09-12-2012, 04:52 PM
Hi, thanks for linking your Fectio article. But I've got to disagree with the figures here.
Zosimus' army sizes are extremely high. Ioannes Lydos gives just under 390,000 soldiers, and Agathias 645,000 soldiers and sailors, for the whole Empire. Zosimus gives 581,000 if we add all four figures, 286,000 in the first conflict and 295,000 in the second. Treadgold argues that Zosimus has re-used what were paper strengths for the armies of Constantinus, Maxentius, Licinius, and Maximinus Daia as field-army strengths for the armies of Constantinus, Maxentius, Constantinus again, and Licinius, which involves some fiddling with the data but isn't an unreasonable way to make sense of Zosimus.
The Panegyrici Latini 12:3 claims that Constantinus crossed the Alps, with barely ΒΌ of his army, against 100,000 enemies.
Lactantius in the Deaths of the Persecutors ch. 45 claims that Maximinus Daia had a field army of 70,000 and Licinius of 30,000.
Neither of these are entirely reliable sources, but they are at least earlier, and their numbers paint a different picture than Zosimus do.
Zosimus' army sizes are extremely high. Ioannes Lydos gives just under 390,000 soldiers, and Agathias 645,000 soldiers and sailors, for the whole Empire. Zosimus gives 581,000 if we add all four figures, 286,000 in the first conflict and 295,000 in the second. Treadgold argues that Zosimus has re-used what were paper strengths for the armies of Constantinus, Maxentius, Licinius, and Maximinus Daia as field-army strengths for the armies of Constantinus, Maxentius, Constantinus again, and Licinius, which involves some fiddling with the data but isn't an unreasonable way to make sense of Zosimus.
The Panegyrici Latini 12:3 claims that Constantinus crossed the Alps, with barely ΒΌ of his army, against 100,000 enemies.
Lactantius in the Deaths of the Persecutors ch. 45 claims that Maximinus Daia had a field army of 70,000 and Licinius of 30,000.
Neither of these are entirely reliable sources, but they are at least earlier, and their numbers paint a different picture than Zosimus do.
