Ancient army numbers

[Paralus]

Why not trying to see my point. Romans were sending armies of 30 to 40,000 soldiers (and as I commented even bigger if speaking of local allies) to fight against tired enemies torn by incessant in-fighting and social strife and still they were trying for several decades with limited success until success was handed to them as a ripe fruit. Persians wanted it all in the span of 1-years campaign against societies that were in their prime and no matter their internal strife could potentially form a temprarary alliance presenting some of the best armies in the known then world.

I disagree root and branch. You state that The Romans "were sending armies of 30 to 40,000 soldiers (and as I commented even bigger if speaking of local allies) to fight against tired enemies torn by incessant in-fighting and social strife and still they were trying for several decades". Clearly they were an ineffective lot these ROmans. How in the world did they ever conquer an empire?

I imagine you have some examples of these generational conquests?

Why would you expect them to have brought there any less than 300,000 field soldiers when they could easily calculate that Greeks could present in a battle 100,000?

Why would they bother to bring 300,000 to battle a rabble of disorganised and squabbling city states? Already the north had given "earth and water" and the Thessalians were cooperating. Thebes, too, was unsympathetic to the "allied" cuase. The simple fact is that had Mardonius been able to wait the Greek coalition will have disintegrated; the stress fractures are clearly apparent in Herodotus' narrative. Fact is, due to supply problems, he could not.

Classical Athens could not feed itself: a great amount of its tucker was imported (hence the critical importance of the Hellespont and its fascination with "bread baskets"). Yet we would posit another Athens plonked into the Thessalian or Boeotian plains happily feeding itself.

Business was revolving around trade cities and traderoutes. Hellenistic monarchs showed little interest to expand their territories they barely controlled anyway with their little for the tasks armies.

You continue - without a shred of evidence - to trundle out nonentities such as "their little for the tasks armies" as if it is widely accepted as fact. It is not. The example of Macedon and the Greeks is no example: this is, clearly and unarguably, the "poorest" of the Hellenistic kingdoms and for good reason.

Hellenistic monarchies were in business, which business was acquisition. Without such the many Friends on those monarchs would find useful gain elsewhere. The entire history of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms (and Macedonia under Philip V given the alliance and proposed carve up by he and Antiochus III of the Lagid empire) is one of wars of expansion and acquisition.

As a start I'd recommend Austin's Hellenistic Kings, War and the Economy, Classical Quarterly 36 (ii) 450-466 (198

Persians were too an oligarchical class and speaking a non-aramaic language but they were from next door, dressed like them, introduced no foreign culture, employed locals in all mid-ranks and even on higher ranks and as a nation were extensively intermarrying on top (apart inbred royal family) as well as bottom level. Persians had permitted the continuation of local oligarchies and even local royal families continuing business as usual

As has already been pointed out, the Persians were just as foreign to Syrians and those in Mesopotamia and "across the rivers" as were the Greeks. They were resisted as well. Clearly the Egyptians saw them as next of kin; just the sort you'd like to kill.

The Greeks - beginning with the Macedonian conquest - also left local elites well enough alone. Something they also did with local governance and religion. Indeed. Alexander adopted - sometimes in whole cloth - Persian structures already in place. To those locals tilling soil very little changed.

"Myriads of Persians lost to a few Greeks". That never happened just like that. In Greek mainland they lost due to their own wrong tactical calculations. 1 century later, in their own homeland they lost due to their own inner social strife and again own tactical calculations and fell like all Empires - first from the inside, then from outside...

Whilst the Empire was not that of 480 it was, by the invasion, united. It was defeated militarily and the imperial structures in place - as all the sources show - were almost all kept in place rather broken up. As well, the locals were not only used in armies (of Alexander and his Successors) but trained for the purpose.

The myth of incapable Persians is just a European-made myth.

Finally something I can agree with. And given that there is no need to posit ridiculous numbers such as 1,000,000; 600,000; 500,000; 300,000 for them to be capable.

But I suspect that a touch of zealotry infuses this debate. Against such no logic prevails.