were all near identical in their social organization. As for "allies", aside from the medizing city states there were no allies. Just provincial levies of varying quality.

3. A third mistake is that you only speak of the Athenians as though the "uebersoldierly" Spartans were not present in the battles...

They were. But Athens is by far the more "normal" city state, isn't it? Plus the performance of Spartans throughout the ages is hardly "ubersoldierly".

4. And of course your most important mistake again lies in the choice of words... A comment that has some state have an army that is an "untrained militia" certainly implies that this army is "bad", inefficient, crap, a bunch of farmers, even though you did not say the word "bad".

Nope. It does not. An untrained militia is perfectly capable of defeating a professional army if they are well led and well motivated. It has happened countless times throughout history.

5. A fifth mistake is that you grab an out-of-context quote and base a whole argumentation which is wrong to begin with. The Athenians had a perfectly well organized standing army, military service was compulsory, the reserves (those who had completed their official military service) were very often called to further training and service.

And what do you base your argument on? Also, they did become quite militarized in their "empire" era, but I really don't recall them having a standing army during the Persian wars.

Your whole argumentation is wrong and completely lacks any comparison between the two recruitment-training-reserve systems. And if you want to make a point, then make it clearly, some of us are simply not as clever as necessary to read between the lines and understand which parts are points and which "humor".

None is humor. The early hoplite is fundamentally a militiaman, not a professional soldier, I think it's pretty clear - no matter what you might try to prove. Their quality was just as varied and non-persistent as any other force throughout history.

They simply weren't the super-soldiers they're made out to be.

[MD]

I think nobody doubts that in cases of emergency the attacked states could mobilize huge forces often probably lager than what any invader could send, see the Thucycides quote above. There is a huge difference between the dream force of any invader that ensures victory in all circumstance and what they could really afford.
In war the truth is always the first victim. Herodot admits often that many of his accounts are based on hearsay, Diodoros writing several centuries later mentions quite frequently that the army numbers in his sources differ widely.
The whole purpose of this thread should be to discuss what was possible not why it was desirable to field huge armies.

In such cases the attacker must always bring at least more than 2/1, unless he has an army of vastly superior quality than the opponent (not the case of Carthagenians).
-> Carthaginians were much aware of their own motley-crew infantry deficit in front of Greek infantries ..

Are there any sources to support this assumption or is this a modern interpretation?

Due to the above, the 300,000 estimate for Carthagenian forces looks normal too given that some of them should had been more logistics than proper military (though due to small distances involved and existence of local allies, logistics pressure was smaller)
-> Carthagenians used all that massive number of cargo ships to tranfer not really supplies (which could be easily trasferred on a daily basis from N. Africa with a smaller number of ships) ..

Even with just the short distance between Africa and Sicily to bridge the food for the army still had to grow somewhere. Northern Africa was not yet the bread basket it would become after later Carthaginian and especially Roman colonization. According to Diodorus (13.81 )even 70 years Carthage, just like Athens, had to import food to feed all of its many inhabitants for this reason.

So who thinks still of the Carthagenian expendition being much less than 300,000? Based on what evidence?

Unlike the Persian with their giant and well organized empire Carthage ruled over no continuous territory, just Phoenician colonies and trading posts scattered all over the western med. More comparable to Athens and its league at the height of its power. Sure they could and did rely on mercenaries to provide the necessary numbers for their armies, but 300.000 seems to be excessively expensive. Could Carthaginian merchants so much more successful than their Greek counterparts that their state could afford such an army?

In Himera - which itself was a relatively small and unimportant city, in 2008 during works for a railway, there have been found more than 10,000 graves many of which are actually group-graves

While this cemetery seems supports parts of Diodoros narrative, as the horse graves, the number of excavated mass graves is not sufficient to support this massive armies. The necropolis was in use for roughly the last one and a half centuries before Himeras destruction. Among the 2000 graves that were closer examined there were 7 mass graves with a total of 64 bodies believed to contain casualties from the first battle in 480 BC and mass graves with 59 bodies dating to the cities destruction.

