10-02-2016, 02:23 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-02-2016, 07:35 PM by Nathan Ross.)
(10-02-2016, 10:54 AM)Julian de Vries Wrote: I do not understand why all these academics always underestimate the sizes of steppe armies... let’s suppose that a great man united all these Greek cities and you will have a magnificent army. In this way through this tribe process could the steppe peoples amass such large armies.
It's partly a question of logistics. While it may have been possible for ancient nations to assemble hundreds of thousands of troops, keeping them supplied over the course of a campaign would have stretched the capacity of even the most organised civilisations to breaking point (this paper - Crossing the Hellespont - provides a good survey of the massive logistical requirements of the Persian invasion of Greece). For steppe armies, keeping a vast force together and in motion would have been even harder, as much of the area they had to cover was not intensively farmed and they would be constantly scattering in search of forage.
However, at Faesulae the enemy were Goths, not steppe peoples (even if there was a probable crossover between the two). As the article points out, it seems unlikely that Stilicho's army of 15-20 thousand could have defeated hundreds of thousands of warriors, who could have overwhelmed them by weight of numbers alone. So a cautious reassessment is probably wise.
Zosimus in particular often seems to exaggerate army numbers enormously, which in some cases are contradicted by more sober estimates in other sources. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing which is correct, or, if Z is wrong, where he might be getting his higher figures from ( we must assume, I think, that Radagaisus's barbarians kept no accurate tally of numbers, something that even the King of Persia apparently found difficult!)
Nathan Ross
