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

[Patrick Waterson]

I think, is that we must endeavour to recognise our cultural biases and seek to minimise their impact.

Would that be an approach that Herodtus would recognise I wonder?

Yes.  Herodotus travelled extensively during his research and spoke to many people from various different cultures.  He did retain much of his Greek perspective, not least because he was a Greek writing for a Greek audience, but did not assume that Greek techniques were the answer to everything or that everyone had to operate using Greek systems.

[Jim Webster]

That at least we can agree upon.  If one is able to leave aside one's own culture, or at least its outlook and assumptions, it does permit a better understanding of other cultures and suspends the knee-jerk negativity reflex when the apparently unlikely is encountered.

I agree entirely, I just wonder how much we can step outside our own culture?

When you look back at 'modern' historians, for example Gibbon, you can see in him a man of his place and his time.
To be fair that might have been what gave him the courage to tackle such a work 

[Flaminpig0]

.

I agree entirely, I just wonder how much we can step outside our own culture?

More so than Herodotus et al as at least in theory we recognise cultural and other bias as an issue which ancient historians and their target audience would not.

[Patrick Waterson]

The idea of somebody producing in the region of 88 million amphorae and shipping them to the coast of Thrace to store grain in, when nobody else seems to have found the need, does look a little unlikely

But how many amphorae would already be in existence?  Would fresh millions be needed or would they already be in use or even waiting to be used?  Any additional production might be quite modest over and above replacing breakages and other losses.  And having already seen how convenient amphorae are for storing and handling maritime cargoes, and how widespread they are among wrecks of the classical period, we might wish not to discard them too readily.

Perhaps the lack of piles of shards on the beaches is considered a problem (would experienced handlers really be so careless as to break a substantial proportion of the items they were handling?).  One might point out that the beaches are no longer where they used to be: the beaches of 480 BC are either under water (in the northern Aegean) or several hundred yards inland (in the western and eastern Aegean).  So if there are shard dumps from 480 BC that is where they would be found.  If on the other hand the experienced handlers had comparatively few breakages and the Ionians in Xerxes' fleet were using ostraca for their daily tallies, then we would not find shard dumps anywhere.

That at least we can agree upon.  If one is able to leave aside one's own culture, or at least its outlook and assumptions, it does permit a better understanding of other cultures and suspends the knee-jerk negativity reflex when the apparently unlikely is encountered.

I agree entirely, I just wonder how much we can step outside our own culture?

Interesting thought.  In my experience it takes a bit of practice and a fair amount of immersion in the thought processes, outlook and general assumptions of earlier cultures.  If one can do this a lot of things fall into place, particularly the degree to which things were factual or symbolic, and the thinking about how the world worked and what had to be done to make it work as one wished.

When you look back at 'modern' historians, for example Gibbon, you can see in him a man of his place and his time.
To be fair that might have been what gave him the courage to tackle such a work 

Oh yes.  Gibbon's history is thoroughly Anglophilic and one can see his approval of institutions who most nearly reach the ideal of English constitutional goverment and his implicit and occasionally explicit pronouncements about the inevitable doom of systems which do not.  His sentences include a judgemental adjective in just about every phrase - it still makes wonderful reading, and the interesting thing is that he captures a picture of national charateristics without making it a caricature of a stereotype.

His picture of more or less constant decline once the Antonines were past is nowadays revised into a series of ups and downs which are often connected with economic rather than political stimuli by today's historians, but his technique of working closely from sources while being aware of the thinking of scholars, and on the whole preferring the former over the latter, is one with which I can sympathise.

[Jim Webster]

.

I agree entirely, I just wonder how much we can step outside our own culture?

More so than Herodotus et al as at least in theory we recognise cultural and other bias as an issue which ancient historians and their target audience would not.

or is our recognition of cultural bias just a cultural hangup we have that future generations will point fingers at and mock us for

(I jest, honestly  )

[Flaminpig0]

.

I agree entirely, I just wonder how much we can step outside our own culture?

More so than Herodotus et al as at least in theory we recognise cultural and other bias as an issue which ancient historians and their target audience would not.

or is our recognition of cultural bias just a cultural hangup we have that future generations will point fingers at and mock us for

(I jest, honestly  )

Depends if 'our' culture is going to be the dominant one in the future- in 200 years  the main school of history might agree with Narendra Modi and take Ganesh as proof of ancient plastic surgery. 

[Justin Swanton]

As a final point about amphorae and then I am definitely dropping the subject, a shard-hill of 50+ million amphorae in Rome represents part of a regular import of something like 300 000 amphorae per year over, say, two centuries. That means that in the same period of time 800 million wine amphorae were also imported, enough for Rome's own mini-Everest. Where have those shards gone? If they've gone, why worry about a few hundred thousand amphorae per food dump along the Aegean coastline?

[Jim Webster]

.

I agree entirely, I just wonder how much we can step outside our own culture?

More so than Herodotus et al as at least in theory we recognise cultural and other bias as an issue which ancient historians and their target audience would not.

or is our recognition of cultural bias just a cultural hangup we have that future generations will point fingers at and mock us for

(I jest, honestly  )

Depends if 'our' culture is going to be the dominant one in the future- in 200 years  the main school of history might agree with Narendi Modi and take Ganesh as proof of ancient plastic surgery.

