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

Cactus · 04-23-2008, 09:01 AM

So what was a large army by ancient or medieval standards?

"Ancient" and "Medieval" are time standards, but time alone does not determine much. The first thing that you have to consider is geography. Some places were lot more militarized than others: In tribal societies you can have every able-bodied man considered as an armyman, but in more advanced societies only a fraction of the men were in the military... so on and so forth. But as a rule of thumb, you can say that the River Valley Civilizations of the ancient world fielded the largest armies.

Or average?

Again it does not make much sense to average over all the different places with time alone as the consideration.

Exceptionally large?

The Chinese, but it depends on your definition of the military: All armies have to do some non-military labor or another... the Chinese armies just had to a lot more of the non-military labor than others, so it is an ambiguous state of affairs whether they had a large military or they had a large conscripted work-force.

How in size did ancient and medieval armies compare in size to today's militaries?

They were smaller, by our definition of armies.

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.

Rome could field up to 10 Legions ~ around 60,000 men ~ in a single campaign in 2nd Century CE. Of course there were exceptionally bigger ones, but this was the most common. But the Roman Army as a whole could itself be much larger, as it not only held and patrolled... but its proconsuls were also empowered to carry out independent campaigns in their locality.

04-23-2008, 09:01 AM	#2 (permalink)
Cactus Contributor Join Date: 08-01-07 Posts: 591	So what was a large army by ancient or medieval standards? "Ancient" and "Medieval" are time standards, but time alone does not determine much. The first thing that you have to consider is geography. Some places were lot more militarized than others: In tribal societies you can have every able-bodied man considered as an armyman, but in more advanced societies only a fraction of the men were in the military... so on and so forth. But as a rule of thumb, you can say that the River Valley Civilizations of the ancient world fielded the largest armies. Or average? Again it does not make much sense to average over all the different places with time alone as the consideration. Exceptionally large? The Chinese, but it depends on your definition of the military: All armies have to do some non-military labor or another... the Chinese armies just had to a lot more of the non-military labor than others, so it is an ambiguous state of affairs whether they had a large military or they had a large conscripted work-force. How in size did ancient and medieval armies compare in size to today's militaries? They were smaller, by our definition of armies. 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. Rome could field up to 10 Legions ~ around 60,000 men ~ in a single campaign in 2nd Century CE. Of course there were exceptionally bigger ones, but this was the most common. But the Roman Army as a whole could itself be much larger, as it not only held and patrolled... but its proconsuls were also empowered to carry out independent campaigns in their locality.