It's a good yarn anyway isn't it?

MANY of the ancients were notorious liars. Many of those that weren't were incredibly gullible fools. Where do you think 'Urban Legends' originated?

"According to historians today, the last battle involved the 300 Greeks, and Xerxes supposedly had at least 1 million Persians at the battle." The world population in those days is estimated at 200 MIO, I couldn't find numbers for Persia but based on present population in the region I would estimate it at 1,5 MIO. Am I supposed to believe 1 million of those where fighting in Greece?

Many of these stories sound like puffery to encourage enlistments or re-ups, those that don't sound like political campaign literature. I take most of them with a cup of saltsuspect

The Persian army numbered about 250,000 (see Peter Connolly, Greece and Rome at War). It wasn't a logistical impossibility as they were hugging the coast and so were resupplied by sea. Oh, and Ilpars, the two legions lost by Flaminius at Trasimene were replaced at the beginning of 216BC. The eight legions on the battlefield at Cannae were reinforced to 5000 Roman and 5000 Allied troops instead of the more usual 4200 (Polybius).

In the battle of Gaugamela, 47,000 Greeks (led by Alexander the Great) dfeated a force of 200,000 Persians. At its peak the Persian Empire was at approx. 1.2 million citizens. So 700,000 Persians may have not been possible.

But you have to remember some things about Ancient Wars. In the defense they would raise large armies and then drop them when the war was over. It wasnt really until Rome there were large standing armies. Also to get supplies, these massive armies would loot the country side ie Cannae was a grain store thats why a battle happened there. Also according to Napoleon, a country only needed 1/2 its population not to be soldiers, so according to him, Persia would have 600,000 total soldiers. Do not forget Alexander and Phillip II were ripping into Persia before that. Also the Persians need troops all over their empire to keep other invaders out.

No...the Persian Empire couldn't have been that small. You'd be saying that ancient Macedonia had a population 1/4 the size of Persia, and THAT I don't believe. Anybody have any real knowledge of this?

Yes, looking at the numbers, it doesnt look like Persia was just 1.2 million. The number may have been the original Persia, before Cyrus the Great. But Alexander had soldiers from other areas in Greece.

The chinese fielded some rather huge armies even earlier than this. the encyclopedia of war lists the first recorded battle in history as being chinese and the losing side brought several hundred thousand to the field When comparing chineese logistic capacity to mediterranean and european one you have to take in account the better economic ratio of chineese agricultural system. The rice is better than wheat and even in the wheat agriculture, the chineese have sth like 3 time better ratio than european one.