Can we have some numbers please as to how large an increase in production you imagine Xerxes demanded? How many men they were supposed to feed as opposed to being fed from imports.
By this time Greece was almost certainly dependent on grain imports anyway
Disagree about Greece being dependent upon grain imports: that did not happen for another century, when Egypt sent corn to whichever cities were prepared to send troops to help it out. Even Athens was self-sufficient in 480 BC; fuss about Black Sea corn does not begin until Thucydides makes mention of it.
As for numbers, we make our own guesses from Herodotus VII.119:
"Similar accounts were returned by the officers in the other towns. Now the dinner, about which a great deal of fuss had been made and for the preparation of which orders had been given long ago, proceeded as I will tell. [2] As soon as the townsmen had word from the herald's proclamation, they divided corn among themselves in their cities and all of them for many months ground it to wheat and barley meal; moreover, they fed the finest beasts that money could buy, and kept landfowl and waterfowl in cages and ponds, for the entertaining of the army. They also made gold and silver cups and bowls and all manner of service for the table. [3] These things were provided for the king himself and those that ate with him. For the rest of the army they provided only food. At the coming of the army, there was always a tent ready for Xerxes to take his rest in, while the men camped out in the open air. [4] When the hour came for dinner, the real trouble for the hosts began. When they had eaten their fill and passed the night there, the army tore down the tent on the next day and marched off with all the movables, leaving nothing but carrying all with them."What the above indicates is that there were no imports but a lot of drain on local resources. One notes incidentally the corn being 'in their cities' - the above (Perseus' Godley) translation incidentally seems to have a phrase out of place: "they divided corn among themselves in their cities and all of them for many months ground it to wheat and barley meal" is elsewhere translated as: "the inhabitants made a division of their stores of corn and proceeded to grind flour of wheat and of barley for many months together". It seems more sensible that they ground many months' grain allowance at once than that they spent months grinding grain ... either way, that was the equivalent of their winter store gone to feed Xerxes' army for a day.
What you have to beware of here is that Germanicus and Chronicles may well have got their information from the same, flawed, source. They don't need to be independent.
Germanicus had Egyptian inscriptions translated; would the writer of Chronicles have bothered to acquire information from such a source? The Chronicler in any event did not take his numbers for chariots or cavalry from that source. I think we can safely conclude that they were independent.
What you must remember is that the Bible does have a penchant for large numbers, the number of Israelites which Moses is supposed to have led may have been larger than the population of Egypt.
This was exactly what worried the pharaoh who decided to end the Hebrews' work-free, tax-free status, and his successor, who wanted their male children out of the way.
The question about persistent large numbers in the Bible is whether they were persistently large because of several generation of writers' constantly overheated imagination or because the numbers really were large. If it were only the Bible which mentions armies of hundreds of thousands, we migth be justified in assuming exaggeration. But
all major cultures of the period record themselves and/or their opponents as fielding massive armies.
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