Could the Persian Empire logistically support an army several million strong?

[Erpingham]

I hope the Persian cavalry kept their horses in better condition.  I'd say the guy on the left has only a body condition of 2-3.

I will confess, I hadn't heard of body condition scores until we started this thread - remarkable what you discover well looking for something else

[Justin Swanton]

Here's a diagram showing men on a 1 in 10 slope and each with 2 yards lateral space. They obviously don't have to march in tidy ranks and files, just keep a reasonable distance apart. What problem does this pose to the walkers?

Firstly the photo
This is the sort of area you're expecting people to cut forage from remember. So I think carefully studying this picture will tell you a great deal about just how big an area you'll really need. Look at the grass length and sparsity

Secondly if you want to believe that you can march men three hundred abreast through  Gallipoli then I'm not even going to try to convince you otherwise.
But please, provide one example from ancient literature of an army than advanced in a column 300 men abreast? Come on, just one

You got me! I don't have a single reliable primary source quote that unequivocally states that X army marched 300 men abreast. If I did, 3-million-man Achaemenid armies would be in the history books and we would be arguing about discussing something else.

My 300-man-wide column is a necessity to account for a 3,4 million man army marching from the Hellespont to Thermopylae. It's a hypothesis with some circumstantial evidence to back it up: the time taken to cross the Hellespont on two 30-yard-wide bridges, the need to cut down a forest to make a passageway in Macedonia, etc. (I think there's some etc.) The purpose of the thread is to see if such a hypothetical 300-man-wide army could in fact cross the Balkan countryside and be fed and watered whilst doing so. Still waiting for the killer argument... (and no, quoting Maurice as an authority isn't a killer argument).

BTW the forage in the photo looks fine. There's some clear ground near the river but it doesn't cover most of the area in the photo. Keeping in mind that average grazing ground in Greece is around one ton per acre which is more than enough to supply the needs of animals from the camp area itself.

[Erpingham]

BTW the forage in the photo looks fine. There's some clear ground near the river but it doesn't cover most of the area in the photo. Keeping in mind that average grazing ground in Greece is around one ton per hectare which is more than enough to supply the needs of animals from the camp area itself.

I think we suffering that numbers fixation again.  If we assume that advance units select camp sites that happen to be covered in good pasture untouched by animals and they carefully stack that fodder for the army, you could have theoretically could find sufficient fodder round the camp.  In reality, you can't guarantee that every camp will be in good pasture untouched by animals and the gathering process may not be carried out with the delicacy required.  Likewise, the idea that engineering detachment will be able to construct a sophisticated water distribution system at each stop seems optimistic.  Maurice's dams might be more do-able practically but you still have to overcome the shear lengths of accessible drinking space needed. 

 

[RichT]

The purpose of the thread is to see if such a hypothetical 300-man-wide army could in fact cross the Balkan countryside and be fed and watered whilst doing so. Still waiting for the killer argument... (and no, quoting Maurice as an authority isn't a killer argument).

You will be waiting forever for the killer argument - because there can be no single killer argument against such a thing, just lots of smaller more or less compelling arguments that have already been presented, and which you reject individually because they are not the killer argument.

Maybe a different approach would be advsiable. Pretty much nobody today, AFAIK, believes Xerxes army was 3M+ strong, so the burden of proof rests with those who want to argue that it was. Your aim, presumably, is to persuade others of your point of view, otherwise why bother discussing it.* That being so, shouldn't you present a killer argument that it was 3M strong? Do so, and all objections must melt away. Of course, you will be unable to do so (barring the archaeological discovery of a sequence of Xerxes' marching camps) for the same reason - no such killer argument exists, or can exist.

* alternatively your aim might have been to invite others to convince you that you are wrong, but if so then you are still setting the burden of proof impossibly high. 

[Flaminpig0]

It might help if Justin could give us an  indication might be- then people could provide the evidence for this and the thread can end before we get to 2151- AD that is not nine minutes to ten

[Justin Swanton]

The purpose of the thread is to see if such a hypothetical 300-man-wide army could in fact cross the Balkan countryside and be fed and watered whilst doing so. Still waiting for the killer argument... (and no, quoting Maurice as an authority isn't a killer argument).

