Overestimated historical states

"Bah, that was only an ambush, nothing to worry about."
-Marc Antony after losing two legions and most of his siege engines


So the Parthians were weak because their superior mobility allowed them to initiate battles on terms that favoured them and generally dictate the course of the war? If the Romans are too slow to force engagements then that's their problem, not Parthia's.

Not underestimating ambushes as a tactic, just saying that in a pitched battle, Romans would more likely beat the Parthians than the opposite.

Besides, Antonius’ campaign was doomed from the start, he went on with it too late in the season, and was an essy prey for the Parthians. The fact that he also was a commander with many, many shortcomings also didn’t help.
 
Do you actually struggle with it though? I have to ask because you seem to be able to believe such high numbers without any skepticism, I don't think one can entertain ancient historians as a whole when they come up with such numbers.
It's a multifaceted question, and I think you're doing a grave injustice to the topic by reducing it to believing ancient historians or not. A person can accept evidence that supports large ancient armies while still not understanding why later armies weren't as large.

But if it's all contingent on choice why would anyone stop doing it? Why would someone purposefully limit its manpower and forces? Ultimately there must be a financial, logisticial and strategical reason to do so, it can't be all political and economic structures, otherwise I'd argue we would see those structures converge towards the most military capable states if structures alone allow for such huge armies to be raised. Anything else, like individual unit quality, would pale in confront to the ability of one state to mobilize so many more men. Also I think we shouldn't seek easy explanations such as the elimination of the full freemen levy, because we would actually need to see if such a thing is actually possible to begin with in settled societies and whether it was ever actually used, especially in societies with large amount of freemen.

What's your standard of proof for establishing that universal levies existed in antiquity? Right now, it really seems like you're flat out unwilling to consider any rates of mobilization over 2-3%, no matter how many historical sources widely accepted (with caveats) by qualified modern analysts one produces. Regarding the elimination of universal service, sometimes the good of the elites isn't the good of the community as a whole; if elites have to concede power to common people to improve their collective warmaking ability, it's a real question whether they'll go through with it. Maybe the common people don't want to be compelled to pay taxes and fight for the state. There's a lot of potential explanations that don't rely on simple voluntary choice; that's what we should be talking about, not whether to throw out every ancient historian's figures.

The Romans spent plenty on public works, specifically in the imperial era they also had subsidies of various kinds, internal and external. Even the professional Roman army of the late principate didn't compromise all of the state expenditure(it amounted to about 60-65%) and left a lot of room for other stuff.

https://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/scheidel/041201.pdf

In the Mid Republic, the budget spent on war across 43 years averaged a bit under 80% (see Michael James Taylor's dissertation Manpower, Finance, and the Rise of Rome), which included some years of much lower military activity than others; in years of peak activity, it's only natural for this share to encompass almost all the annual revenue available.

And modern armies have a lot better technology, demographics and bureaucratic structures, if you want to compared relatively untrained levies then the Romans still levied armies on the relative scale of Napoleonic mass levy(well quite bigger apparently, 2-3% vs 5% or 10-14%).
The extreme examples from the modern period are fairly comparable. Sweden during the Great Northern War and Prussia during the Seven Years and Napoleonic Wars were able to raise 6-7% of their population; the mostly non-industrial Confederacy in the ACW had 11-12% mobilization, despite the much more sophisticated military machine at work.

Which census exactly? Also I'm not sure why we have to entertain the idea that Hannibal had an actual 1:30 ratio disadvantage and that the Italians could mobilize upwards of the 10% of their population, at some point we must be able to say that X historian is wrong regardless of what supposedly good sources he had.

The censuses of the Mid Republic through the early Principate we have through Livy; with a couple exceptions (source critics suspect corrupt manuscripts), they record 200-270,000 citizens in the late 3rd early 2nd century. Also, I think you misread that passage from Polybios; we wasn't fighting 770,000 men at once, that was the pool of assidui the Romans could draw on, while if you add up the forces they had under arms for active campaigning, the total is a bit over 250,000. At the beginning of the war, the Romans raised about 60,000 men; one army of 20,000 fought in Spain, while the other, recalled from Sicily, joined the local forces for a total of 40,000; at the same time, Hannibal had recruited the local Gauls to reinforce his army to about 40,000. Depending on what estimates you use, the Romans raised about 175,000 men at their peak, as did Carthage; most of the Romans were in Italy containing Hannibal, while Hannibal's brothers in Spain were defending their manpower base with the bulk of Carthage's forces. None of the comparative balance or distribution of forces breaks probability; each side had a relatively defensive posture, protecting their manpower bases with forces close to hand, while attacking the enemy's base of power. If the Romans began the war less mobilized than they could have been, that's hardly unprecedented; it's very easy to misjudge the strength of an enemy, and false concepts of economy have proven difficult to get rid of.

Archaeological evidence such as? I'm being repetitive but you should link when you mention such things. Also what does it mean, "able to bear"? I don't doubt there were 50k male adults in the regions.

Douwe Yntema's analysis ("Polybius and the Field Survey Evidence from Apulia" in People, Land, and Politics: Demographic Developments and the Transformation of Roman Italy 300 BC–AD 14) of things like settlement size, density, and distribution accords with Polybios's population data, which was derived from the same source as the army numbers; it's hardly credible that the same official records would have an accurate survey of population, but wildly inaccurate numbers for their own armies, which were after all their priority.

Depends on the nature of war but it shouldn't go much above 2-3% for non-local conflicts for agricultural based countries. That's just a general figure, obviously specific cases the ceiling could be higher or lower(though not to the levels ancient historian go)

And how do you divine this figure? Actually, don't tell me, because if you can turn this into a book and apply this to the study of ancient warfare, disproving a century of analysis by the best and brightest the academy has to offer, you're on the track to becoming one of the greatest ever historians of ancient warfare.
 
BTW @John7755 يوحنا , those figures you gave for the Assyrians, Abbassids and Sassanids, where did they come from or how did people go about estimating them?

Abbasids sources: al-Tabari and al-Ma’sudi tells us usually of the army sizes. In the Amorium invasion, al-Tabari tells us that the largest army the caliphate had ever mustered was 73k or so warriors, split into two armies. General Abbasid fiend armies were no more than 10k warriors and most accounts we have are less than this. Al-Tabari mentioned that the Byzantines had rallied their army which at its maximum was 75-82k and was defeated by the 35k strong army of al-Afshin.

Sassanids: standing Sassanid armies under Khosrow’s reforms, were 12k by region and multiplied by 8 spāhbed, these are 96k. The army size would decline to 70k later as investigations. Sassanid armies found grow to be 40k though or larger but only for specific campaigns. Nobles would be called up and bring with them, the true military prowess of the empire. The Sassanid imperial armies make sense in their size and number both in terms of accounts, evidences and so forth.

