Ancient army numbers

[Sean Manning]

There is no "leading his army down on the center" in the text, which would indeed point to your conclusion. The text reads "lead the troops against the center of the enemy" (ἄγειν τὸ στράτευμα κατὰ μέσον τὸ τῶν πολεμίων) with no other instruction which is much more neutral. The Greeks advancing oblique against the position of Artaxerxes would be highly improbable no matter how far this position was. Just 20,000 infantry to the left (now this would be a very moderate estimate, wouldn't it?) would be about 2 kms, assuming a median dept of 10 men. There is no way that the Greeks would parade such a distance in front of the enemy lines, chariots, archers... obstructing their own and practically moving in column as the enemy would be free to engage wherever he chose and stop their movement or just shower them with missiles for the time necessary to complete the march (some 30 mins for that short distance). The only way that such a maneuver could be made, if I accept your assumption that Artaxerxes was not that far to the left and even have him much nearer than your estimates, would again be for the Greeks to march behind the lines and take new positions where it would be more appropriate for them to attack Artaxerxes. Of course this would not be a first. Such maneuvers are indeed attested in the sources quite a few times. Under that prism, no matter where you place Artaxerxes, in order for the Greeks to attack his position, they would have to redeploy to a new position anyways making little difference whether it would be in the center of the far left. You might like Diodorus numbers more, he states 400,000 for the king (Plutarch also IIRC) and 83,000 for Cyrus. Of course, even in this scenario and in anyone other in which Artaxerxes has double or more the men Cyrus has, Artaxerxes will still be outside Cyrus' far left. What you "dispute" is not the actual numbers (unless we are talking about really small armies of maybe 20-30,000 mean each) but the proposed analogy. Also, Cyrus does not lead his center against the king, Xenophon has him outside the battle serving as some kind of cavalry reserve.

Why do you think twenty or thirty thousand men is small? That is the size of a Roman consular army; ancient armies above that size were remarkable things. Cyrus seems to have had three thousand cavalry (Diod, Xen. is consistent) and a barbarian infantry force about the same size as the Greeks (Xen.) Xenophon had no idea how many barbarians Cyrus had so said they were "countless" (ten myriads); he then got Artaxerxes' strength by multiplying every figure he gave for Cyrus' army by ten. Cyrus had 100,000 barbarians, Artaxerxes 900,000 or 1.2 million. Cyrus had twenty scythed chariots and 600 picked cavalry, Artaxerxes had 200 and 6000. Diodorus may have used a five-fold multiplication on his 83,000 Cyreans (including 3,000 cavalry). Cyrus had one myriad of picked cavalry, Artaxerxes five (Diod. 14.22.6-7); Cyrus had 83,000 troops, Artaxerxes 400,000 (Diod 14.19, 14.22).