Persian Invasion of 480 BC - articles

[Sean Manning]

But what you can't seem to fathom, is that some other person can look at the exact same sources as you, and come up with a completely different conclusion or theory based on the extant information at hand.

And again, you're infering an idea based on pay statements from a later era anyway, to try and find a basis for an empire that existed a thousand years prior.

The problem is you have no solid proof of anything you are saying. Rather, you've an idea, a thesis in your head that you've perceived based on your readings about the size of Xerxes army, and used your own logic to justify your ideas based on these infered pieces of information.

This is not proof. And it's not enough to solidly deduct a fact. Until something more accurate can be found to decide either way, you're going to have to accept the fact that people are going to disagree with you. You may not like it, but those people's ideas are no less or more valid than your own, since they are after all, theories based on corelative information.

You're best bet is to present your information, debate what you can, and leave it at that. Otherwise you're just arguing your own opinion, and that is completely pointless, since everyone thinks they're own opinion is correct anyway.

Nobody on this thread has found an example of a premodern field army reliably attested at over a hundred thousand troops, with the sole exception parts of Napoleon's Grand Army (which was smaller than it seemed and quickly weakened). Great Greek armies of the Hellenistic period, such as those at Raphia (Polybius 5.79ff), are always said to be under 100,000. We have cited Engels for some of the reasons larger forces didn't work; I would also add G.T. Griffith's The Mercenaries of the Hellenistic World for a discussion of how Alexander the Great's reinforcements from Greece drained away as fast as he recieved them, leaving his army size fairly constant at around 50,000 troops.

All of recorded premodern military history, critically analyzed, seems to provide enough of an evidence base to judge whether field armies of several hundred thousand troops were practical, and to say that with one or two exceptions they were not. Strengths of individual ancient armies, of course, are usually uncertain enough to be a matter of opinion within certain reasonable bounds. I agree we will never know how large Xerxes' invasion army was closer than a factor of two or so. But respectfullly, I don't think the question of whether field armies of several hundred thousand troops were possible can simple be passed off as unknowable and a matter of opinion. Some opinions are simply unsuportable.

This thread has been going around in circles, and I expect this will be my last contribution.