Assyrian: The Akkadian speaking world at this juncture, especially the Assyrian empire, kept diligent records for the time through their letter exchanges. We find many references not of historic nature to numbers of soldiers and numbers of armies and after this, we fill in the few blanks left for us based on the information copied to us, on both the amount of food, road work, horses, donkeys, etc needed for campaigns. One such example of everyday complaint, is a bureaucrat needing more resources complains of not having enough goods or as having poor roads to traverse his soldiers and the need of sending a group of Itu’ean soldiers.
 
The thing about city states is that they don’t have the type of bureaucratic inefficiencies that plagued large empires—they also have far greater sense of civic duty among their citizenry, not to mention have the wealth to purchase grain and mercenary support to support warfare that normal feudal could not afford. This means that they could mobilise a greater percentage of their population than feudal entities.We know for example that the Republic of Venice could raise armies and fleets larger than 10k rather. In the Fourth Crusade, Venice alone contributed 10,000 oarsmen and marines, whereas the feudal crusaders only have around 12,000 men. IIRC, Venice also had a standing force of 5-8k spread out across it’s colonies in the 14th to 15th century.

I don’t think that Rome is a good comparison because the Roman state is a typical of example of bureaucratic inefficiency. A lot of governing was outsourced to local elites who collect taxes on Rome’s behalf.If we are to look at Rome’s earlier days when the spirit of their citizenry was highest however,they did raise armies in excess of 100k during the Punic War.
 
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The thing about city states is that they don’t have the type of bureaucratic inefficiencies that plagued large empires—they also have far greater sense of civic duty within their citizenry, not to mention have the wealth to purchase grain and mercenary support to support warfare that normal feudal could not afford. This means that they could mobilise a greater percentage of their population than feudal entities.We know for example that the Republic of Venice could raise armies and fleets larger than 10k rather. In the Fourth Crusade, Venice alone contributed 10,000 oarsmen and marines, whereas the feudal crusaders only have around 12,000 men. IIRC, Venice also had a standing force of 5-8k spread out across it’s colonies in the 14th to 15th century.

I don’t think that Rome is a good comparison because the Roman state is a typical of example of bureaucratic inefficiency. A lot of governing was outsourced to local elites who collect taxes on Rome’s behalf.If we are to look at Rome’s earlier days when the spirit of their citizenry was highest however,they did raise armies in excess of 100k during the Punic War.

I do not dispute armies of 100k, only this view that the Achaemenids could raise armies in the vicinity of 1 million or 2 million or even over 100k for a single campaign into Greece. I also dispute the notion that Greek cities could levy more than say 3-4K warriors freely.

Venice was a larger city than most of these Greek states, with a larger percentage of non-slaves.
 
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@dandan_noodles You seem to be switching the goal post. We know steppe empires could levy larger percentages of their populace than most peoples. We also understand that a host of migratory people can unleash large numbers in an instant. However, to assume these practices existed in the Achaemenid empire or Rome to any serious degree, is not reasonable. Assyria also levied soldiers essentially every year to invade peoples in the old and Middle Kingdoms, yet do we believe that every free man in Assyria legitimately campaigned every year?

Even in China, most battles in the 7th century under the Tang have less than 80k soldiers combatting. At Suiyang, the combat over this location lasted a year and the Yan forces sent 100k over an entire year to take the location! In the wars in Korea, the Tang armies are less than 40k always and the Koreans vary and are always below 50k. At Talas, the Anxi protectorate arrived with no more than 25k warriors. Is the opinion of the opposing posters, that Greek city states could levy greater numbers of soldiers than the Tang Dynasty!?
Talk about moving the goal posts. I didn't claim every ancient citizen campaigned every year; I said that in Greece and Rome, all free men of a given economic strata were subject to military obligations, and in peak years this represented a significant proportion of the free men. Taylor estimates the average Roman assidui completed about 6 years of campaigning in the Mid Republic, or about 1/5th of the time he was liable to military service. It's reasonable to believe ancient cities/tribes raised armies by levies of free men because that's what ancient people tell us about their own societies. If Greek armies tried to match the quality and equipment of Tang Chinese troops, yeah, their armies would be a lot smaller, but it's pretty arbitrary to think that a completely different force composition would be unable to match a simple headcount for at least a portion of the campaign season. Tbh I'm not entirely sure what you're proposing; are you claiming that because societies like Greece and Rome supposedly couldn't possibly have mobilized militia armies to the tune of 5-10% of the population, they had to be as small a percentage as in Imperial China, and professional soldiers, or that their militia armies made up no greater a share of the population as professional armies?

Your Rome scenario is frankly comical, and really below your own standards of intelligent argument we've seen elsewhere on this forum. Rome's frontiers in the Principate demanded permanent occupation, for which a mass levy is not suitable; 10-20% of the men in a community can be away from their trades for a few seasons, but not indefinitely. Moreover, a subject population as culturally heterogenous as that of the Principate, who have no voice in affairs of war and peace, would probably not tolerate mass mobilization of that kind; revolts against conscription in the Vendee during the French Revolution cost far more men to put down than they were intended to produce, after all. In Rome's strategic situation, simply demanding money by which they could pay volunteers (Italy's agricultural sector had a lot of surplus men) to man the frontiers full time was as sound an approach as was possible.

I do not dispute armies of 100k, only this view that the Achaemenids could raise armies in the vicinity of 1 million or 2 million or even over 100k for a single campaign into Greece. I also dispute the notion that Greek cities could levy more than say 3-4K warriors freely.
No one is claiming the Achaemenids had million man armies. However, we know that Xerxes' host was so large as to preclude resistance north of the Isthmus by several of the largest Greek states. A large body of historical evidence supports the idea of armies of several thousand men by the larger Greek cities (places larger than Tegea); to be able to easily crush such a force (almost 40,000 heavy infantry and at least as many light troops), the Great King would need an army of about 100,000. This is borne out by details like the attested size of the Persian camp at Plataea, which was not an exaggeration, since it's considerably smaller than would be necessary for an army of the exaggerated proportions Herodotos gives us. If he was just making it up, he would have made the numbers match up.
 
And they were unwise to think so, because they were at the end of the day, and the smartest of them knew it.

Vercingetorix is literally the one who said so.

But that’s the point, Roman armies were becoming more and more professional, it wasn’t just in Gaul this was happening.

These specific Romans were becoming more experienced by dint of their strategic situation; most of the Gallic warriors probably would have been quite experienced as well, warfare being far more common in divided, tribal Gaul than in Italy.

Shields can be overbearing in a way that well crafted armor isn’t. If one of the many pila thrown by the legions got stuck in them, they became too heavy to be wielded and essentially useless.

