slydessertfox said:
I don't think you need to go as far as to do a reboot.
OK, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to try and figure out, pencil and paper style, the best way for Alexander to get 70,000 troops (plus another 20,000 servants, and a few thousand animals) around the Arab Peninsula without straying from known plans; I'll then rewrite the first three updates and throw them all back on here in one giant post. I won't make a new thread. We'll then go from there, pretending this whole mess never happened.
Hm, when you speak of "reaching up to 120,000" I am afraid your memory fails you once again and you mix up two different things:
1) number of Alexander's troops in one place under his immediate, direct command as an invading army
2) number of all Alexander's troops in Asia throughout all his Asiatic empire including garrisons, troops of his local commanders in Egypt in Babylonia in Asia Minor etc.
Alexander's conquest of Asia is one of the best documented one (comparatively), so you may check your sources again to make sure.
Engels' chart is titled "Approximate Troop Numbers in Alexander's Army: Hellespont to Gaugamela", and the purpose of the chart is to work out the carrying capacity of the army on the march and to demonstrate the magnitude of Alexander's campaign. Quoting from Engels:
Engels said:
Both Arrian (Ind. 19.5) and Curtius (8.5.4) record the greatest number of trooops in the Macedonian army in India as 120,000. Our Table 6 lists a total of 120,055 troops or a difference of .04%.
Before India, while Alexander is passing through the Hindu Kush, Engels estimates the total number of troops in the army is 64,000 (54,000 infantry, 10,000 cavalry), with another 36,000 followers:
Engels said:
We estimated that by the time Alexander crossed the Hindu Kush, he had approximately 64,000 troops and 10,000 cavalry horses. The remaining 36,000 that crossed may have been follwers, who by this time totaled about one-half the number of combatants.
The big spike from 64,000 at the Hindu Kush to 120,055 at the end of the Indian campaign seems to have come from reinforcements on the Hydaspes River; Diodorus Siculus claims that Alexander received 30,000 Asian reinforcements there, and Curtius claims 7,000 Greek infantry reinforcements and 5,000 Greek cavalry reinforcements came. All together, Engels adds them up as 42,000 reinforcements tacked on to the Macedonian army, which almost brings the army's total to the 120,000 men that Arrian and Curtius claim. My gut says that that 42,000 shouldn't be added (or at least, the 30,000 easterners), because I would tend to agree that Alexander having an army of 120,000 does seem a bit farfetched - as I said in that post. Certainly, he did not use all these men to fight at the Hydaspes River, as Arrian has only 30,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry fighting for Alexander at the Battle of the Hydaspes. But whatever the case, it does seem pretty clear to me that the army was considerably larger than 48,100, which is basically the point which you claim is the maximum amount any invading ancient army could control and maintain, and what we're really arguing about, though it's not really that relevant - I agree that 70,000 troops, plus animals and servants and other followers, is a bit too many for Alexander to feed and keep watered on a daily basis for the year-long march around a desert peninsula without any rivers and little fertile farmland. The extra 20,000 that I initially missed makes a big difference.
Russian said:
Do not believe everything ancient sources say. They say that the invading army of the Persian King of kings Xerxes into Greece was about 1 000 000 (one million) people.
Do you believe that number?
Well obviously not; though I'm not sure that helps your overall case (that no ancient invading army could be over 50,000 troops), seeming how modern estimates for that army range from 80,000 up to 500,000, with 80,000 to 200,000 being considered the most likely range. For the record, I'd guess low, either at 80 or 100,000. I have yet to see anyone claim that Xerxes' invasion force was 50,000 men or smaller.
As a suggestion:
There might be a contingent of 5-20 thousand where one part was Macedonian veterans and three parts were Persians. And they were supposed to fight together as a combined force on the battlefield. But no mixed two-ethnic units of 12-16 people, that's for sure.
That's probably the best option; I'll see if I can come up with any alternative compromises, but that's the model I'll probably use. Thanks for the suggestion.