You will be waiting forever for the killer argument - because there can be no single killer argument against such a thing, just lots of smaller more or less compelling arguments that have already been presented, and which you reject individually because they are not the killer argument.

Maybe a different approach would be advsiable. Pretty much nobody today, AFAIK, believes Xerxes army was 3M+ strong, so the burden of proof rests with those who want to argue that it was. Your aim, presumably, is to persuade others of your point of view, otherwise why bother discussing it.* That being so, shouldn't you present a killer argument that it was 3M strong? Do so, and all objections must melt away. Of course, you will be unable to do so (barring the archaeological discovery of a sequence of Xerxes' marching camps) for the same reason - no such killer argument exists, or can exist.

* alternatively your aim might have been to invite others to convince you that you are wrong, but if so then you are still setting the burden of proof impossibly high.

Let me clarify what I'm trying to achieve with this thread.

Starting with the fact that the general academic consensus is that Herodotus and other primary sources were out in their estimates of the size of Achaemenid armies by a factor of between 5 and 10. To refresh, here are the sizes of the armies as per the sources:

Herodotus:
1 700 000 men (Greek campaign)
700 000 men (Scythian campaign)

Xenophon:
900 000 men + 300 000 men (Cunaxa)

Arrian:
600 000 men (Issus)
1000 000 men (Gaugamela)

Diodorus, Curtius, Justin (not me - the martyr) and others give similar figures of these magnitudes.

Since these are pretty much all the sources we have for Persian history and to reject them to this extent means putting our understanding of the Persian Empire in question, I propose that one examine if these numbers are feasible. Apart from the affirmations of the sources, I can't scientifically prove that Persian armies were this big. Nobody can. But neither can anyone scientifically prove that they were considerably smaller. There is no hard evidence either way other than the sources themselves. This means we have to respect the sources as much as possible. If we cover them with a blanket of doubt right from the word go, affirming that the only certitude we have is from scientific experimentation and you can't perform scientific experiments on history, then history as a serious subject of study is dead.

I suggest that instead of scientific certitude (which is impossible) we go for moral certitude, i.e. examining the writer of the period in the same way a lawyer cross-examines a witness in court. A witness may be hostile - not inclined to spill the necessary beans - but it is still possible to glean the facts from what he/she says with enough certitude to arrive at a judgment. Ditto for Herodotus. It just needs a good dose of common sense. 

The only thing we can establish with some sort of scientific accuracy is the practicality of moving 3 million men from Asia Minor to Greece. If it is possible then I'm quite happy to take Herodotus at his word. To establish if it is possible from my armchair (actually a rather uncomfortable plastic chair) simply means establishing whether there are any insuperable obstacles, as opposed to obstacles that can be overcome with some preparation, ingenuity and organisation.

[Jim Webster]

Here's a diagram showing men on a 1 in 10 slope and each with 2 yards lateral space. They obviously don't have to march in tidy ranks and files, just keep a reasonable distance apart. What problem does this pose to the walkers?

Firstly the photo
This is the sort of area you're expecting people to cut forage from remember. So I think carefully studying this picture will tell you a great deal about just how big an area you'll really need. Look at the grass length and sparsity

Secondly if you want to believe that you can march men three hundred abreast through  Gallipoli then I'm not even going to try to convince you otherwise.
But please, provide one example from ancient literature of an army than advanced in a column 300 men abreast? Come on, just one

You got me! I don't have a single reliable primary source quote that unequivocally states that X army marched 300 men abreast. If I did, 3-million-man Achaemenid armies would be in the history books and we would be arguing about discussing something else.

My 300-man-wide column is a necessity to account for a 3,4 million man army marching from the Hellespont to Thermopylae. It's a hypothesis with some circumstantial evidence to back it up: the time taken to cross the Hellespont on two 30-yard-wide bridges, the need to cut down a forest to make a passageway in Macedonia, etc. (I think there's some etc.) The purpose of the thread is to see if such a hypothetical 300-man-wide army could in fact cross the Balkan countryside and be fed and watered whilst doing so. Still waiting for the killer argument... (and no, quoting Maurice as an authority isn't a killer argument).