A Roman without his shield is done for, and his armor probably wouldn't save him from a direct pila hit either.

Romans had barely just managed to have standard equipment for all their soldiers, and they were significantly more advanced than the Gauls. How could the more distant tribes inhabiting the north actually match them in equipment?

More advanced in metal work? Seems hard to sustain in light of the fact they imported their steel from an Alpine Celtic kingdom. As long as a Gallic warrior had his shield, helmet, sword/spear, and javelins, he would be able to fight on pretty even terms with the Romans one on one; equipment is pretty much never the reason for victory or defeat in Roman narratives.

From the De Bello Gallico “Many among the legionaries dared jump upon the ceiling of shields formed by the phalanxes, and having pulled away the shields with their hands, they attacked the enemies from above. The barbarians on the left wing were pushed back and routed, but on the right wing they put our men in danger with their numerical superiority”

It wasn’t that the “phalanxes” were solid enough to push back the Romans, it was their numbers that did. I’m not saying that they didn’t overlap their shields, but from there to actually compare it to a real phalanx is a long shot.

So the Thebans weren't in phalanx when they lined up fifty deep and crushed the Spartans with superior numbers at Leuktra? You make arbitrary semantic distinctions without foundation in the facts; 'charging, smashing through with numbers' is as generic a description of ancient tactics as it gets, good order or no. The fact that Romans describe Gallic and German formations (and not, say Spanish troops, though in that case Latin writers have a different term for their battle order) as phalanxes indicates that they did have good order.

Yes, and it’s a shame we don’t have the details of those battles, but that defeat was probably more due to Carbo’s incompetence than anything. Charging recklessly against the enemy is one thing, which is what the Gauls do in most of book 2’s encounters, charging in orderly manner is another. It’s not that the Gauls never did so, but most of the time the Romans took high ground and the Gauls attacked them.

Shouldn't we then be talking about the specific failings of Celtic or German commanders, then, rather than blaming the troops and exonerating Roman soldiers for any role in their defeats?

At Telamon at least the Celts easily managed to match the Romans, who had fortuitously received reinforcements a short while before.

I still can’t remember an instance where a Roman general blamed his failure upon his soldiers honestly, I might be wrong about that.
No, they didn't match the Romans, they were significantly outnumbered and outflanked as a result of the strategic maneuvering of the two Roman armies. If a Roman army was caught in this situation, they'd almost certainly be destroyed.

Read Rosenstein; Roman generals absolutely blamed their troops for defeats. During the Spanish Wars, "C. Hostilius Mancinus came before the senate to exculpate himself for his disastrous retreat from Numantia and defend his humiliating surrender and the treaty that followed. He laid the blame in part on the lazy, unmanageable army he had inherited from his predecessor Pompeius and went on to assert that it had been the cause of the latter's defeats as well."
 
The various Vietnamese dynasties are hella overrated. Vietnam's military record is genuinely really impressive, but I think a lot of people (especially those writing books about why America was "destined to lose") tend to exaggerate it. "Vietnam has a history of resisting and repelling invaders" yeah, and it has an almost as long history of being conquered, colonized, and vassalized. If they were really the military power some make them out to be, then they would have never spent a century labouring on French rubber plantations in the first place.

Another thing that tends to get backwards projected by some people is 20th century Vietnamese nationalism. Vietnam was disunited for a very long period of time, there was a lot of distance and geographical features between the Mekong delta and the Red River Delta, as well as some notable cultural differences (such as with religion, Mahayana in the north, Theravada in the south). I think a PoD in the 1700s could result in distinct southern and northern nations.
 
It's a multifaceted question, and I think you're doing a grave injustice to the topic by reducing it to believing ancient historians or not. A person can accept evidence that supports large ancient armies while still not understanding why later armies weren't as large.
But you remain with a very incomplete picture, you might as well interpret things the other way and it wouldn't be any different. If we didn't have ancient sources giving specific, you think we would come to the same conclusions?

What's your standard of proof for establishing that universal levies existed in antiquity? Right now, it really seems like you're flat out unwilling to consider any rates of mobilization over 2-3%,
Battlefield archeology, other types of archaeology, comparative studies etc.
I'm not flat out unwilling to consider them, but we have no reason to start the discussion from those ancient sources and walk our way backwards which is what many do.

Regarding the elimination of universal service, sometimes the good of the elites isn't the good of the community as a whole; if elites have to concede power to common people to improve their collective warmaking ability, it's a real question whether they'll go through with it. Maybe the common people don't want to be compelled to pay taxes and fight for the state. There's a lot of potential explanations that don't rely on simple voluntary choice; that's what we should be talking about, not whether to throw out every ancient historian's figures.
We can't start another discussion by bypassing the reason we are having the discussion to begin with.


In the Mid Republic, the budget spent on war across 43 years averaged a bit under 80% (see Michael James Taylor's dissertation Manpower, Finance, and the Rise of Rome), which included some years of much lower military activity than others; in years of peak activity, it's only natural for this share to encompass almost all the annual revenue available.
Your sources gives 70% actually, in any case this could potentially be a pointless argument considering allied armies(after your source) were not paid directly and they constituted a huge part of the army, I'm not sure what your calculation used to begin with so maybe using that 250k figure might be creating weird results.

The extreme examples from the modern period are fairly comparable. Sweden during the Great Northern War and Prussia during the Seven Years and Napoleonic Wars were able to raise 6-7% of their population;
I'm not fully sure, but the Swedish peak figure didn't last for long and generally those level of mobilization(especially with the casualties) are considered to have been very taxing on the population, the Prussian figures on the other end, at least in the Seven Years wars, relied on a lot of foreign troops outside Prussian territories, in any case we are talking about 18th century exceptional examples there.

the mostly non-industrial Confederacy in the ACW had 11-12% mobilization, despite the much more sophisticated military machine at work.
I don't think the peak force was ever that big compared to population:

https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/images/npscw_facts-01.jpg

Even excluding slaves it's still 6-7% at most(with slaves is 3%), plus we are talking about a 19th century there, regardless of how backwards the CSA was economically. Not sure that's a good proxy for Roman armies 2 millennia prior.

The censuses of the Mid Republic through the early Principate we have through Livy; with a couple exceptions (source critics suspect corrupt manuscripts), they record 200-270,000 citizens in the late 3rd early 2nd century.
I'm not sure if I follow the logic and numbers, we have the Roman censuses giving those number of people and we have Polybius giving those number of potential troops, so why does it matter if the 250k army coincided with the figure of citizens, did this army just include only Roman citizens and basically incorporate the vast majority of them? And if not then I don't see how the census itself supports those figures and if does it again raises the levels of mobilization in Italy even further given we need to account for allied armies, making this whole claim even less likely.


