"Size of Ancient Armies" Topic

Sitting here on a nightshift watching 'Troy' and its got me thinking (as you do), all the books I've read about ancient battles say about the thousands of warriors involved. Now what is puzzling me is how did they get that many warriors? The populations can't of been that big in those days.
If any army of thousands really existed and was destroyed surely that civilisation would of dissapeared as it must of lost nearly all its male population…
Can someone enlighten me please?
Cheers, Mick

Mick:

As far as "Troy" goes, here's what the Iliad has for the list of folks who left to fight there: link
I'm sure the figure of 120 per ship may be a bit high for an average; maybe 50?
Regards, Dean

This is what I can't get my head around. According to the link we are talking about an army of 140,000+ who fought away from home for years. How could the places they came from survive? The whole economy should of collapsed as there can't of been many left at home.
I'm probably totally wrong but finding it hard to fathom…
Mick

Ancient armies tend to be greatly exaggerated. A good place to start is the book "Warfare in Antiquity" and "The Barbarian Invasions" by Hans Delbruck. These titles are over 100 yrs old, but much of the info on the size of armies is still valid today. Delbruck pretty much demolishes the idea that armies could number in the upper tens of thousands, and puts the alleged 1 million Persians to rest.
He uses his own military experience and other historical examples to evaluate the evidence.

Let's be honest here for a moment shall we? Ancient armies consisted of 12 elements, no mor, no less, although sometimes they fielded an optional element of camp followers.

Says so in the scriptures. Err, DBA. Umm, the ramblings of a deranged Englishman.

I'm with you. There is no way the Troad could have suported 2 armies of the size Homer reports for a campaign lasting 10 years. Not to mention the impact this would have had on the economies of the world.

Hey! There were plenty of folks left behind. Where do you think all those suitors came from?

Stop and think about it. Sending 120,000 unruly louts to camp on Troy's doorstep probably improved the local economy!

mjc

Take a look at Marathon. The Herodotus gives no number to the persians and gives the Athenians something like 10000 men. That was everything they could muster. As we know that the Persians had somethng like 600 war vesseles, we can figure that they had no more than 24000 men on the plain.

So what does that mean for Troy? Well, they had smaller ships and a smaller population. Each king probably sent only a fraction of their army and not the whole lot like Athens. Also, since it was a long hop to Troy, the 1200 ships could not be all war ships. Some had to carrty supplies or, perhaps, the ships were not completely filled with men. At 50 men per ship, that would be 60000 men in the Greek Army. Lord knows how many were in the Trojan army.

Well with the Illiad you're using a heroic epic poem that is derived from passed down legendary oral sources and embellished with artistic license. So you're going to have some exaggeration.

Even with the Marathon figures doesn't anyone else find them very high? Think of the time period, we are not talking about populations the size of today. The populations then must of been a lot smaller, 10,000 Athenians would mean a population of say 30 to 40,000 (taking into account women, children, pensioners and slaves) for that area of Greece. That's a lot of people for a fairly small area in that period of time.
Mick

Interestingly, the so-called "Catalog of Ships" is one "book" in the Iliad that some scholars/historians believe actually originates from the Bronze Age. Many of the cities/places cited & described in some detail were already abandoned or insignificant during the period the poet is supposed to have composed the epic. As some say, trust your Homer. However, that is not to say that over 100K "Greeks" ever invaded Asia Minor at any time in history. Even Alexander didn't have that many.

Population of Athens around 431 BC was about 440,000. Consider the united States is 300M now. Aproximatly 60 years ago, the population of the US was 140M. Since Athens was going through a Boom of sorts, you could rationalize a similar polulation growth or about half the size in 490 BC. That would be 200K or a little more maybe. Basically, even then, Athens was BIG! Now, you would have to go back even further (say 600 years) and then all bets are off.

Look at the later Roman Notitia Dignatatum. It is not certain what size the smaller legions and auxiliary units were in the later empire, but around 1000 and 500 per unit gave a paper strength of something like 500,000 or so for the whole empire east and west. Of course this number would never have been reached so it was likey something under 500,000 defending a long frontier on three continents with the Comitatus billeted in cities in each province.

The Roman army at Hadrianople may have been 15,000-20,000 men and the loss of 2/3rds of these was considered a huge disaster. The army of Julian at Argentoratum was also only 13,000. Barbarians such as the Goths would have had populations in the 100,000 to 200,000 range with armies of only 10,000 or so. When the Vandals took a census before crossing to Africa their entire population was 80,000 and this included the remnants of other Vandal and Alan groups destroyed by the Visigoths.

