Concerning First Punic War

rldragon

I have recently been reading the "Carthage must be destroyed" by Richard Miles, and some of the figures of armies he mentions are simply astronomical. When I tried to check them up (the universal quick and dirty way, wikipedia), similar figures appeared.

So, my question to those in the know, how large were exactly those armies of Rome and Carthage?
 
Huehuecoyotl

Huehuecoyotl

Well, the First Punic War did last over 20 years. The figures cited might be the total number of combatants across that entire period.
 

Monopolist

I have to agree that that is a fantastic book, well worth reading. :cool:

The thing with the First Punic War was that is was primarily a naval war, and naval battles tended to have more extreme casualty counts than land battles. I can't think of any land battles from that war off the top of my head that featured more than forty thousand combatants (from what I recall battles tended to feature 10-15,000 soldiers on each side), but the sea battles were huge. The Aegates Islands had both sides contribute over 200 ships; each trireme had about 200 men on it, which means that both navies had over 40,000 sailors, plus marines! And Cape Ecnomus had over 300 ships for both sides, meaning that there were over 120,000 people in the battle! And every ship that was sunk meant that all 200 of its crew drowned... that adds up really quickly. Trireme battles were a really nasty business.

EDIT: Derp, I don't know how I forgot that many of the ships by this time were quinqueremes :eek:... I'm not sure how many sailors a quinquereme could hold, but I'm sure it's a little more than what a trireme could, meaning the numbers I listed were actually even larger!
 
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Monopolist

Alternate History Geek said:
Riiiiiiiiiight.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I don't know if the sarcasm was necessary, but fair point. Not every member of a sunken trireme's crew would drown; I shouldn't have said that, I was just trying to make it easy by counting 200 for every ship. A high percentage would though, since I would bet that few rowers were trained quality swimmers that can survive a long swim in a chaotic environment all the way back to the shore. Those that managed to survive by grabbing on to some part of the wreckage could either be saved, or captured or killed, depending on which side won the battle. The casualty count probably would not be all 200; in actuality it probably varied quite strongly between which side won and which side lost, with a sunken ship from a losing fleet perhaps losing almost its entire crew, whereas a sunken ship from a victorious fleet might be able to salvage half of it or more.

Now, considering how a quinquereme's crew is twice that of a trireme (420 to 200), I would bet that a sunken quinquereme would lose over 200 men on average.... :p But I was talking about a trireme there, so point you.
 
Errnge

Errnge

Well, most of Carthage's (and other Hellenistic armies) were comprised mostly of hired mercenaries with a core of native elites. In Carthage specifically you had the Sacred Band, a contingent of elite Punic hoplite citizen soldiers, usually complemented by Numidian Cavalry, Iberian and Celtic infantry, and others. The actual armies Carthage mustered that were non-mercenary were probably in the range of 5000 to 10,000
 

pternagy

I can't comment on casualty rates for specific battles, but what I can say is that there is a very widespread belief, nearly universal in what I have read, that ancient sources exaggerated the sizes of armies and the casualties in the battles they reported. Some of the exaggerations have been suggestions about errors in scale (a minor example would be thinking a century has 100 mean instead of 60, an author who counted centuries would increase an army's size by two-thirds) and just plain throwing out cool numbers.

I always read numbers in ancient and medieval sources the same way I read speeches. They are they to give the flavor or what happened, they are not necessarily what actually happened. If I see a big number, I think "A Lot." if I see a small number, I think "A Few."
 
SlyDessertFox

SlyDessertFox

pternagy said:
I can't comment on casualty rates for specific battles, but what I can say is that there is a very widespread belief, nearly universal in what I have read, that ancient sources exaggerated the sizes of armies and the casualties in the battles they reported. Some of the exaggerations have been suggestions about errors in scale (a minor example would be thinking a century has 100 mean instead of 60, an author who counted centuries would increase an army's size by two-thirds) and just plain throwing out cool numbers.

I always read numbers in ancient and medieval sources the same way I read speeches. They are they to give the flavor or what happened, they are not necessarily what actually happened. If I see a big number, I think "A Lot." if I see a small number, I think "A Few."
Click to expand...

I thought a century was 80 men?
 

pternagy

slydessertfox said:
I thought a century was 80 men?
Click to expand...

It varied from time to time. Now that I think about it, I have no idea what the specific number would have been in the First Punic War.

My point still stands, more or less. Though I suppose 125% is a much more manageable overstatement.
 
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