Douwe Yntema's analysis ("Polybius and the Field Survey Evidence from Apulia" in People, Land, and Politics: Demographic Developments and the Transformation of Roman Italy 300 BC–AD 14) of things like settlement size, density, and distribution accords with Polybios's population data, which was derived from the same source as the army numbers; it's hardly credible that the same official records would have an accurate survey of population, but wildly inaccurate numbers for their own armies, which were after all their priority.
So Polybius figures roughly match the estimated population if we assume that all adult males(which also have to compromise 20% of the population) were assidui? I mean sure it hits the mark(well honestly the author could have tweaked the percentage of the total population that is adult male or taken into consideration proletarii and slaves if he needed the numbers to differ) but I'm not sure what good this does ultimately when talking about mobilized forces specifically.

For example this is what Paul Erdkamp says about Polybius figures(and Polybious was trying hard to be the most accurate he could be):

Few ancient figures are problem-free and taken at face value in modern studies, and a case in point is Polybius II 24, which has been debated and variously interpreted by modern scholars.
Two centuries of scholarship have resulted in three interpretations of the figures outlined above. Few scholars have accepted Polybius’ figures as correct.
Most have found it necessary either to reject or alter some of his figures, or to correct Polybius on what his figures exactly mean. A notable exception is Lo Cascio, whose interpretation adheres much more closely to the text.
Although the survey of arms and manpower in Polybius II 24 is possibly based on official figures, it is a construct in the sense that deliberate choices were made concerning the form in which the available numbers were presented.
Figures are given for regional or ‘ethnic’ entities: Latins, Samnites, Iapygians and Messapians, Lucanians, and Marsi, Marrucini, Frentani and Vestini. Obviously these entities are not utterly without foundation.
They may reflect the perception in Rome of ethno-political blocs among its allies, but the entities did not have any administrative or military purpose, which may also explain the many difficulties modern scholars have with their apparent incomplete and arbitrary nature.

https://www.academia.edu/4752150/Polybius_2.24._Roman_manpower_and_Greek_propaganda

And how do you divine this figure? Actually, don't tell me, because if you can turn this into a book and apply this to the study of ancient warfare, disproving a century of analysis by the best and brightest the academy has to offer, you're on the track to becoming one of the greatest ever historians of ancient warfare.
Pointless snarky remark is pointless. You ask me a question, I give a general answer and you reply this way, nice.
 
The various Vietnamese dynasties are hella overrated. Vietnam's military record is genuinely really impressive, but I think a lot of people (especially those writing books about why America was "destined to lose") tend to exaggerate it. "Vietnam has a history of resisting and repelling invaders" yeah, and it has an almost as long history of being conquered, colonized, and vassalized. If they were really the military power some make them out to be, then they would have never spent a century labouring on French rubber plantations in the first place.

Another thing that tends to get backwards projected by some people is 20th century Vietnamese nationalism. Vietnam was disunited for a very long period of time, there was a lot of distance and geographical features between the Mekong delta and the Red River Delta, as well as some notable cultural differences (such as with religion, Mahayana in the north, Theravada in the south). I think a PoD in the 1700s could result in distinct southern and northern nations.
I feel like this is similar to this weird history meme that Afghanistan is a "graveyard of empires", which I'm not even sure where it comes from.
 
Vercingetorix is literally the one who said so.

And the one who avoided battle after saying that.



These specific Romans were becoming more experienced by dint of their strategic situation; most of the Gallic warriors probably would have been quite experienced as well, warfare being far more common in divided, tribal Gaul than in Italy.

Warfare in Gaul must have been as frequent as it was in Italy in the fifth century, small raids led by one tribe against the other. Gauls didn’t have officers training them, and they didn’t fight in distinguished units, or for a defined period of time. What experience a Gaul got was personal to him, as warrior, what experience the Romans got counted for the whole army. That’s the difference between a professional army and one simply made by some good elements.



A Roman without his shield is done for, and his armor probably wouldn't save him from a direct pila hit either.

But the Gauls didn’t have pila did they? They had spears, of course, but they weren’t much for throwing them, they preferred rushing the Romans to prevent them from using the pila.





More advanced in metal work? Seems hard to sustain in light of the fact they imported their steel from an Alpine Celtic kingdom. As long as a Gallic warrior had his shield, helmet, sword/spear, and javelins, he would be able to fight on pretty even terms with the Romans one on one; equipment is pretty much never the reason for victory or defeat in Roman narratives.

The Galatians, who were all naked and destroyed by Roman pila, would beg to differ. In Gaul?

I still doubt every Gallic soldier wouls be equipped with shield, helmet, sword/spear and javelin. Most foot soldiers would have lacked at least one of those.



So the Thebans weren't in phalanx when they lined up fifty deep and crushed the Spartans with superior numbers at Leuktra? You make arbitrary semantic distinctions without foundation in the facts; 'charging, smashing through with numbers' is as generic a description of ancient tactics as it gets, good order or no. The fact that Romans describe Gallic and German formations (and not, say Spanish troops, though in that case Latin writers have a different term for their battle order) as phalanxes indicates that they did have good order.

The Thebans didn’t rush towards the Spartans, there was method in what they did, which is not always the case for Celts. For one of their wings which fights in good order, there’s another that just runs towards the enemy while the Romans stand ground.



Shouldn't we then be talking about the specific failings of Celtic or German commanders, then, rather than blaming the troops and exonerating Roman soldiers for any role in their defeats?

What generals? It was a rare occurence for a Gallic army to have one single commander in charge of the whole army. They weren’t that organized most of the time.


No, they didn't match the Romans, they were significantly outnumbered and outflanked as a result of the strategic maneuvering of the two Roman armies. If a Roman army was caught in this situation, they'd almost certainly be destroyed.

Read Rosenstein; Roman generals absolutely blamed their troops for defeats. During the Spanish Wars, "C. Hostilius Mancinus came before the senate to exculpate himself for his disastrous retreat from Numantia and defend his humiliating surrender and the treaty that followed. He laid the blame in part on the lazy, unmanageable army he had inherited from his predecessor Pompeius and went on to assert that it had been the cause of the latter's defeats as well."

And for Telamon I stand corrected, but it still was a fortuitous circumstance. Had the second army not happened to be passing there, numbers would have been more equal. Moreover, I went to reread some details of the battle, and it’s essentially a battle where equipment was making the difference. The Romans slaughtered several Celts because they were fighting naked, and their weapons couldn’t match those of the Romans. Again, how much probable is it that Gauls from the northern region wouldn’t also fight naked and that their equipment wouldn’t also be of a lesser quality?

I really just remembered Mancinus being proud of his surrender and playing the card of the man who did what needed to be done. My bad.
 