No it's a circular argument.
The argument starts out with "A 4 million man army had to pass this way."
To achieve this the army has to march 300 men abreast.
Therefore Persian armies were capable of marching 300 men abreast through Gallipoli

[Erpingham]

To paraphrase Richard, and repeat something said earlier, neither the position "If you can't show it's impossible, it must be true" nor "If you can't show it's possible, it must be false" take us far.  Instead we need to look at a balance of probabilities.

Though Justin fails to see any "killer" arguments, the conventional position does pile up a lot of obstacles.  So far, the "sources first" advocates have struggled to answer these and the balance of probability is strongly with the orthodox position.  It may be that is in part due to the fact that we only see bits of argument at a time and Justin would do better if he could provide a summary of his case. 

As I understand it, there was a 3 year preparation period where stores and armies were assembled and a large construction battalion was sent to Greece.  We know the construction battalion built a canal - it is archaeologically detectable.  Apparently they also surveyed the route, marking out daily camp sites and weekly depot sites. Sometime in this three years they built a 300 m wide road from the Hellespont to Thermopylae.  Then, with the approach of D-day, bridges were built and rebuilt and an advanced force set off to establish the first weekly depots.  They advanced carefully to avoid trampling any pasturage.  Then, a few days later, the engineering vanguard crossed the Hellespont and proceeded a day in advance of the main army, harvesting fodder, building irrigation systems and laying out camps.  These were then followed in a very orderly and disciplined fashion by the remained of the army (I don't think we've discussed march order) who are spread over two days.  The back of the army camps where the previous one did the day before (I'm unclear here whether the first half of the army has left fodder for the second half, whether the second half use transported fodder or whether they go further abroad to forage).  The naval supply chain is delivering supplies across beaches using lighters to stock the seven day depots.  When the depot is stocked, they move to the next and the fleet of lighters sails down the coast.  Warships are presumably covering this operation, based at a beach near the depot, close enough to draw supplies from it and with an independent water supply (we haven't discussed the naval side).  I hope this does justice to the theory Justin is developing.

I presume part of Justin's geographic research is to identify potential sites for his daily camps and his depots, plus operating beaches for 1207 warships?

[Jim Webster]

BTW the forage in the photo looks fine. There's some clear ground near the river but it doesn't cover most of the area in the photo. Keeping in mind that average grazing ground in Greece is around one ton per acre which is more than enough to supply the needs of animals from the camp area itself.

The grazing looks fine. Unfortunately your numbers don't allow grazing. Remember we had servants going out and collecting forage with a sickle. Indeed at one point a calculation was provided to state that the army needed less fodder than could be provided by the campsite alone if the haymaking crews got there first.

But look at that picture. It could provide 1 ton per acre, but you couldn't harvest one ton per acre with a sickle, there just isn't enough length of grass to work  with.

Sickle use seen here  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nI0GK6qrdk

The sickle was the standard harvesting tool in Greece and Persia

[Duncan Head]

Justin (not me - the martyr) and others give similar figures of these magnitudes.

Justin the epitomator of Trogus, presumably? Not generally thought to be the same bloke as the martyr.

[Erpingham]

Justin the epitomator of Trogus, presumably?

Wow, you could build an entire Dr Who episode around that name !

[Jim Webster]

Justin (not me - the martyr) and others give similar figures of these magnitudes.

Justin the epitomator of Trogus, presumably? Not generally thought to be the same bloke as the martyr.

Having read Justin I would cheerfully have martyred him 

I thought I had trouble remembering people's names but Justin took it to a whole new level!

[RichT]

You could also include Ctesias for example (800,000 for Scythia and Xerxes in Greece), or Simonides (3,000,000 at Thermopylae). You might also consider the fact that the numbers in each source are different from each other - but it's OK for the purposes of this to talk about orders of magnitude.

Since these are pretty much all the sources we have for Persian history and to reject them to this extent means putting our understanding of the Persian Empire in question,.