You have to understand that the peak of the Carthagenian military had not been the later Romanocarthagenian wars but the wars between Carthage and Syracuse in the 5th and 4th centuries.

Is this based just on the numbers given by the ancient historians or is there any archaeological data to support this view? Consensus seems to be the Carthage wealth peaked in 4st and 3rd centuries BC. Based on what I said at the beginning of this post we should check if their numbers are consistent with what else we know about the combatants and their resources.

[Macedon]

The text is quite clear that Athenians don't train much. If at all. Since most forces in history have been untrained anyway, do you have any sources that say Athenian hoplites were trained and drilled troops?

Too many to count... I cannot really believe that this can actually be seriously questioned... As for the text, it still does not say that the Athenians were untrained and there certainly are a great many texts that have to do with details of the Greek military training (and in a variety of Greek states) as well as the importance they placed on it, in the works of most ancient writers, which you profess to have read.
I will only quote Hermocarates, again in Thucydides, since this is the source you suggested proving the inferiority of the Athenian army claiming that the Athenians were the best Greek troops of the time (and you of course could then say that they were the best of the worst, I guess).

Thucydides Hist., Historiae, B.6, ch.72, s.3, l.2 “οὐ μέντοι τοσοῦτόν γε λειφθῆναι ὅσον εἰκὸς εἶναι, ἄλλως τε καὶ τοῖς πρώτοις τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐμπειρίᾳ ἰδιώτας ὡς εἰπεῖν χειροτέχναις ἀνταγωνισαμένους.”

As for the comparison between the two specific sides in question, I guess that Herodot's discussion of the causes why the Persian infantry was defeated by the hoplites would be most appropriate in which he clearly mentions that it was not courage but arms and training where the Persians were inferior.

Herodotus Hist., Historiae, B.9, s.62, l.11 "Λήματι μέν νυν καὶ ῥώμῃ οὐκ ἥσσονες ἦσαν οἱ Πέρσαι, ἄνοπλοι δὲ ἐόντες καὶ πρὸς ἀνεπιστήμονες ἦσαν καὶ οὐκ ὅμοιοι τοῖσι ἐναντίοισι σοφίην."

Regarding the training itself, the age they entered military service, the training they went through, the role of music, dance and sports in preparing youths for war, their service in the various branches of the army, the mustering of the reserves, their training and festivals where they exhibited their competence, the methods of draft, the mustering of the armies, the training on the march, their overall experience etc, all these are broadly discussed issues in the sources and I wish we had such data on other civilizations too. And mind you me, I am solely talking about Greece proper in the Persian Wars (and I guess the Peloponnesian War too since you mentioned Thucydides) and the comparison is between the average level of training and general competence between the men in the armies in question or, if you prefer, between the average Persian soldier and the average Greek soldier.

Most sources are quite clear that Persians underwent a training program, all learning to shoot a bow and presumably drilled, before serving several years in the regular army, after which they retired to the patches of land the king granted them, being eligible for a levy in case the king needed them. The cavalry was certainly well trained as well, being feudal troops. It is most likely that the core citizens of the empire - Persians, Medes, Elamites, Kassites and Hyrcanians were all near identical in their social organization. As for "allies", aside from the medizing city states there were no allies. Just provincial levies of varying quality.

"Most sources" say nothing of the sort. There is no text talking about the Achaemenid training of the Persian Wars in the detail you mention, I wish there was, especially if we didn't have to almost solely rely on the Greek sources. Your whole suggestion is based on making assumptions and then present them as truth.. "all learning to shoot a bow and presumably drilled", "serving several years in the regular army", "The cavalry was certainly well trained as well, being feudal troops", "It is most likely that the core citizens of the empire - Persians, Medes, Elamites, Kassites and Hyrcanians were all near identical in their social organization."... these are assumptions based on less data than the data we have regarding the training of the Arcadians alone and I am not saying that the Achaemenids did not train their men... Again, you seem to be making a very strange point. So, Greeks were militiamen but the Persians who were not "professionals" were not? Being a feudal lord ensured good training, being a peasant in one's holdings also ensured training but Greek life was sloth and shunned anything military? It awfully looks like this is what you claim... and of course something like that would be totally unsupported and strange.

