Falsifying Hannibal's numbers

[philjones62]

I note that Academia are inviting comments on Steven James' paper on the above.  I am not sure how broadly this is accessible.

[Andreas Johansson]

James' paper appears to be freely available to anyone with an Academia account:

https://www.academia.edu/96335573/How_Polybius_Falsified_Hannibals_Army_Numbers_of_218_BC

(If you don't have an account, creating a basic one sufficient to read this is free.)

[Ian61]

Am I missing something here, the text keeps mentioning the size of Hannibal's army and then crunching numbers for Roman / Allied forces. I consider myself a fairly numerate person but this has left me baffled.

[Erpingham]

Well, it has the typical Steven James love of numbers    I think a fundamental issue is he doesn't explain why a Roman author would assume Hannibal's army mirrored Roman army structures or why they would think it reflected a set number of legions.  Perhaps this is explained in another extract from this multi-volume work?

[DBS]

Quite.  All I could conclude is an assumption that Polybius and his Roman mates could only work in legion equivalents.  And anyone credible would not call allied forces "legions"...

[Duncan Head]

And anyone credible would not call allied forces "legions"...

Livy does 

OK, admittedly not until Magnesia, thirty or so years later...

[Cantabrigian]

I haven't read the paper, but the idea that army strengths might have been inaccurate or deliberately inflated doesn't sound like breaking news.

What am I missing?

[Duncan Head]

What am I missing?

The idea that all Roman historians (in this case, Polybios's Roman source Cincius Alimentus) described enemy forces in numbers that exactly matched a number of Roman and/or allied Italian legions.

[DBS]

And anyone credible would not call allied forces "legions"...

Livy does 

OK, admittedly not until Magnesia, thirty or so years later...

And then writing it all up nearly two centuries later...