Well I think you go wrong there at the first step. Our understanding of the Persian Empire is absolutely fine if we reject these figures - indeed because most people reject these figures, our understanding of the Persina Empire is already based on the assumption that these figures are incorrect.

... I propose that one examine if these numbers are feasible. Apart from the affirmations of the sources, I can't scientifically prove that Persian armies were this big. Nobody can. But neither can anyone scientifically prove that they were considerably smaller. There is no hard evidence either way other than the sources themselves.

That depends on what you mean by 'hard evidence'. Plenty of fairly hard evidence has been presented in this thread. And most people would argue that a statement of Herodotus is not hard evidence (this was already the view in antiquity of course - many 'sources' - writers and historians in antiquity - regarded Herodotus as wholly unreliable - whether justly or not is another matter - but it's not some modern fashion).

This means we have to respect the sources as much as possible. If we cover them with a blanket of doubt right from the word go, affirming that the only certitude we have is from scientific experimentation and you can't perform scientific experiments on history, then history as a serious subject of study is dead.

Wrong again! Without getting all meta, there are lots of sources of information a historian can use, and naively accepting every statement of an ancient author is not the only option.

I suggest that instead of scientific certitude (which is impossible) we go for moral certitude, i.e. examining the writer of the period in the same way a lawyer cross-examines a witness in court. A witness may be hostile - not inclined to spill the necessary beans - but it is still possible to glean the facts from what he/she says with enough certitude to arrive at a judgment.

Well I hope I never have to have you as my lawyer! I'm all for the method (moral certitude is fine by me). But in most legal cases, you wouldn't rely on a single witness statement without, at the very least, examining the expertise, knowledge and motivations of the witness, looking for corroborating statements and (above all) considering forensic evidence. You would reject such methods and rely entirely on the unvarnished witness statement.

Ditto for Herodotus. It just needs a good dose of common sense. 

Sure. Funnily enough, common sense is what I suspect most people in this thread feel you lack... It's a slippery concept, common sense.

The only thing we can establish with some sort of scientific accuracy is the practicality of moving 3 million men from Asia Minor to Greece. If it is possible then I'm quite happy to take Herodotus at his word. To establish if it is possible from my armchair (actually a rather uncomfortable plastic chair) simply means establishing whether there are any insuperable obstacles, as opposed to obstacles that can be overcome with some preparation, ingenuity and organisation.

OK I'm fine with the method - but you apply exceptionally high standards of proof to arguments against the practicality of it, while being remarkably easy to convince as to its practicality. For example, drawing a diagram of a 1 in 10 slope, placing some figures on it, and presenting this as proof that several million men can walk en masse across the hills of northern Greece, is not, I feel, an argument that would convince many juries. But maybe the proof of the pudding is in the eating - we are all unbiassed jurors here, full of common sense - if you can convince us then that's a big step forward for your argument. If you can't, then maybe you should consider the possibility that it is your argument, rather than our understanding, or common sense, or historical method, that might be flawed after all.

FWIW my position is as is was when we discussed this in 2015 - I can't prove Xerxes army wasn't 3,000,000 strong, and maybe it was, but comparisons with other periods of history, and consideration of the practical difficulties, make me think it unlikely.

Incidentally (to wind up my overlong and unintended foray into this thread), has anyone tried wargaming an army of 3,000,000, or even 800,000? At a figure scale of 1:20, 800,000 men would only need 40,000 figures. Or alternatively, take something like DBA. If we take a standard 12 element army to represent about 40,000 men, then 800,000 would be represented by 240 elements, 3M by 900. Sounds doable - I can't think of any practical objections to that.

[Duncan Head]

Justin the epitomator of Trogus, presumably?

Wow, you could build an entire Dr Who episode around that name !

Epitomate! Epitomate!

[Jim Webster]

Justin the epitomator of Trogus, presumably?

Wow, you could build an entire Dr Who episode around that name !

Epitomate! Epitomate!

Justin always struck me as the sort of person who'd describe an episode of Doctor Who for you.
But he'd have missed the point, have seen only half the episode, but had also seen a trailer for the next season

And kept getting the companion's name wrong