They were. But Athens is by far the more "normal" city state, isn't it? Plus the performance of Spartans throughout the ages is hardly "ubersoldierly".

Why would the Athenians be the norm and I am again not saying that the Athenians were worse than others? In all battles of the second Persian War, it was the Lacedaemonians who had the upper hand in landbattles, why do you take them out of the equation? Plus, I am not discussing efficiency, what good would it make to this discussion when we are explicitly talking about a war that the Persians lost big?

Nope. It does not. An untrained militia is perfectly capable of defeating a professional army if they are well led and well motivated. It has happened countless times throughout history.

You cannot fix that... an untrained militia can do wonders, be inspired to greatness but it still remains an untrained militia, in most effects a mob. Your choice of words was simply unfortunate, let alone mistaken.

And what do you base your argument on? Also, they did become quite militarized in their "empire" era, but I really don't recall them having a standing army during the Persian wars.

????? Do you honestly support that you have somewhere read that the Greek cities did not have standing armies? That their draft and training systems started after the Persian Wars or even after the Peloponnesian War (since your argument regarding the Athenians comes from these times)?

None is humor. The early hoplite is fundamentally a militiaman, not a professional soldier, I think it's pretty clear - no matter what you might try to prove. Their quality was just as varied and non-persistent as any other force throughout history.

They simply weren't the super-soldiers they're made out to be.

I am not trying to prove anything. It is you who try to suggest a totally unconventional model of Greek warfare and military training. NO ONE ever said that the Greeks were super-soldiers as NO ONE one had said something like that in the other similar discussion you had started regarding the Greeks always having been outnumbered, where you again used the same strange line of argumentation. You seem to have some personal problem with ancient Greeks that I do not understand. NO ONE said that the Greeks were "super-soldiers", NO ONE said that the ancient Greeks were the biggest badasses in history and that they would easily conquer the word should 10-20 of them decide to. You keep on presenting such theories as the norm when NO ONE, at least here, and certainly almost no one that matters outside here supports them. And in your crusade to prove that they were not some alien jedi masters, you keep on attacking them in a manner that is inexcusable and totally wrong, diminishing their achievements and glorifying everyone else's. Effectively you are doing the same thing that you accuse others of doing and without any textual or other support too.

In conclusion, if your opinion on the Greek armies before Alexander (with the possible exception of the "inefficient" Spartans) is that they were a bunch of lazy men who had the money to buy themselves a good armor to even up the odds against men trained from their childhood in the use of arms and rigors of war (that is the Persians and their dependencies), that they disliked military training as something cowardly, had no standing army, did not train their reserves, that Greek mercenaries did not enjoy any more respect than any other mercenaries, etc etc etc, that they were a simple untrained militia that was propagandistically glorified by the Greek authors of their time,it is your choice. The sources, almost in their entirety comprised of these same people, say otherwise.

Were ALL Greeks trained in war? NO. There indeed were states, usually small cities who preferred to rely on mercenaries for example (and are scolded for that by the sources), there were states whose inhabitants only underwent basic training and nothing more, too. This was not the case with at least the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians (along with many other Greeks of predominantly Greece proper) of the 5th century.

[Macedon]

By the way guys... the Thucydides quote in question does not suggest anything against the mustering of huge forces other that it would be uncommon under the specified circumstances.

ὀλίγοι γὰρ δὴ στόλοι μεγάλοι ἢ Ἑλλήνων ἢ βαρβάρων πολὺ ἀπὸ τῆς ἑαυτῶν ἀπάραντες
κατώρθωσαν. οὔτε γὰρ πλείους τῶν ἐνοικούντων καὶ ἀστυγειτόνων ἔρχονται (πάντα γὰρ ὑπὸ δέους ξυνίσταται), ἤν τε δι’ ἀπορίαν τῶν ἐπιτηδείων ἐν ἀλλοτρίᾳ γῇ σφαλῶσι,


He never says "never" or "cannot". He simply says :

Only a few great fleets of Greeks or barbarians managed to make far from their homeland.
They don't come in larger numbers than those who inhabit the land AND their neighbors (who always, because of fright join forces), and so that the lack of provisions in the foreign land does not harm them.

