I'm currently reading a book about Cleopatra [1] (it's superb) and I've been absolutely boggled by the productive capacity of the nation states of her era. Whet

I'm currently reading a book about Cleopatra [1] (it's superb) and I've been absolutely boggled by the productive capacity of the nation states of her era. Whether it was building ships, growing and transporting grain or raising armies, these were highly sophisticated bureaucracies that knew how to make, grow and transport huge quantities of stuff. I'm at work and don't have the book on me, so I may have this slightly wrong, but IIRC, in Cleopatra's day Alexandria (where she resided with her court) was consuming 300 tons of grain per day, which arrived on ships via the Nile. Or consider the ability of Rome to draft and train legions of highly-skilled soldiers: it was at a scale similar to that of modern-day Russia. 1: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7968243-cleopatra https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7968243-cleopatra