But you remain with a very incomplete picture, you might as well interpret things the other way and it wouldn't be any different. If we didn't have ancient sources giving specific, you think we would come to the same conclusions?
We'd probably come to no conclusions, because the written sources are utterly essential for the in depth study of the ancient world. If you read about a period or place for which there aren't written sources and compare it to a period where there's a surviving history, the historiography is like night and day. It frankly beggars the imagination that you think this is a legitimate question. We'd come to different conclusions if our biggest source of evidence was removed, and if my aunt had a dick she'd be my uncle. We should strive to conform our theoretical assumptions to the evidence, not discard evidence based on arbitrary assumptions.

Battlefield archeology, other types of archaeology, comparative studies etc.
I'm not flat out unwilling to consider them, but we have no reason to start the discussion from those ancient sources and walk our way backwards which is what many do.

Think of it this way. Could you put together an intelligible history of the Seven Years War from battlefield archaeology alone? Compare that to writing a history based just on written sources.

We do have a reason to start with our sources, they contain far more detail about political and military events than any other kind of evidence, and often come directly from the people who experienced the history in question. They represent human communication, whereas archaeology relies on lots of abstract reasoning and theoretical extrapolation on the basis of voiceless inanimate objects. Moreover, when these sources are relatively consistent across decades, even centuries, and provide lots of specifics (number of legions? got it. composition of legions? say no more. proportion of allies to citizen troops? pay rates? rations?), it's increasingly hard to conclude they're making wild exaggerations. Do you think Polybios and Livy are wrong about the number of legions?

We can't start another discussion by bypassing the reason we are having the discussion to begin with.

We can start by looking at actually attested historical phenomena for explanations before jumping to flatly contradicting pretty much all the ancient evidence.

Your sources gives 70% actually, in any case this could potentially be a pointless argument considering allied armies(after your source) were not paid directly and they constituted a huge part of the army, I'm not sure what your calculation used to begin with so maybe using that 250k figure might be creating weird results.

The assumption is that the Socii were not taxed dramatically less by their home communities than the Romans were; using this as the basis for an estimate for the confederation's collective revenue, even the peak mobilizations are generally pretty close to annual revenue. Some years have surpluses, sometimes harsher taxes are levied, states build up warchests; it's hardly unprecedented for a year of intense campaigning to cost more than a state's annual revenue. Even if we only look at troops in Roman pay, the peak figures are within the reach of state finances. In the case of Egypt, their attested forces of 160,000 men in the army and fleet only represent about half the annual revenue, but would require about 4% of the population; Macedonian armies could reach 10% while still only requiring half the estimated revenue of the state.


I'm not fully sure, but the Swedish peak figure didn't last for long and generally those level of mobilization(especially with the casualties) are considered to have been very taxing on the population, the Prussian figures on the other end, at least in the Seven Years wars, relied on a lot of foreign troops outside Prussian territories, in any case we are talking about 18th century exceptional examples there.
Yeah, peak figures don't last long, they're peak figures. Thing is, big important wars that we like to study tend to drive the figures higher, even when it's taxing on the population, because the stakes in war are so high. Yeah, mobilizing a lot of men puts pressure on the economy, but if it's a question of temporarily increased food prices vs devastation and conquest, that's a non-question. That said, the way Roman agriculture was organized, families often ended up past the point of diminishing returns for farm labor, so each son serving in a campaign every five years didn't actually represent the loss of much economic value. In the Prussian case, the people of the kingdom were producing enough surplus to hire foreign troops. I think it's telling that among professional historians of Roman demography, the question isn't whether the Romans could have matched the Prussian/Swedish peaks, but if they doubled it; that they raised huge armies is not disputed by any scholar I'm aware of.

I'm not sure if I follow the logic and numbers, we have the Roman censuses giving those number of people and we have Polybius giving those number of potential troops, so why does it matter if the 250k army coincided with the figure of citizens, did this army just include only Roman citizens and basically incorporate the vast majority of them? And if not then I don't see how the census itself supports those figures and if does it again raises the levels of mobilization in Italy even further given we need to account for allied armies, making this whole claim even less likely.

So Polybius figures roughly match the estimated population if we assume that all adult males(which also have to compromise 20% of the population) were assidui? I mean sure it hits the mark(well honestly the author could have tweaked the percentage of the total population that is adult male or taken into consideration proletarii and slaves if he needed the numbers to differ) but I'm not sure what good this does ultimately when talking about mobilized forces specifically.

Polybios breaks down the men available for service, and we can see that the number of Romans and Campanians matches up with the census figures for Roman citizens. The census figures, combined with the archaeology, show that Polybios's figures for men able to bear arms are roughly accurate; this establishes a pool armies can be drawn from. Moreover, it reinforces the overall reliability of this passage, as it's unlikely he's going to be right about number of men available for service and completely wildly wrong about how many served like you seem to think. That these men were primarily assidui is supported by the great difficulties the Romans had finding proletarii to serve in the fleet as rowers during the Second Punic War.

Pointless snarky remark is pointless. You ask me a question, I give a general answer and you reply this way, nice.
The point is that your confidence in this figure, completely contrary to the consensus of generations of experts, does not correspond to the strength of evidence for it. What's more likely: your assumptions about the military capacity of ancient societies are fallible, or historians for the past century have been huffing paint and missed this apparently obvious fact?
 
Warfare in Gaul must have been as frequent as it was in Italy in the fifth century, small raids led by one tribe against the other. Gauls didn’t have officers training them, and they didn’t fight in distinguished units, or for a defined period of time. What experience a Gaul got was personal to him, as warrior, what experience the Romans got counted for the whole army. That’s the difference between a professional army and one simply made by some good elements.

These aren't 19th century armies with professional general staffs rigorously analyzing campaigns and incorporating their experience into training and doctrine. Roman armies got disbanded at the end of the governor's term; that experience mostly gets flushed. Roman soldiers in the Late Republic were drawn from an increasingly demilitarized core territory; they're picking up men without much cultural familiarity with war. By contrast, even the smallest Gallic communities probably had a lot of experience with war, and this gets passed down from one man to another, from one generation to the next. I don't think the Gauls were professional soldiers any more than the Romans were, but it's hardly the case that Romans were experienced professionals and Gauls weren't; it depended on the specific history of the individual and their community.

But the Gauls didn’t have pila did they? They had spears, of course, but they weren’t much for throwing them, they preferred rushing the Romans to prevent them from using the pila.

The Galatians, who were all naked and destroyed by Roman pila, would beg to differ. In Gaul?

I still doubt every Gallic soldier would be equipped with shield, helmet, sword/spear and javelin. Most foot soldiers would have lacked at least one of those.

