05-19-2005, 06:08 PM
Numbers in Ancient armies is a very interesting subject that I have studied with some detail. As you say, Herodotus was the only source, so we don´t have any way to measure his reliability on numbers, other than common sense, and that is why I think the million men, or even the 300.000 men army is grossly exagerated.
It is the same as the numbers in medieval armies, you find armies in the hundreds of thousands in the sources, however once you get reliable documents on numbers, they are extremely low. Think about it, the "military revolution" of the XVII century meant that Louis XIV could raise an army of around 450.000, but even that number could be inflated as much as 1/3 by "ghost" soldiers. add to that this is not a field army, like the one of Xerxes, but most of it were garrisons, the largest field armies were around 100.000, and that is only in the Low Countries, where the high density of population and maritime traffic allowed the building of huge depots from where supply lines could support large concentration of troops. Because all this comparations, common sense tells me that herodotus numbers are highly inflated.
It is the same as the numbers in medieval armies, you find armies in the hundreds of thousands in the sources, however once you get reliable documents on numbers, they are extremely low. Think about it, the "military revolution" of the XVII century meant that Louis XIV could raise an army of around 450.000, but even that number could be inflated as much as 1/3 by "ghost" soldiers. add to that this is not a field army, like the one of Xerxes, but most of it were garrisons, the largest field armies were around 100.000, and that is only in the Low Countries, where the high density of population and maritime traffic allowed the building of huge depots from where supply lines could support large concentration of troops. Because all this comparations, common sense tells me that herodotus numbers are highly inflated.
AKA Inaki
