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Ancient army numbers
Quote:Your technique is better for calculating the burdens of war on that citizen population within any one society. I think that my technique is better for comparing the size of armies, relative to the population or the economy between different societies. Why?

Why?, because your comparing apples and fireplaces. Second, Persian economy was vastly higher than Punic wars and gallic invasion examples you used, income. 14,600 talents of silver in 480BC, so this is another fallacy.

Your method gets you into all sorts of problems.


Quote:Because 'citizen' can mean different things in different societies, and non-citizens fight in some societies.

In your late Roman example you posted the regular army but failed to include those who comprised the bulk of the manpower. http://usna.edu/Users/history/abels/hh38...taries.htm

These non citizens filled vital military roles.

Slaves are not non citizens, they are not part of the military manpower pool as they do not serve in the military.

In any event as i used this:http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZS1OoQe_CgoC&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=roman+population+in+212bc&source=bl&ots=KdcwSVHE1p&sig=tOUYq7hLC4-TXRAWvHNmYwZ8WBE&hl=en#v=onepage&q=roman%20population%20in%20212bc&f=false it shows that even using total population you get 7%+ values froma wide range of historical examples, not your 1-2% for Persia. You then post this book to support the oposite of its content after i used it to show what it does contain.



Quote:I suggested that professional armies with terms more than ten years long might be associated with relatively low military participation rates relative to the whole population, and noted two strength figures for the late Roman Empire [via Treadgold but the lower comes from Ioannes Lydos and the higher from Agathias with some support from Zosimus].

Rome Punic wars citizens served for decades at a time, see Livy, and achived high MPR from 225BC onwards, inc later Republic 25 years service, in any way you do the math ypou dont get what you suggest. Persians did 10 years mil training, both have the opoiste of your suggestion.

Maths will not support your suggestion, you started with 225 and 212 BC, both showing the oposite, and any number ( Mil strength or avaiable for mil service) divided by a larger number ( total population) will produce a smaller number not a higher (Mil strength or avaiable for mil service divided by actual males of mil age is a smaller number) one for MPR, so no, this is flawed methodology at every level.

Quote:I suggested that citizen armies with terms less than one year long might be associated with relatively high military participation rates relative to the whole population. Maybe citizen armies was the wrong phrase, because I'm trying to get at numbers which can be compared between societies. I couldn't find any useable figures for these, but I could find two possibilities for the middle Roman Republic would could represent an intermediate form between the "citizen army" and the "professional army."

You started with 225 and 212, both showing the oposite from your suggestion, as does carthages and Greek numbers, you then moved to 4th cent AD Notitia numbers, which again show the flaw in your method.

Quote:I think you challenged my interpretation of the figures for the middle Roman Republic. I'm not an expert on the period. I could go over this in another post though.I think you challenged the existence of the figures for the late Roman Empire. Or the time frame.

You citied Brunt, whose work does not cover that time period. Your flawed methodolgy is the problem, Late Roman Empire had 50-60 million people only 10-20% were citizens liable for service in the Legions,
Quote:Late Roman armies and fleets between 435,000 and 645,000 strong, out of a population between 40,000,000 and 60,000,000.

435,000/(10% of 40,000,000=4,000,000)= minimum MPR of 10.8% of citizens in mil serve, while being 1% of total population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Roman_army

I did not challange, i pointed out your unable to use maths, including basic addition, to support your suggestions, as all your examples show the oposite of your contention.

225 BC Latins in mil service 87500/273000=32%
212 BC Latins in mil service 80000/273000=29%, less Latins lost from 218 onwards would push it far beyond the 225 BC MPR, 137k Latin citizens in 209 would put it c45-50% for 212BC.

We are done.
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Quote:In your late Roman example you posted the regular army but failed to include those who comprised the bulk of the manpower. http://usna.edu/Users/history/abels/hh38...taries.htm
An internet page like this may not be the best of sources.. :whistle:

Quote:You started with 225 and 212, both showing the oposite from your suggestion, as does carthages and Greek numbers, you then moved to 4th cent AD Notitia numbers, which again show the flaw in your method.
The Notitia Dignitatum does not give us any numbers. Number-guessing is done with the number of units multiplied by estimates of numbers within those units. But as we cannot possibly ascertain those numbers per unit (assuming this was even standard), that's all we can do - guess.
Robert Vermaat
MODERATOR
FECTIO Late Romans
THE CAUSE OF WAR MUST BE JUST
(Maurikios-Strategikon, book VIII.2: Maxim 12)
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Quote:When Athens lost 40,000 of its citizens in sicly in 415,http://www.ancientgreekbattles.net/Pages/47932_Population.htm it had sent 40,000/71,500, ie 55% of its males of mil age off to war in Sicliy, and lost almost all of them.