My lady wife is at the moment helping somebody trade their family tree, they've discovered they've got a relative buried in our churchyard.
The man buried (before the second world war) had a father who was 'a gold miner'. The father married in South Africa and some of his children were born in South Africa and some back in Barrow in Furness. But from where they were born he obviously went out, came back and went out again. He was married out there in about 1905 but we're not sure when he went out, he missed rather a lot of censuses one way or another.
We've got other people buried in our church yard who got the boat from Cornwall to Barrow, worked in the mines here, in the US, in Canada, and back here. They seemed to think no more of travelling four or five thousand miles to get their next job than we would taking a job in a neighbouring town. They'd spend a couple of years, perhaps more, and move on. Do we understand these people? I mean, really understand them. I think most of them were literate but what education they'd had after the age of ten or twelve I wouldn't know

[Imperial Dave]

As a final point about amphorae and then I am definitely dropping the subject, a shard-hill of 50+ million amphorae in Rome represents part of a regular import of something like 300 000 amphorae per year over, say, two centuries. That means that in the same period of time 800 million wine amphorae were also imported, enough for Rome's own mini-Everest. Where have those shards gone? If they've gone, why worry about a few hundred thousand amphorae per food dump along the Aegean coastline?

depends on the amphorae size and shape. the olive oil amphorae were probably dumped due to oil impregnation amongst other things

[Flaminpig0]

As a final point about amphorae and then I am definitely dropping the subject, a shard-hill of 50+ million amphorae in Rome represents part of a regular import of something like 300 000 amphorae per year over, say, two centuries. That means that in the same period of time 800 million wine amphorae were also imported, enough for Rome's own mini-Everest. Where have those shards gone? If they've gone, why worry about a few hundred thousand amphorae per food dump along the Aegean coastline?

depends on the amphorae size and shape. the olive oil amphorae were probably dumped due to oil impregnation amongst other things

Does anyone do 28mm models of amphorae-?I can feel a Hordes of the Things  army coming on.

[Flaminpig0]

.

I agree entirely, I just wonder how much we can step outside our own culture?

More so than Herodotus et al as at least in theory we recognise cultural and other bias as an issue which ancient historians and their target audience would not.

or is our recognition of cultural bias just a cultural hangup we have that future generations will point fingers at and mock us for

(I jest, honestly  )

Depends if 'our' culture is going to be the dominant one in the future- in 200 years  the main school of history might agree with Narendi Modi and take Ganesh as proof of ancient plastic surgery.

My lady wife is at the moment helping somebody trade their family tree, they've discovered they've got a relative buried in our churchyard.
The man buried (before the second world war) had a father who was 'a gold miner'. The father married in South Africa and some of his children were born in South Africa and some back in Barrow in Furness. But from where they were born he obviously went out, came back and went out again. He was married out there in about 1905 but we're not sure when he went out, he missed rather a lot of censuses one way or another.
We've got other people buried in our church yard who got the boat from Cornwall to Barrow, worked in the mines here, in the US, in Canada, and back here. They seemed to think no more of travelling four or five thousand miles to get their next job than we would taking a job in a neighbouring town. They'd spend a couple of years, perhaps more, and move on. Do we understand these people? I mean, really understand them. I think most of them were literate but what education they'd had after the age of ten or twelve I wouldn't know

I suspect not.

[Andreas Johansson]

Tangentially, I came across a review at Bryn Maw of a book that participants in this debate might find interesting: Brill's Companion to the Reception of Herodotus in Antiquity and Beyond

[Erpingham]

should I get my anorak now or later 

It's OK Dave.  Real amphora geeks would look down their noses at such populist stuff

[Erpingham]

or is our recognition of cultural bias just a cultural hangup we have that future generations will point fingers at and mock us for

(I jest, honestly  )

Ah, many a true word etc.   Yes, our idea of "objective history" is a cultural artefact, in the same way as Gibbon's or Churchill's was.  It does have the advantage that it is more "self-aware" - to operate it you should be consciously looking for bias, rather than assuming you haven't got any.

On how much you can lay aside your culture, it depends a degree how much you try.  But it is very difficult to unlearn stuff.  So, I know about the existence of viruses and bacteria and how they can cause ill health.  I know insects can vector disease.  I cannot therefore take an explanation that malaria is caused by bad air at face value.  I look up in the sky and I know that we are orbiting the sun, not it orbiting us.  And so on.

We also need to be cautious.  We can think we understand how someone in the past thought but we have actually a fairly limited sample of ancient thinking to go on.  Not many Roman auxiliaries or Persian cavalrymen have left us their memoires, for example.  We usually get the thoughts of an educated elite - generals, philosophers, jurists and so on.  So there is a danger of thinking we can get closer than we can to the ancient mind set.

Anyone, its all getting off the topic.  Let us bask in a rare consensus that we are trying to reduce our cultural biases.

[Erpingham]

As a final point about amphorae and then I am definitely dropping the subject, a shard-hill of 50+ million amphorae in Rome represents part of a regular import of something like 300 000 amphorae per year over, say, two centuries. That means that in the same period of time 800 million wine amphorae were also imported, enough for Rome's own mini-Everest. Where have those shards gone? If they've gone, why worry about a few hundred thousand amphorae per food dump along the Aegean coastline?

I think maybe you are too focussed on Monte Testaccio, which is, as far as I know, unique.  What you would be looking for is a pot scatter containing amphora fragments.  In a depot handling thousands of amphorae you'd be breaking some.  The fragments of these would be dumped somewhere or just left where they fell.  I seriously doubt the Persian forces on campaign, passing from site to site daily, would be collecting up fragments to use as ostraca.  Also, the most diagnostic bits - rims and handles - don't make good ostraca.  They are also big and chunky and endure in archaeological contexts.  Honestly, if a site is using amphorae in the ancient world, they will turn up.  If they are handling lots, lots will turn up.