First, it clearly says that there are exceptions to the "rule" since a few great fleets did exist. Second it talks of fleets, which is not the case in the Second Persian War. The force marched on the land. It is indeed a huge enterprise to cross over with a huge naval force that can actually carry a huge army (whatever one may think "huge" is) as the Syracusans were afraid that the Athenians might do. Naval support is not the same thing with naval transport of troops. What is more problematic in this quote is also the fact that it talks of armies that are unable to be supported with provisions from their homeland and thus are dependent on the produce of the land. Thirdly, it talks about troops not greater in number than the people who inhabit the land PLUS their neighbors which unfortunately can be read in a lot of ways. One could conservatively claim that he only speaks of standing armies numbering in the 8-20,000 region for every sizable state (without its neighbors). Another would claim that it talks of the total military reserve which would be much more sizable (3-4 times that). Yet another, the most generous one would have Thucydides talk of the totality of the inhabitants which would easily cover any "huge" army. What it says is that maritime operations in a distance that is "too far" as that of the Athenians against Syracuse, do not NORMALLY happen (only a few have) with more troops than "THE NUMBER OF THE INHABITANTS PLUS THIS OF THEIR NEIGHBORS" (whatever this might mean, it certainly is quite a large number in itself when talking about a land like Sicily for example), for they can be destroyed by insufficient supplies since they are too far to navally support from home. As for the Persians, the speaker simply states that they made many mistakes (I guess their numbers being one of them?), he does not mention anything that has to do with the numbers of their troops and then adds that maybe the Athenians will have their fate and be defeated too as a final encouragement to those who are going to fight for the freedom of their families and homeland.

And of course these are words that are supposed to be a part of a speech that is meant to encourage the Syracusans who await to be attacked by the Athenians and not actually Thucydides' opinion. Although I do not doubt its logic, we cannot say that this reflects Thucydides' own views.

Regarding the views of the later authors regarding this specific discussion, it would be interested to quote Diodorus :

Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica, B.2, ch.5, s.5, l.3 “οὐ μὴν ἀδύνατόν γε φανήσεται τοῖς ἀναθεωροῦσι τὸ τῆς Ἀσίας μέγεθος καὶ τὰ πλήθη τῶν κατοικούντων αὐτὴν ἐθνῶν. εἰ γάρ τις ἀφεὶς τὴν ἐπὶ Σκύθας Δαρείου στρατείαν μετὰ ὀγδοήκοντα μυριάδων καὶ τὴν Ξέρξου διάβασιν ἐπὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα τοῖς ἀναριθμήτοις πλήθεσι, τὰς ἐχθὲς καὶ πρῴην συντελεσθείσας πράξεις ἐπὶ τῆς Εὐρώπης σκέψαιτο, τάχιον ἂν πιστὸν ἡγήσαιτο τὸ ῥηθέν. κατὰ μὲν οὖν τὴν Σικελίαν ὁ Διονύσιος ἐκ μιᾶς τῆς τῶν Συρακοσίων πόλεως ἐξήγαγεν ἐπὶ τὰς στρατείας πεζῶν μὲν δώδεκα μυριάδας, ἱππεῖς δὲ μυρίους καὶ δισχιλίους, ναῦς δὲ μακρὰς ἐξ ἑνὸς λιμένος τετρακοσίας, ὧν ἦσαν ἔνιαι τετρήρεις καὶ πεντήρεις• Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ μικρὸν πρὸ τῶν Ἀννιβαϊκῶν καιρῶν, προορώμενοι τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ πολέμου, κατέγραψαν τοὺς κατὰ τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἐπιτηδείους εἰς [τὴν] στρατείαν πολίτας τε καὶ συμμάχους, ὧν ὁ σύμπας ἀριθμὸς μικρὸν ἀπέλιπε τῶν ἑκατὸν μυριάδων•”

Here. Diodorus defends the huge numbers reported for Asian numbers and gives "more recent" examples for numbers of western states for his readers to make a comparison.