Javelins were very much a part of the Gallic panoply; some of them would have been dedicated skirmishers with lighter equipment, but the line infantry would have been well equipped for close combat. It's increasingly recognized by scholars of ancient warfare (Quesada Sans especially) that the Western Mediterranean world had a distinct tactical system based on the use of tall oval shields, javelins, and swords. The chest is usually one of the last places one armors, and a mail shirt isn't going to stop a well aimed javelin. Then again, Polybios apparently considers cloaks and trousers of the non-naked Gauls at Telamon good protection against Roman javelins; either way, Roman body armor isn't much of a factor.

The Thebans didn’t rush towards the Spartans, there was method in what they did, which is not always the case for Celts. For one of their wings which fights in good order, there’s another that just runs towards the enemy while the Romans stand ground.
They absolutely did. Greeks armies pretty much always sprinted into battle, and with completely untrained troops like Greek hoplites, this was a recipe for disorder fast. The fact that Helvetii shields were close enough together during an advance to get pinned together represents much better formation discipline than pretty much any non-Spartan Classical Greeks ever displayed.

And for Telamon I stand corrected, but it still was a fortuitous circumstance. Had the second army not happened to be passing there, numbers would have been more equal. Moreover, I went to reread some details of the battle, and it’s essentially a battle where equipment was making the difference. The Romans slaughtered several Celts because they were fighting naked, and their weapons couldn’t match those of the Romans. Again, how much probable is it that Gauls from the northern region wouldn’t also fight naked and that their equipment wouldn’t also be of a lesser quality?

It's not really a fortuitous circumstance when the only reason the campaign might fail is the Romans' own actions; their system of divided command with two chief magistrates caused them lots of trouble through the centuries, leading to some of the worst disasters in their history. The two armies shouldn't have been deployed separately in the first place. The fact that a Celtic army would have outnumbered a relatively small portion of the Romans' field forces (50,000 out of 250,000) if they hadn't been reinforced is not a very meaningful one. Considering the sheer numbers the Romans put in the field in 225, one has to wonder how they possibly could have lost.

We know from archaeology that the Celtic shield and sword were all but interchangeable with Roman arms (compare the scutum and theuros, or the gladius hispaniensus with the leaf bladed celtic swords of the period), so I have a hard time buying Polybios explanation here; he has a fondness for structural and technological explanations, when really the events of his own narrative are perfectly sufficient. Moreover, those Celts fought naked in this specific situation for specific reaons (avoiding getting tangled in foliage). This was not necessarily a universal practice, and is in any case beside the point. The Celts lost because they were badly outnumbered, attacked from the rear, and finally charged in the flank by heavy cavalry. It hardly reflects badly on their arms or fighting quality that they were defeated in these circumstances; no ancient army could have withstood that onslaught.
 
These aren't 19th century armies with professional general staffs rigorously analyzing campaigns and incorporating their experience into training and doctrine. Roman armies got disbanded at the end of the governor's term; that experience mostly gets flushed. Roman soldiers in the Late Republic were drawn from an increasingly demilitarized core territory; they're picking up men without much cultural familiarity with war. By contrast, even the smallest Gallic communities probably had a lot of experience with war, and this gets passed down from one man to another, from one generation to the next. I don't think the Gauls were professional soldiers any more than the Romans were, but it's hardly the case that Romans were experienced professionals and Gauls weren't; it depended on the specific history of the individual and their community.

Roman armies weren’t disbanded at the end of a governor’s term, they were disbanded once war in their sector was over, and at times not even then. The Fimbrians had been constantly under arms from 85 BCE to 62 BCE, for example, and Roman armies in Hispania stayed there despite their pretor’s end of term. Every Roman of average wealth up until the mid first century BCE grew up with a strong warrior ethos, in full expectations of having to serve in the army, and most men enrolled from a young age and were bound to serve at least 16 years. It’s irrelevant that Gauls had to constantly fight in small raids for their whole lives, the Romans had just as much familiarity with war.



Javelins were very much a part of the Gallic panoply; some of them would have been dedicated skirmishers with lighter equipment, but the line infantry would have been well equipped for close combat. It's increasingly recognized by scholars of ancient warfare (Quesada Sans especially) that the Western Mediterranean world had a distinct tactical system based on the use of tall oval shields, javelins, and swords. The chest is usually one of the last places one armors, and a mail shirt isn't going to stop a well aimed javelin. Then again, Polybios apparently considers cloaks and trousers of the non-naked Gauls at Telamon good protection against Roman javelins; either way, Roman body armor isn't much of a factor.

Of course they used javelins in general, almost all Western armies in antiquity did, but when fighting Caesar, they much preferred to rush and throw the legionaries in disorder, rather than engage in skirmishes.


They absolutely did. Greeks armies pretty much always sprinted into battle, and with completely untrained troops like Greek hoplites, this was a recipe for disorder fast. The fact that Helvetii shields were close enough together during an advance to get pinned together represents much better formation discipline than pretty much any non-Spartan Classical Greeks ever displayed.

In that same passage, Caesar also says that the Helvetii attempted to attack the Romans who were on high ground, and that breaking their formation was easy. Compare it to Perseus’ phalanx at Pidna. Unrelenting, the Romans barely managed to break the Macedonians’ spears, they only managed to get through it because the uneven terrain created gaps in their enemies’ formation. If the Romans had stood their ground like they did with the Celts, they would have been slaughtered. The Helvetii might have stood close together, but their equipment made for a poor phalanx.


It's not really a fortuitous circumstance when the only reason the campaign might fail is the Romans' own actions; their system of divided command with two chief magistrates caused them lots of trouble through the centuries, leading to some of the worst disasters in their history. The two armies shouldn't have been deployed separately in the first place. The fact that a Celtic army would have outnumbered a relatively small portion of the Romans' field forces (50,000 out of 250,000) if they hadn't been reinforced is not a very meaningful one. Considering the sheer numbers the Romans put in the field in 225, one has to wonder how they possibly could have lostt.

And how would we know the Celts didn’t have reserves somewhere else? Despite tremendous losses, they still kept on fighting until 222, then their numbers went to joing Hannibal and even after that they kept on fighting for several more years. They must have had some numbers of their own, numbers which the Romans could outnumber just because of their allies.

We know from archaeology that the Celtic shield and sword were all but interchangeable with Roman arms (compare the scutum and theuros, or the gladius hispaniensus with the leaf bladed celtic swords of the period), so I have a hard time buying Polybios explanation here; he has a fondness for structural and technological explanations, when really the events of his own narrative are perfectly sufficient. Moreover, those Celts fought naked in this specific situation for specific reaons (avoiding getting tangled in foliage). This was not necessarily a universal practice, and is in any case beside the point. The Celts lost because they were badly outnumbered, attacked from the rear, and finally charged in the flank by heavy cavalry. It hardly reflects badly on their arms or fighting quality that they were defeated in these circumstances; no ancient army could have withstood that onslaught.

