Ancient army numbers

[Nathan Ross]

Again, what makes you think they could field more than the Romans could?

Ah, Ok, I see your point. I was talking about total army size, so my use of 'field' in the above post was probably ill-judged. The Roman army surely did number in the hundreds of thousands (389,704 under Diocletian, if we believe John Lydus), and possibly the Persian army, with a vast empire to draw on, did likewise. So to say (for example) that Xerxes had an army of hundreds of thousands of men may not be wrong, but to assume that he brought this number with him on his invasion of Greece would defy probability.