[Macedon]

The whole purpose of this thread should be to discuss what was possible not why it was desirable to field huge armies.

I very much agree. How many of the many accounts of huge armies are real is pretty much open to debate. That ALL accounts are wrong is to me almost as improbable as a claim that ALL are right. Maybe the Persians came to Greece with a mil and the Carthaginians landed on Sicily with only 50,000. Maybe Alexander faced at Issus only 50,000 and at Gaugamela indeed 1,000,000. There are many for and against arguments in each and every case and unfortunately without some certified video footage no one will ever make a case that will persuade everybody.

[Nikanor]

I think nobody doubts that in cases of emergency the attacked states could mobilize huge forces often probably lager than what any invader could send, see the Thucycides quote above.

Personally I do claim the opposite. Even basic military manuals indicate that for comparable armies, the attacker must field considerably greater numbers than the defender.

There is a huge difference between the dream force of any invader that ensures victory in all circumstance and what they could really afford.

Correct observation, though I have already catered for this particularly for the Persian campaign. The army numbers for both Persians and Carthagenians when properly explained (logistics vs. fighting troops) are well into their capacity keeping in mind that these were one-off efforts meant to last a few months campaign, not decades.

The whole purpose of this thread should be to discuss what was possible not why it was desirable to field huge armies.

This is precisely the reason that I have writtern long - boring! - texts above analysing the feasibility of such campaigns. And most points point out to Persians and Carthagenians being able to field for a few months/1-year campaigns such armies.

-> Carthaginians were much aware of their own motley-crew infantry deficit in front of Greek infantries ..

Are there any sources to support this assumption or is this a modern interpretation?

Yes, you are correct, this is more of a modern interpretation but certainly in the contemporary context. We have lots of sources mentioning Greek mercenaries throughout the centuries and all over the Mediterranean, Egypt and Middle East where they were hired most often as the kingdoms' special forces and not as standard or auxiliaries. Greeks themselves (5th century) made use of mercenaries (most often fellow Greeks) mostly as side troops. On the contrary, the Carthagenian army was de-facto a motley crew of mercenaries hired from all over the place, different cultures, languages, often antagonistic etc. Difficult to manage in low or high numbers alike - in fact higher overall numbers could as well enable some more safety (the one watching the other). It takes no great leaps to understand the unfeasibility of Carthagenians employing a motley crew of equal size to the fairly uniform Greek armies - they had to have considerably more.

...Northern Africa was not yet the bread basket... According to Diodorus (13.81 )even 70 years Carthage, just like Athens, had to import food...

Correct reasoning. But they had so many other places to get foodstocks, Persian Egypt alone sufficed, then they had Spain, Corse, Sardinia, Gaul, northwest Italy. With 3000 cargo ships they did not even need to deplete a kilogram from the stocks of their allies in western Sicily. All they had to do was to source double their usual stocks for just 1 summer. Yes, expensive but this was meant to be an expensive 1-off investment that would ensure decades if not centuries of monopoly afterall!

Unlike the Persian...Carthage ruled over... Phoenician colonies and trading posts scattered all over the western med. More comparable to Athens and its league at the height of its power.

Valid question. From what I have read in primary sources as well as in modern analyses, our knowledge of Carthage comes mostly out of their failures to beat the Syracuseans, and their failures to beat the Romans. However, Carthage was unlike these two Greek-Latin powers. At its peak power in 8th century and then again in 4th century, they controlled the quasitotality of the western Mediterranean trade and they had a continuous trade/cultural/political link with the Phoenician east to which they still looked upon surprisingly till very late times contrary to the dispersed and independent Greek powers acting on their own even if allied. So no they were not really in the same league with Athens which even at its peak it remained a minor player in the Mediterranean lake. If Syracuse provenly fielded more than 60,000 own troops, Carthage could amass easily 4 times the number, at least for 1 summer "campaign to end all campaigns". Do not forget, in 480 BC, it was an once in a century chance to hit Greeks in Magna Graecia.

