4 ms·
From article: "Here, in the Battle of Issus, Alexander's army of 75,000 Greeks faced Darius' vastly superior force of approximately 600,000 Persian troops." Fr
by tristramb 2y ago
From article: "Here, in the Battle of Issus, Alexander's army of 75,000 Greeks faced Darius' vastly superior force of approximately 600,000 Persian troops."
From Wikipedia: "Modern historians find Arrian's count of 600,000 men highly unlikely. They argue that the logistics of fielding more than 100,000 soldiers in battle was extremely difficult at the time."
Basically, the ancient agricultural landscape would be unable to feed an army of more than 100,000.
- Maken 2y agoMacedonian war propaganda, still going strong 2K years later.
- jaapz 2y agoThe next paragraph, or actually next sentence adresses this immediately: > These ancient written sourced troop numbers are likely greatly exaggerated as more modern accounting of the battle puts the numbers much lower, but it is how the story was told for the better part of 2,300 years.
- duxup 2y agoYeah 600k seems pretty outsized for battles of that time, even compared just "reported" numbers.
- michaelcampbell 2y agoDan Carlin's "Hardcore History" podcast mentions this in almost every episode. Numerical values in historical documents are always to be greeted with LARGE amounts of suspicion if not outright disbelief.