World Affairs Board - View Single Post - How big were ancient and medieval armies?

Spongegod · 04-23-2008, 03:41 AM

I'm wondering because I was always under the impression that 10,000 men was a lot. In TLOTR, Boromir's like "nobody just walks into Mordor...you can't even do it with 10,000 men!!!" But then again I once heard that 20,000 men was not a lot. And I think I might also have heard things that show that there were often forces consisting of greater numbers than ten-thousand persons at a time. So what was a large army by ancient or medieval standards? Or average? Exceptionally large? How in size did ancient and medieval armies compare in size to today's militaries? I once heard that Rome, at one point, had 400,000 men...but clearly they couldn't have been using all of that to invade more stuff because undoubtedly quite a portion of that army must have been used just to hold and patrol the land the Romans had already conquered.

04-23-2008, 03:41 AM	#1 (permalink)
Spongegod Banished Join Date: 04-23-08 Posts: 14	How big were ancient and medieval armies? I'm wondering because I was always under the impression that 10,000 men was a lot. In TLOTR, Boromir's like "nobody just walks into Mordor...you can't even do it with 10,000 men!!!" But then again I once heard that 20,000 men was not a lot. And I think I might also have heard things that show that there were often forces consisting of greater numbers than ten-thousand persons at a time. So what was a large army by ancient or medieval standards? Or average? Exceptionally large? How in size did ancient and medieval armies compare in size to today's militaries? I once heard that Rome, at one point, had 400,000 men...but clearly they couldn't have been using all of that to invade more stuff because undoubtedly quite a portion of that army must have been used just to hold and patrol the land the Romans had already conquered.