Ancient army numbers

[Paralus]

Paralus I will repeat it again and again, pay attention to my point: the reference is to the military tactical efficiency on which Romans are measured having a very low one (employed massive armies, lost most first contact battles, lost at times 40K soldiers/battle, kept on efforts of 50-80 years per region, took more than 300 years to Empire building etc.). It is pure mathematics and nothing else.

This comparison - without evidence or example - is truly watermelons and cucumbers: yes both are empires and both are totally different (as are the gourds in question). At no stage do you take into account the objectives of either of these states.

I imagine that the Roman conquest of Greece and the Greek East bulks large in your thinking?

So the 1/3rd of cities that finally resisted them would had been something totally foreseen by Persians. Only these cities could amass troops of more than 150,000 soldiers on total thus theoretically they could easily present in a single battle troops half that number or they could keep sending waves of armies of 1/4er of that. In any case Persians being the attackers would had needed to field much more than that [...] For any attacker who wishes to clear out a campaign in a year (and not in 50-80 years...), to face a total estimated force of resisting locals of many more than 100,000 men and many more than 500 ships

There were meany a "Mediser" in GReece. The Persians will have had a fair idea of who would and would not resist. Your numbers are, again, wrong in any case. The deployment numbers of the states who did resist were nothing like 150,000 and the Greeks never mustered 500 ships. Herodotus claims something less than 39,000 hoplites for the final crunch in the field. If the rest are psiloi then they seemingly did very little - especially as the Greeks were under a constant cavalry "bombardment".

Having only recently coped with the huge Ionian revolt that costed them the upheaval of a whole region and its capital Sardeis (totally grounded), they knew that they could hardly rely on Ionians "behaving" and certainly they could not count on the effectiveness of Macedonian disgruntled vassals nor to opportunist Thessalians [..] none of them back then was known to field an army even ranging as of "average" standards in Greece.

The Persians crushed the Ionian revolt and ensured that the cities remained "unwalled". That last statement is near correct. Macedon famously had no infantry worthy of the name. Clearly thousands of Persians will have been needed to keep this crack force under supervision.

Persians had brought there 600 Phoenician ships which could transfer a fighting force of more than 60,000 troops, had landed about 30,000 troops

Many of those ships will have been cavalry transports - as Herodotus notes. That 60,000 troops were also carried is, mathematically, impossible.

Are you suggesting an utterly new take on Marathon viz the Persians had only managed to land 30,000 at the time of the attack?

rejecting without any base the feasibility of the huge Persian army moving supported by ships. All that just because Persians were an ancient Asian kingdom - because apparently there is no other argument [...] There is not a single argument of those who insist on the "low-numbers theory" to support their insistence

It would not matter what basis or argument was presented as it would be rejected out of hand - as has been the case to date. I won't dignify the "racist" basis of rebuttal.

As I wrote earlier: a tinge of zealotry colours one side of this debate and, against such, no logic will hold. This has been the case throughout.

I'm with Robert: greener fields beckon.