Armies are a bit different than peoples on the move. Migrations are more like locusts, moving on as long as grazing and food can be pillaged, so the size of the migration is mostly limited to how many people and animals can be fed off the land.

Legends state that Darius' army drank rivers dry…. hardly possible, but makes for a good story, even though all these millions of people and their golf courses in the Southwestern US are drinking the Colorado River dry.

Without any kind of outside corroborating evidence, any numbers in an ancient text are suspect. Winners reduce their numbers to appear more heroic, and losers are exagerrated beyond the pale. Some more scientific texts, such as Polybius give us information that has more cross referencing, so it would seem to be more reliable.

Inherent Military Probability (IMP), the scientific analysis spawned by Delbruck, applies the lessons of general historical armies to the past. By cross referencing data from pre-industrial armies, one can come up with some interesting data about command and control, signal and command distances, and all things relating to how an army moves and is fed during the long campaign, aside from the short microscopic time of actual action days. Still the issues of concentration for action and dispersal to keep from scouring the earth are common issues in ancient warfare.

It is a subjective analysis, and can lead one to throw out the baby with the bathwater at times. Most ancient battles are constructed from IMP analysis, since most accounts are not detailed enough on their own to be objective.

One way to see if the numbers add up is to actually painstakingly do this. A good example is:

Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army
by Donald W. Engels

This work painstakingly reconstructs the reinforcements of Alexander's army and how sources corroborate the facts. Of course Alexander has enough soruces to allow such cross analysis, others don't. It does not "prove" that Alexander had 43,000 men at the Granicus River.. but it rather neatly proves that the sources are mostly consistent. However we are left with much guesswork about the opposition as their numbers are less logical, and have less checks and balances.

And Alexander's army was something of a logistical novelty since Philip II had ordained a streamlining and lean baggage and supply and servant system, to keep overhead numbers lower, and remove as many fodder consuming animal as possible. This is one major factor in why Alexander campaigns happen at a blitzkrieg pace compared to other ancient armies.

IMP has formulated many ideas over time, based on numerous sources that without telegraphs, radios or very huge staff corps, one man will have difficulty commanding more than 30,000 men, which is about the size of a Roman Consular army, and also about the same as Napoleonic Army Corps.

In general most actual major ancient battles fit into the "around 30,000" men per side size, with the rare mega-battle as an exception, and certainly many more mini-battles that are not often given much press (although the Romans love to write about their skirmishes)….

Mega invasions, such as Xerxes against Greece also entails a massie support effort to keep such an army supplied. Even an army of 100,000 would have needed vast tons of supplies per day, and maybe hundreds of thousands of people in the pipeline to keep it operating. Modern mechanized armies are much more logistically heavy than past armies, but still the food and water had to arrive, without trucks.
And Alexander, as armies of today still have to go through the Khyber pass to supply their troops.
JJ

JJartist has hit the nail on the head there.

Ancient writers tended to exaggerate to make a good story. It would seem from reading around, that most pre-industrial armies had a 'natural' limit of around 30,000. This number comes up again and again throughout history and seems to be set by supply and command issues.

But then you can see fairly large battles in antiquity even with the less number figures, that would only be seen again in the 17th century.

One of the issues of numbers in Ancient armies is, who would count them?
I would think Ancient generals themselves would only have a vague idea.
Didnt Xerxes merely get his army to march past a given point and then estimate numbers based on the march rate?

"One of the issues of numbers in Ancient armies is, who would count them?"

I rather imagine that an ancient general would have counted his troops pretty much the same way a modern one would have – one at a time. Counting things does not require technology, just numbers.

Doug

It does require organisation though.

Exactly, Boone.
Units divided into platoons and companies with HQ troops and company clerks and the accompanying paperwork: I can't imagine the average Gothic army or Sea Peoples' horde would go to that level of organisation.
A rough estimate would be all they'd have IMO.

I remembered reading that Sargon had a standing army of around 6000 cir. 2200BC.

so I "gasped " wiki and link

about the greek fleet.