The Romans were known to pick only the best from their enemies. If the Gladius hispaniensis had been interchangeable, they would have employed something less expensive than that. Once the gladius lost favor in the imperial period, they replaced it with the spatha used by cavalryman. The Romans were all for efficiency, if they used the gladius, it means it was the best of the best.

If they wanted to avoid foilage in total security, they could have just worn light armour, the Romans must have had their same problems from time to time, and yet they never fought naked. Fighting with no armor was probably more convenient for the Celts, but it also betrays they had no proper armors to wear. In the end Telamon was won by a lucky manoeuver from the Romans, true, but apparently the Gauls were already exhausted by then, they were going to lose anyway, and if Polybios claims that it was also because of their equipment, who are we to deny that? He’s seen things we haven’t after all.
 
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Talk about moving the goal posts. I didn't claim every ancient citizen campaigned every year; I said that in Greece and Rome, all free men of a given economic strata were subject to military obligations, and in peak years this represented a significant proportion of the free men. Taylor estimates the average Roman assidui completed about 6 years of campaigning in the Mid Republic, or about 1/5th of the time he was liable to military service. It's reasonable to believe ancient cities/tribes raised armies by levies of free men because that's what ancient people tell us about their own societies. If Greek armies tried to match the quality and equipment of Tang Chinese troops, yeah, their armies would be a lot smaller, but it's pretty arbitrary to think that a completely different force composition would be unable to match a simple headcount for at least a portion of the campaign season. Tbh I'm not entirely sure what you're proposing; are you claiming that because societies like Greece and Rome supposedly couldn't possibly have mobilized militia armies to the tune of 5-10% of the population, they had to be as small a percentage as in Imperial China, and professional soldiers, or that their militia armies made up no greater a share of the population as professional armies?

Your Rome scenario is frankly comical, and really below your own standards of intelligent argument we've seen elsewhere on this forum. Rome's frontiers in the Principate demanded permanent occupation, for which a mass levy is not suitable; 10-20% of the men in a community can be away from their trades for a few seasons, but not indefinitely. Moreover, a subject population as culturally heterogenous as that of the Principate, who have no voice in affairs of war and peace, would probably not tolerate mass mobilization of that kind; revolts against conscription in the Vendee during the French Revolution cost far more men to put down than they were intended to produce, after all. In Rome's strategic situation, simply demanding money by which they could pay volunteers (Italy's agricultural sector had a lot of surplus men) to man the frontiers full time was as sound an approach as was possible.


No one is claiming the Achaemenids had million man armies. However, we know that Xerxes' host was so large as to preclude resistance north of the Isthmus by several of the largest Greek states. A large body of historical evidence supports the idea of armies of several thousand men by the larger Greek cities (places larger than Tegea); to be able to easily crush such a force (almost 40,000 heavy infantry and at least as many light troops), the Great King would need an army of about 100,000. This is borne out by details like the attested size of the Persian camp at Plataea, which was not an exaggeration, since it's considerably smaller than would be necessary for an army of the exaggerated proportions Herodotos gives us. If he was just making it up, he would have made the numbers match up.

The original discussion earlier, was the proposition that the Achaemenids had standing armies far smaller than what is generally believed. I have discussed this quite frequently utilizing what we know of Achaemenid predecessors successors. My entry into the discussion had solely to do with Achaemenid structures; Greek city states are beyond my scope. We may be glad too, you mentioned the heterogeneous nature of Roman imperial structures, this works with my points of Achaemenid era systems.

The large Greek city states could easily crush a force of 40k heavy armored warriors? Then what sort of precedence were the Macedonian armies of Alexander setting when he set out for conquest with 50k soldiers? He would be met by Elamo-Persian field armies of 32k, then 70k and finally a force of similar numbers to that at Ipsus (Arbela, my view is between 70-80k). If we take the Greek historian numbers regarding the army sizes, we reach no more than 540k soldiers in total utilized and if I am not mistaken, the histories make it a point to note that the Achaemenids were using all that they had.

I understand your view more now though. It is that in a short notice, some of these European states could amass for particular moments, particularly large armies of varied armored quality? Similar to how one could join Abbasid armies for the proposition of jihad but came only with what they could purchase in their own, which often amounted to just cotton clothing, sword and or bow. If this is your opinion, then it is entirely possible to raise short term large armies. Part of why I can see this, the varied Zagros mountain folk practiced this at times. They raised armies of 40k warriors, (made up of men, likely children and fighting women) to combat an Assyrian expeditionary force of 17k. Ultimately, the Assyrian force slaughtered these tribal levy with ease...

Mind you, I do not believe Herodotus made these points up. Simply that there was some sort of discrepancy such as misunderstandings and perceptions. Herodotus and other scholars of this period, in their histories, employ a level of exaggeration as literary tools. Regardless, if the Achaemenids did raise 100k+ soldiers to invade Greece, it must have been an extraordinary event.
 
I feel like this is similar to this weird history meme that Afghanistan is a "graveyard of empires", which I'm not even sure where it comes from.
A lot of people really hype up how Afghanistan was able to fight off the Soviets and British, and again backwards project that "unconquerable" status to previous Afghan states. Which is really dumb considering that that region has been a province of almost every Persian empire.
 
The original discussion earlier, was the proposition that the Achaemenids had standing armies far smaller than what is generally believed. I have discussed this quite frequently utilizing what we know of Achaemenid predecessors successors. My entry into the discussion had solely to do with Achaemenid structures; Greek city states are beyond my scope. We may be glad too, you mentioned the heterogeneous nature of Roman imperial structures, this works with my points of Achaemenid era systems.

The large Greek city states could easily crush a force of 40k heavy armored warriors? Then what sort of precedence were the Macedonian armies of Alexander setting when he set out for conquest with 50k soldiers? He would be met by Elamo-Persian field armies of 32k, then 70k and finally a force of similar numbers to that at Ipsus (Arbela, my view is between 70-80k). If we take the Greek historian numbers regarding the army sizes, we reach no more than 540k soldiers in total utilized and if I am not mistaken, the histories make it a point to note that the Achaemenids were using all that they had.

I understand your view more now though. It is that in a short notice, some of these European states could amass for particular moments, particularly large armies of varied armored quality? Similar to how one could join Abbasid armies for the proposition of jihad but came only with what they could purchase in their own, which often amounted to just cotton clothing, sword and or bow. If this is your opinion, then it is entirely possible to raise short term large armies. Part of why I can see this, the varied Zagros mountain folk practiced this at times. They raised armies of 40k warriors, (made up of men, likely children and fighting women) to combat an Assyrian expeditionary force of 17k. Ultimately, the Assyrian force slaughtered these tribal levy with ease...