You have repeated this ad nauseum. Perhaps you have some source evidence to back it up? I do not see Athens committing anything near that number of her citizens to that disaster.


Quote:At Salamis in 480 BC, the Athenians had 180 ships. We can probably assume that they manned them all

And that is an assumption destroyed by Herodotus. Plataea supplied rowers and Athens gave twenty ships to Chalcis to man at Artemesium. Given the losses there are you suggesting she suddenly produced more citizens for Salamis?
Paralus|Michael Park

Ἐπὶ τοὺς πατέρας, ὦ κακαὶ κεφαλαί, τοὺς μετὰ Φιλίππου καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου τὰ ὅλα κατειργασμένους

Wicked men, you are sinning against your fathers, who conquered the whole world under Philip and Alexander!

Academia.edu
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Nicholas,

Part of it is that I'm interested in late antiquity, and in 'barbarian' army sizes. Since there is no quantitative evidence from within these societies, I have to rely on the qualitative evidence, on cross-cultural comparison, and on quantitative evidence from other societies. Since there is no exact equivalent of Roman citizenship, and considerable dispute over the size of the 'free class,' I can't use evidence based on the number of citizens.

How is cross-cultural comparison, for similar terms, using total population, 'comparing apples and fireplaces'?

Maybe I need to be more familiar with the Roman Republican situation to interpret the Roman Republican data, but I'd like to find more examples, so I can compare multiple societies where recruitment/mobilization is for one campaign to each other, multiple societies where recruitment/mobilization is for a few years to each other, and multiple societies where recruitment/mobilization is for more than ten years to each other.

I never cited Brunt. I don't have a copy. Why do you think I cited Brunt for something he doesn't cover?

Quote:435,000/(10% of 40,000,000=4,000,000)= minimum MPR of 10.8% of citizens in mil serve, while being 1% of total population.

435,000/50,000,000 = roughly 0.9% of the total population. Why are you insisting on only counting citizens? Why are you only counting 10% of the population as citizens, after the edict of Caracalla? Also some of the troops were laeti, serfs, so only counting free citizens would be misleading.

Quote:You started with 225 and 212, both showing the oposite from your suggestion, as does carthages and Greek numbers, you then moved to 4th cent AD Notitia numbers, which again show the flaw in your method.

I still can't figure out what you are claiming about 225 and 212. I think it's clear that Polybius' second higher set of figures are for available military manpower, not for soldiers mobilized. Thus [checking Forsythe and de Ligt] the 273,000 Romans and Campanians in Polybius in 225 compare with the 270,713 in the Roman census in Per. Livy book 20 in 234. The Polybian figures are probably census figures, and the other census figures, until Augustus, are for some adult male citizens, not all citizens.

I focus on 284 and 312 because that's what I'm more familiar with, and because I'm looking for well-documented examples for varying terms: some for short term [still not found], some for medium term [late Republic], some for long term [late Empire]. The late imperial figures come, as I said, from Ioannes Lydos, Zosimus, and Agathias, via Treadgold, not from the Notitia!

Quote:In your late Roman example you posted the regular army but failed to include those who comprised the bulk of the manpower. usna.edu/Users/history/abels/hh381/late_...arian_militaries.htm

These non citizens filled vital military roles.

Quote:Emperor Valens’ decision the Goths to cross the Danube might not have proved so disastrous if the imperial officials charged with supervising the Germans had not so mismanaged matters so as to provoke the starving Tervingi into pillaging the countryside. This, in turn, led to the Battle of Adrianople (378) in which a Roman army was destroyed and an emperor killed, in large measure because of Valens’ contempt for the enemy, which made him careless and reckless. The upshot was that Valens’ successor, Emperor Theodosius I, found it necessary to contract a treaty with the Tervingi (now called Visigoths) that allowed them to settle within the Empire under their own rulers and laws in return for providing troops when called upon to do so.

Sorry, but that section stood out for its anachronisms. Germans? In Late Antiquity? Who? I'm confused here. Tervingi now called Visigoths? I'm going to point to the Notitia, not good for numbers but good for issues like this, and point out it refers to one unit recruited from Tervingi and one recruited from Vesi [not Visigoths, that was a later term]. So probably some Tervingi were now called Vesi but not all.