The face that launch a thousand ships

I google list of ship that sail to troy and got

link

100,000 men

Dulbreck figure about 3% to 5% was the size of an army that hte acnient world would support.

and all thease people could read and write and count lol

Lord Ghee

"all thease people could read and write"
Really? I thought literacy would be far narrower than that until the modern era.
As for counting, it IS an interesting question.
I confess I do not really know and am just guessing.
But modern tribal people do not seem to be as obsessed as us about pin point accuracy.
I still think it likely that altough a people with a bureaucracy may well have had accurate figures on the size of their forces, others with more simple organisational structures might not.
Still, the whole issue is hardly all that important.

Actually, with populations as a people become civilized, the populations often drop. Hence may barbarian invaders happen as a result of surplus barbarian populations moving into depopulated civilized areas. Also, in the UK large areas – especially places like the Scottish highlands and islands – held far larger populations in the past than they do now.

Ancient Persia could draw on the populations of the 'Fertile Crescent'. I don't know what the population of that area was, but probably far larger than today.

The fact is, I think we underestimate the possible population sizes and overestimate the resources ancient armies needed to survive. I'm not saying that armies were 1,000,000 strong, but I think a lot of the assumptions and calculations we make are based on false premises.

I think the upper limit on army size is not population size, more to do with feeding and controlling it.

Before the agrarian revolution of the 18 Century, all societies were based on subsistance farming with little surplus. What extra food was produced supported the urban populations.

Transporting food in large amounts aws also tricky, unless you wanted it near to sea or rivers.

Hence the 30,000 size that keeps cropping up.

As far as counting requiring organization, it doesn't really if you're sufficiently bloody minded about it … just count the bastards one by one as they march past. In many ancient armies, though, it was not necessary – the organization was more advanced than you might think, with many of the rank titles being based on the number of men under command.

Doug

Trust me, any army that has to pay it's soldiers knows EXACTLY how many are in the ranks. Even with the barbarian tribes, it wouldn't be too difficult at all to get a good handle on the number. Every tribe would know how many it had, because each of the clan units would have told the Chieftan how many were there. The army commander would know how many tribes were present, and each Chieftan would tell him how many he brought. They would also have this data because they needed to FEED everyone.

As to large tribes, I am not at all at odds with Caesar when he claims that, at Sabis, the Nervi had 60,000 present. They could feed them through hunting and fishing, and that would be especially true since they were on their own land. They were also astride an ancient highway that made it easy to transport men and goods each way. In fact, Caesar was traveling down it when he encountered them.

In fact, Caesar had 8 Legions with him, plus his huge baggage train and attendant auxilliaries, etc.

Anyway, that's my 2-cent's worth on the issue. I believe we use too much projection when we say that ancient societies were not as populous.

I'm not sure you often hear this on TMP……
but the arguments for counting troops now seem pretty convincing.
I may well be wrong.
At any rate, thanks all for taking the time to post your opinions. I'll chew this over (while at work) for the next few days.

about the greek number at marathon,

the army was of citizens of which 10,000

if the 600 triemes had 30 persian inf on them then the perisans where 18,000 plus cav.

about the army of Xerxes

Munro and Macan note Herodotus giving the names of six major commanders and 29 myriarchs (leaders of a baivabaram, the basic unit of the Persian infantry, which numbered about 10,000-strong[73][74]); this would give a land force of roughly 300,000 men.[75][76]

if starts out at 290,000 and march of to greece. then (can find my number preditions and war) then being down to 200,000 prob about right.

Note the medes and the persians and the immortals div went in probality because they lead the march

Not only did the king of kings lose 20,000 men but lost them form his best units.

Fleet
The size of the Persian fleet is also disputed, though perhaps less so.[80] According to Herodotus the Persian fleet numbered 1,207 triremes and 3,000 transport and supply ships, including 50-oared Galleys (Penteconters) (Greek πεντηκοντήρ).[81] Herodotus gives a detailed breakdown of the Persian triremes:
for a total of 250,000

so 300,000 troop 80,000 cav and 250,000 saliors plus the tarins (normally stated as bieing equal to the army strength.) there you go an army of 1,000,000

Truly one of the greatest military feats (as was beating it)

The eygpt army had 5 div of 5000 men and 500 chariots at Kadesh That is 30,000

The the Eygptains mataining that the Hittie army was bigger
30,000 inf 3000 chariots

the Battle of Philippi

was the largest of Romes battles with 100,000 inf on each side and 30,000 cav and 20,000 cav on each side

compares with the persians.

Lord Ghee