Mind you, I do not believe Herodotus made these points up. Simply that there was some sort of discrepancy such as misunderstandings and perceptions. Herodotus and other scholars of this period, in their histories, employ a level of exaggeration as literary tools. Regardless, if the Achaemenids did raise 100k+ soldiers to invade Greece, it must have been an extraordinary event.
I didn't say the Greeks could crush an army of 40k easily, I said that for Xerxes to be 100% sure of victory, he'd need to invade with at least 100k in the land army alone, since that's how big the Greek land army was; really, his parameters should have been set higher, since the Greeks could have fought together with the Thebans and Thessalians, but abandoned them to the Persians. Xerxes would have wanted to be ready to fight them too. The Greek fleet would have been a bit over 60k, with almost 400 ships; Xerxes would need considerable superiority to be certain of victory. After much of the army departed over the Hellespont, the force that remained under Mardonios was still a huge army, likely 60-120k judging by the dimensions of their camp (18 stades on each side IIRC). Xerxes's army was so large, 40k hoplites and 40-70k light troops believed they had no chance against it. It was definitely extraordinary event; it was a campaign presided over by the king in person, after all.
 
A lot of these questions of mobilization and the virtues of centralized states and the over-estimation/under-estimation of capability tend to be related to tendencies of larger politically unified populations to have relatively smaller "war group", following https://www.pnas.org/content/114/52/E11101 - "Population is the main driver of war group size and conflict casualties". If it is correct!

In short, scaling effects mean that larger societies can win out in conflicts with smaller ones with a relatively smaller total population mobilized; that allows them to make savings and economically grow more with less wasteful spending and taxation to fund soldiers and war, and so the war group (% mobilized / with combat experience) of larger societies tends to shrink...

... but the downside is that if threats suddenly emerge from a new direction, or suddenly unification of politically disunified populations (commonly "barbarians") on the border with higher mobilization and close to technological parity in weapons and tactics, then the larger populations with smaller wargroups can find themselves outmaneuvered and in danger of losing a decisive conflict.

That possibly explains quite a bit of the capability of medieval steppe nomads; as feuding populations relatively resistant to political unification they maintained high mobilization potential for actually quite a substantial force, when unified (despite relatively small populations) and this was compounded by advantages of cavalry and the ability for the latest technological and tactical developments all across Eurasia to be diffused across the steppes and Central Asia.

(There is also probably a "sweet spot" here. Regions that are just too small, too technologically behind from lack of growth, too divided, can't really do anything.)
 
In that same passage, Caesar also says that the Helvetii attempted to attack the Romans who were on high ground, and that breaking their formation was easy. Compare it to Perseus’ phalanx at Pidna. Unrelenting, the Romans barely managed to break the Macedonians’ spears, they only managed to get through it because the uneven terrain created gaps in their enemies’ formation. If the Romans had stood their ground like they did with the Celts, they would have been slaughtered. The Helvetii might have stood close together, but their equipment made for a poor phalanx.
So your contrast for a force losing order as it encounters broken terrain is ... a force losing order as it encounters broken terrain? All we can really conclude from this is that the tactical defensive can be a major advantage, more at eleven. It would not however be accurate to conclude that because an attack on an enemy with high ground failed, that Gauls rushed into battle flaily wildly in direct contrast with the very specific language by military experts in which their armies are described. Gauls and even Germans fought in phalanxes, Britons didn't as attested in the writings of probably the most militarily successful in all of antiquity, but everyone projects their image of the latter on the former.

And how would we know the Celts didn’t have reserves somewhere else? Despite tremendous losses, they still kept on fighting until 222, then their numbers went to joing Hannibal and even after that they kept on fighting for several more years. They must have had some numbers of their own, numbers which the Romans could outnumber just because of their allies.
Well duh the Romans outnumbered the Gauls because of their allies, do you think Gallic tribes went into battle singly? The army at Telamon probably represented a large proportion of the population of the Po and Rhone river valleys (3-4% maybe, based on the area in question and the population density of Roman Gaul i.e. a lowball estimate); there was another, smaller Gallic army left behind in the region of the Po, but as this army was detailed to defend territory from the Veneti, who had gone over to the Romans, it is likely that this was smaller than the 40,000 men the Romans deployed for this expedition, so the total Gallic force would have been about half the size of the Romans'.


The Romans were known to pick only the best from their enemies. If the Gladius hispaniensis had been interchangeable, they would have employed something less expensive than that. Once the gladius lost favor in the imperial period, they replaced it with the spatha used by cavalryman. The Romans were all for efficiency, if they used the gladius, it means it was the best of the best.

If they wanted to avoid foilage in total security, they could have just worn light armour, the Romans must have had their same problems from time to time, and yet they never fought naked. Fighting with no armor was probably more convenient for the Celts, but it also betrays they had no proper armors to wear. In the end Telamon was won by a lucky manoeuver from the Romans, true, but apparently the Gauls were already exhausted by then, they were going to lose anyway, and if Polybios claims that it was also because of their equipment, who are we to deny that? He’s seen things we haven’t after all.
We're people with the benefit of hindsight, alternative sources, and techniques of textual criticism. When someone's explanations aren't strictly consonant with other writers, or what we know from archaeology, we have the right to question them. Given that Polybios is more given to technological/structural explanations (the premise of his history is that the Romans were destined to conquer the world, and he works backwards from that; you seem to have a similar viewpoint), we should wonder whether this if this is a case of the author's fixations intruding on the history, especially since these conclusions are unnecessary to explain the events of the narrative and don't match what we know of the Gallic panoply.

The Romans were adaptable, but arguing they had better equipment by starting with the premise that their equipment was the best because they were Romans falls into circular reasoning. In any case, you can see, like with your eyes, that the blade profile of contemporary Celtic swords is basically identical with the Third Century gladius. The basic leaf shape, similar overall length, point of balance, acute stabbing point, etc. If anything, the design is less suited to the cut than the Roman sword, given the latter's wasp waist design. Caesar pretty much never describes them using swords. One contingent of Gauls , and by no means the largest, fought naked at Telamon for specific tactical reasons, while the other contingents didn't have nearly so much trouble from Roman missiles because of their cloaks and trousers. It is not justified to conclude from this episode that Gallic were usually easy prey for Roman missiles. You have to think critically about this stuff.
 
The Persians could have mustered close to a million troops, but not all of them combat troops.

I imagine aboutb a vast majority of them were in fact supply and support troops, since a pre-industrial Empire has little in the way of powerful logistics apparatus.

The total numbers fighting could effectively be 100-150 thousand but across water and land, Garrison's and slave soldiers.

Any other large army could be majority support troops, camp followers, publication.
 
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