A bit of history, right? Can't hurt.
I know this guy who's written several history books; we are always sparring about some historical point or other. It's really interesting because his knowledge of battles is encyclopedic and he's a great writer. Still, I find sometimes things to
criticize or disagree on, which is lucky because the total agreement we have on most things would make a very short and boring thread.
Good historians criticize other good historians, many times the very sources of the history we are lucky to have.
I have two bones to pick with my friend. He disbelieves the numbers Herodotus gives for Xerxes army in 480 BC, and a couple of his ideas on the Second Punic War are way off. I'll cover both bones to pick, so this is a long post....
Herodotus gives the number of 2 million+ for Xerxes' army, including attendants.
They marched from Sardis, in the middle of Turkey, to Thermopylae, in the middle of Greece. About 500 miles, starting in the spring.
I plan to retrace Xerxes march in person, perhaps as soon as next spring, pandemic permitting. We'll see.
This guy writes articles for history magazines as well like this amazing magazine:
https://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/ancient-warfare/aw-shop/subscriptions.html
The illustrations are very good, and remind me of the comics I had when I was five years old.
Well, my friend believes General F. Maurice's view on the Size of Xerxes Army. I believe Herodotus.
The Achaemenid Empire had manpower reserves similar to Nazi Germany, who deployed more troops farther. In addition most of the march was within a short distance to the coast where the Persian navy could provision the army along the way, as the sources
attest.
The sources for this are Herodotus, the play "The Persians" by
Aeschylus, who fought in the Battle of Salamis, and a monument erected shortly after the Battle of Thermopylae, which says not 2 million, but 3 million.
Critics don't believe the monument either. You know, it's always people 2500 after a war who know better, right?
I wrote a Python program to compute the food and water Xerxes soldiers, attendants, horses, camels, and pack animals needed on a daily basis along the way. Statistics derived from Herodotus data give plausible numbers. I use the man and beast rations
given in "Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army" by Donald W. Engels
I am on the lookout for the 'impossible statistic.' The one that would finally show the impossibility of an army of such size. But it hasn't arisen.
F. Maurice, was a British general who fought in India, South Africa, and WWI, and turned academic and correspondent. While in Turkey, he surveyed part of the geography of Xerxes march copy of Herodotus in hand, as I intend to do. And he concludes that at
most the numbers were one-tenth those of Herodotus. The main reason was the water supply and certain features of the terrain.
I've studied his article and he bases it on incorrect assumptions. To start with he went there in October, while Xerxes set out in early spring with the idea to arrive in Greece when the harvest was ripe in July. To account for this he incorrectly states
that the discharge of rivers doesn't change from May to November in that region, which is patently false. Victor Davis Hanson (1999) explains clearly how water transport in Greece was limited to the sea because rivers were not navigable in the summer.
Maurice, who died in 1951, did not have the benefit of climate science, as we do. Fortunately, we have climate history data and both temperature and precipitation were well-above normal in that period. Rainfall for 480 was near at the peak for the 500 BC
to 450 BC period. So it is probable that Maurice assumptions about the 'dry season' are also incorrect. Rainfall and water supply should have been significantly above average at the time of Xerxes' march, though it would also have been hotter than hell.
Maurice's objections rest also on the fact that certain parts of the itinerary could not accommodate such large numbers. So what?
If he finds that the march was feasible for 200K but not for 2M, that's not much of a problem, because, you can do 200K ten times and you get to a Herodotus numbers. Not all people needed be in the same vicinity.
There were obviously fractions of the host at several locations along the way, were the water was, were the food depots were, waiting for the group ahead to move on for them to go there. Rivers kept flowing.
I have surveyed the water supply of the region from Sardis to Thermopylae, crossing the Hellespont, using Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, and noted the discharge of rivers and the size of lakes along the way, and water would not have been
a problem for neither man or beast on that march, for Herodotus numbers.
Modern historians do the same with Livy and Polybius, who according to them are constantly falling pray to their biases. Why is so hard to consider ancient writers like people who had a brain?
Critics claim Herodotus confused a thousand with ten-thousand, in the narrative of how Xerxes counted his men during a stop in the march. Duh.
AND...
My historian friend now calls Varro's plan for Cannae (almost) brilliant.
The word: BRILLIANT.
Applied to Varro?
Yep. Balls. I know. Right?
Gaius Terentius Varro - the man who lost four (4) consular armies in one day. That is, eight legions, around 70K men.
After which important allies of Rome defected to Hannibal.
The sources are clear.
Varro's plan reveals utter incompetence from the word go.
My friend also thinks that all Fabius Maxiums achieved with his strategy of avoiding battle, the so-called Fabian Strategy, is to delay ultimate Roman victory - which came only after discarding Fabian strategy, supposedly, for a more aggressive policy.
He wants to write an article for Ancient Warfare Magazine actually saying those things that belittle Fabius and elevate Varro.
I want to see the comments to the article. Someone will have to kiss the donkey.
I'll get into Varro and Fabius next.
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