While this cemetery seems supports parts of Diodoros narrative, as the horse graves, the number of excavated mass graves is not sufficient to support this massive armies....

I had also mentioned on the time-span covering both Himera battles. I was mentioning those graves that relate to the first one at 480BC. The articles I read in the Italian press mentioned a far higher number of mass-graves but then since these were general newspapers and not specialist press (as work still continues on the graves...) there could be an error by unknowledgeable editors. In any case, the mere existence of mass-graves (esteemed as not something really nice in Greek culture) for own troops implies (does not prove anything but points) that there was a considerable amount of dead among the victorious side. And the casualties among the losers had been worse. It could be another side-indication of the magnitude of the battle.

Based on what I said at the beginning of this post we should check if their numbers are consistent with what else we know about the combatants and their resources.

I am not "vertically" taking the ancient writers' numbers - I also treat them as "rouch" estimates mingling often logistics with fighting force. I am neither preaching the above as dogma, but I do sincirely believe that after clearing details, the overall mobilisations could most possibly be at the magnitudes writers tell us and not in the arbitrary magnitudes later writers esteemed quite arbitrarily.

Nikos

[Macedon]

Actually, Nick, I do not get your argument about the attacker "having to" be more in numbers than the defender. This advice is not a part of any ancient or medieval military manuals and has been only offered for cases of modern attacks against fortified positions. There is no such requirement regarding ancient and medieval campaigns. As for Carthage, I very much doubt that alone, only from its own Libyophoenician population it could effectively muster 240,000 men and as far as I remember, it never did, not even in its direst moments in the Roman or the Mercenary wars. Syracuse often swelled its population pool by accepting/relocating whole populations of other Greek cities (sometimes those it conquered) to its own, something that I do not recall the Carthaginians ever doing. I do not doubt that they could of course employ mercenaries.

In all, I do see the numbers quoted for the Carthaginians as possibly swollen too. Although I do not dismiss the possibility that such numbers of land troops could have been amassed, I very much question the ability of the Carthaginians to transport them over to Sicily. This is a major difference to Xerxes' campaign, whose army marched along the coast and was not carried over by ships. Even if these numbers also contain the crews of the navy, which would bring the total for the army down by maybe a third or more, it still is a huge operation (not impossible) and many thousands of transport ships are necessary to cross over the men, horses and chariots attested. Transports other than these necessary to carry the supplies. And of course, such an endeavor without first having secured naval supremacy is highly dangerous, even irrational, since it would have been necessary to keep a steady supply flow from Africa to feed these men, a supply effort that would have been very vulnerable, especially near Sicily, whose harbors would largely be controlled by the enemy Greeks, and as Dionysius showed even in Africa.

These facts alone make such an operation much more intricate and difficult than that of Xerxes, even though the latter is attested to have been larger in matters of men involved. As such, I am inclined to believe that the chances of them being somehow (in a lesser or bigger degree) exaggerated is bigger than those of the campaigns of the Persians against Greece.

[Nikanor]

1. The text does not say that the Athenians were untrained, it says that they did not live the uebersoldierly life of the Spartans, so the "untrained" part is anyways grossly off as a remark unless you can back it up with more sources.

The text is quite clear that Athenians don't train much. If at all. Since most forces in history have been untrained anyway, do you have any sources that say Athenian hoplites were trained and drilled troops?

