Ancient army numbers

[Hanny]

Going by Polybius, the Roman Republic and the Socii mobilized well over 200,000 in 225 B.C.E. I came up with 215,600 but that required some interpolation: alae sociorum, stronger than the legiones, to go with the legiones in Southern Italy and Sicily, and separate forces from Etruria and elsewhere in the north. Polybius gives military manpower census totals for those areas but not army size totals for the contingents there.

http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/romancensus.html
For the Campaign of 225 B.C. Rome levied five armies. As usual an army of two double legions, 25,000men, was assigned to each of the two consuls. In addition, an army of 50,000 Etruscan and Sabine militia was placed under one Praetor to guard the frontier of
Etruria in the Northwest. Another army of 20,000 Umbrian and Sarsinate levies was posted in Picenumin the Northeast under another praetor. The fifth army, with 25,000 troops, was composed of the two urban legions and allies and posted as a reserve in Rome. There were also single legions serving as garrisons in Sicily and Tarentum. (Obviously to guard against Carthage, not the Celts in the North). As the Celts did not launch their invasion in the early spring one of the Consular armies, under the consul Gaius Atilius Regulus (son of the First Punic War commander defeated at the Battle of the Bagradas Plains, SPQR), was dispatched to suppress an uprising in Sardinia. The second Consular Army, under Lucius Aemilius Papus took up a position along the Adriatic at Ariminum.

Polybios total is 700k foot and 70k mounted.http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Polybius/2*.html#23



8 Roman legions at 4500 each, from a latin population of 273,000 is a MPR of 13% not 6%.
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Ro...2*.html#23
Each of the Consuls was in p301command of four legions of Roman citizens, each consisting of five thousand two hundred foot and three hundred horse.

So Polybios gives us 8*5500=44,000 with the 2 Cn, he goes on:

In Rome itself there was a reserve force, ready for any war-contingency, consisting of twenty thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse, all Roman citizens. Running total now 65500. He goes on: In Sicily and Tarentum were two reserve legions, each consisting of about four thousand p303two hundred foot and two hundred horse

Total latins 74300 from cenus figure of 273k latins gives us Romes MPR of 27%

Polybios gives 770k mil from a free population of c3.4 million, a MPR of 22%. http://www.paolomalanima.it/default_file...Cycles.pdf

Though about 1% seems to be more common for ancient professional armies, assuming low count population estimates.

Fact free, and contradicted every book on the subject matter.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZS1Oo...bc&f=false

http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Th...edir_esc=y

I am not an expert on the Achaemenid Persian Army, but the sources I've read describe a military aristocracy and a part-feudal part-professional army, so I'm inclined to estimate a lower military participation rate, closer to 1%, maybe 2%.

We can discard that number range, as fiction, as no such ratio exist for the ancient period as a MPR range.