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In many accounts of this period we hear of armies numbering in the hundreds of thounsands and sometime as high as 500 000 on both sides for a single battle.

At the same time in the west, during the hellenistic and roman era, it seems that armies rarely reached the 50 000 mark and were always smaller than 100 000 men. Apparently there were extremely compelling logisitcal reasons for that. A marching army of 100 000 people was simply impossible to feed given the tools of the time.

What does that mean ? Are the chinese figures (vastly) exaggerated ? Or was rice easier to transport than wheat ? Or what ?
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