To my Greek ears (like Macedon's), Pericle's speech does indeed refer to the comparison between Athens and Sparta. I have never read it in english to find out what "colour" is taken out from the translation. In the dawn of Peloponesian war, as Athenian and Spartan antagonism escalated and as inner conservative fractions inside Athens viewed the Spartan system more attractive than repulsive, Pericles, head of the democratic fraction delivers a speech to explain the societal superiority of the Athenian model which surpasses in everything that of Sparta's and even in military affairs while requiring a "moderate" military training managing to present comparable if not superior feats than those Spartans who were losing all their lifes in training.

It is clear from the speech that Pericles does a comparison of the huge contrast between the 2 societies but by no means he implies anywhere that Athenians did not train. Military training was well part of the Athenian lifestyle not to mention that the city had been on war campaigns every single decade from the down of the 6th century to the eve of the 4th century! Citizens were both trained on their own, at sports and at their weapons, and then as part of their unit, in military drills. Navies alike. Remember during the Ionian revolt - Athenians trying to convince Ionians to follow their style of training - such things imply that this was standard procedure for them even prior to the rise of the later large Athenian navy.

While the two most professional Greek armies had been the Spartans and the Macedonians (the super-soldiers...), that by no means imply that other Greeks received no training.
Of course military training varied - Ionian cities were not reknowned for their military training but the example of cities like Sybaris solely relying on mercenary troops were rather the exception than the rule at least till end of 4th century. In the 7th-4th centuries there was a large number of highly trained citizen troops out there and that is what made them attractive as mercenaries to Persians afterall, who used them as their special forces. Had they been untrained levies as you suggest Roach, nobody would be interested.

You have to understand also, that tight formations and phalanx-modes -- contrary to what historians have claimed so far (historians who never held a spear and a shield alone, let alone, holding them in a group of 500 men walking in line!) -- require much more training than the relative free-style looser formations fighting modes of Persians and Romans. Do the experiment today: arm 500 beginners with shield and pilum and tell them to attack on loose formation 1 on 1 an imaginary enemy then step backwards holding the shields in front of them. They will struggle, might stumble a bit, but they will do it. Take 500 beginner archers, position them losely, tell them to run a bit forward shoot at 60angle, and then run back. They will do it in 1 go. 500 Horse archers, after a month training with bow on horse will do the basic circle shooting given they have some prior basic knowledge of horses (ask horseback archery members to tell you).

However, arm 500 athlets, preferrably of professional military experience, to wear full equipment, put them in dense formation and tell them to march 50 meters and attack on an imaginary opponent... and sit down and laugh. Do not forget to have an ambulance during the exercise (i.e. do not try this at home!). Ask us re-enactors that did the experiments to tell you better!!! The re-enactment group Koryvantes in Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece, trains for 3 years now every month with real weaponry, fully clad and arguably presents the best trained men in the world right now in the issue, but still members try hard to keep moving around in line side by side - the 12 sessions per year are simply not enough. And keep in mind, their number is at highest 10 per session, not 500! Do the maths.

I can easily propose that apart the standard military service where most of the training was provided, they would have at least 20-30 sessions per year of group training to keep them in touch with the sport. Many states might did even more than that.

By all means from the late 4th century onwards the acceleration of large properties at the expense of the middle class created a huge social gap, with the indentured landless masses increasingly uninterested in training seeing no point fighting for business-wars while these wars attracted those who were willing in a full-time career as highly-specialised mercenaries, paid in wages and in loot - naturally then the massive part of the people were not trained as much as previously. But here we talk for the 7th-4th BC period.

[Paralus]

I think nobody doubts that in cases of emergency the attacked states could mobilize huge forces often probably lager than what any invader could send, see the Thucycides quote above.

Personally I do claim the opposite.

There is a huge difference between the dream force of any invader that ensures victory in all circumstance and what they could really afford.

Correct observation, though I have already catered for this particularly for the Persian campaign..

The whole purpose of this thread should be to discuss what was possible not why it was desirable to field huge armies.

This is precisely the reason that I have writtern long - boring! - texts above analysing the feasibility of such campaigns. And most points point out to Persians and Carthagenians being able to field for a few months/1-year campaigns such armies.

The touch of zealotry surfaces MD. You should depart along with myself...