There are some 'barbarian' units in the late Roman Army, no question there, some, like the Thervingi and Vesi, were mostly recruited within the Empire, and others mostly recruited from outside it. But most were not.

If, as is likely, the 645,000 with Agathias reports and Zosimus more-or-less matches was only the paper strength, the army and navy might not have expanded much from the 435,266 which Ioannes Lydos reports. If, as is likely given the Notitia, many of the federate troops were counted as part of the army, and if, as Elton argues, barbarization wasn't all that common, then I'm not sure how you can argue that 645,000 is an underestimate.
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In reference to my last post:

Generally, I think it's misleading to describe Goths as 'Germans.' Gothic is a Germanic language, but so are English, Danish, etc. I suppose it makes sense to describe the Suebi, Franks, and Marcomanni as 'Germans' but that poses problems with the Saxons.

One could make an argument that Lagarimanus was 'German' because because his name probably reflects the west Germanic senses [in lair, laager, etc.] instead of the east Germanic senses [in ligrs] of the same root. But that's visible precisely because of the contrast between the western and eastern meanings.

I think it's especially misleading because of past attempts to appropriate all of Germanic antiquity, including Gothic antiquity, for German nationalism. It is just as reasonable to incorporate Gothic antiquity into Polish, Ukrainian, Moldavan, Romanian, and Bulgarian history, inter alia.
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Quote:In reference to my last post:
I think it's especially misleading because of past attempts to appropriate all of Germanic antiquity, including Gothic antiquity, for German nationalism. It is just as reasonable to incorporate Gothic antiquity into Polish, Ukrainian, Moldavan, Romanian, and Bulgarian history, inter alia.

... though among them it could be only Polish who could ever be interested in doing so as Poland was the place of birth of both Goths and Vandals but then even Polish who view themselves more as west-slavic people and not as slavised east-Germanic are not so interested in doing so afterall. Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Russians are all closely related Slavic cultures (and regionally as people) which regard extremely negatively the spread of germanic cultures in Eastern Europe. At best, they view Goths as temporary passing by tribes and such these had been since they left behind minimal cultural, linguistic, archaeological or other traces, very few to consider adding them in any narrative.

Goths were a specific tribe that traced initial origins in an island of the Baltic. Technically they were of Scandinavian ancestry, Swedish to be precise, and it is only when employing the term "Germanic tribes" in the broader sense of "Teutonic tribes" which encompass a massive array of differentiated northern European tribes speaking various languages of the same linguistic family, that Goths are termed as "Germanic people". Now if this fitted more "German nationalism" or "Swedish nationalism" it is the problem of Germans and Scandinavians to short out but certainly Goths cannot fit easily into Slavic national narratives nor to Romanian ones who apart the Roman Empire look more up to Dacians and Scythians and the southern Greeks rather than the Goths. Unless of course we are talking about modern mish-mashes of "all happy togetherness" which is quite in vogue today by some circles.

The historic reality is that Goths were not any massive nation or something but a collection of tribes that gradually followed southeast the already established trade-routes via the Eastern rivers and found progressively their way to modern day Ukraine where the decreasing power of the nomadic Scythians as well as the Roman destruction of the nearby powerful Dacian state left them more space to expand laterally and occasionally even raid south till the Aegean, provided there was no organised Roman resistance. By the time they had reached the Black-Sea coast Goths were already a heavily mixed tribe just as later Normands of northern France with the difference that Goths had not adopted local languages but retained their own Germanic one (an eastern quite distant from others today extinct branch) spreading it momentarily over a fraction of local populations, a large array of quite differentiated tribes ranging from local Dacians and Scythians, Caucasian-iranian tribes such as Sarmatians and Alans as well as Eurasian people with heavy mongolic influence such as the Turanic Huns who of course subdued them. Thervingi and Greuthungi - especially the latter that moved in the steps - were greatly mixed with Scythians, Alans and Sarmatians. It was the Huns' pressure that led desperate Goths into enterring the Roman Empire where they became a primary tool of the rising Eastern "christian-spreading" oligarchies for the manipulation of politics inside the Empire, and this even prior to the events that led to the battle of Adrianopolis, a catastrophe maybe for the roman army but quite over-inflated in modern times. In that battle we speak of "Gothic armies" when it was a joint force of Goths, Alans, Sarmatians and even renegade Huns. Interestingly it was the Alanic cavalry that played the decisive role for the "Gothic" victory. The events that followed showed that clearly inside the Roman Empire there were oligarchies employing the riff-raff of Goths for internal power games in an era of transfer of power from the west to the east and the totalitarian imposition of the christianic faith.
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