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#71

Ancient and Medieval History / Re: Obsessed with the Tang Dyn...

Last post by Nick Harbud - Sep 30, 2026, 09:25 AM

Just a slightly deranged,  off-topic thought...

...How does one write 1,000,000 in Roman numerals when the largest numeral value = 1,000?  I mean, can we rely upon the scribes (or their copyists) to put exactly 1,000 Ms onto the page correctly?

Perhaps all the learned ones recorded such things in Greek myriad notation?  Thus,

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#72

Ancient and Medieval History / Aristotle's school at Mieza un...

Last post by Duncan Head - Sep 30, 2026, 09:13 AM

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-unearth-the-2400-year-old-school-where-aristotle-taught-alexander-to-be-great-180989581/

As it happens, I picked up a slim book about Mieza/Lefkadia when I found myself in Macedonia last week. I suppose it is now no longer up to date!

[not]

#73

Ancient and Medieval History / Re: Obsessed with the Tang Dyn...

Last post by Justin Swanton - Sep 30, 2026, 08:52 AM

Personally, I think the T'ang would grossly outnumber any of the opponents you might be thinking of.  I mean, the side with the big battalions generally wins.   

The impression I get from my son (a graduate student of Chinese history with deep interest in military affairs) is that the Chinese records of military actions and the numbers involved in them are deeply unreliable and implausible.  Just because pre-modern China was a bigger, more populous place than most other powers did not mean that it was exempt from the same logistical limitations that constrained the size of armies that could be put into the field or the duration that they could be maintained once gathered.

Which resurrects the Achaemenid Persian army debate (any takers?  ). Primary sources from China, India and the West all speak of really big armies (in the hundreds of thousands) and all are dismissed by modern scholars based purely on the assumption that armies in Antiquity travelled and were supplied like 19th century European armies, i.e. the armies travelled entirely by road and carried all their supplies with them. But if you look at the primary sources they make clear that large armies could be supplied by pre-prepared food dumps or by sea and that armies travelled cross-country, not by road. The limitations on their size imposed by contemporary scholars then disappear.

My understanding is that modern scholars do not make assumptions that ancient armies travelled by a modern type of road network or were incapable of creating supply depots.  Rather, they are aware that, among other things, in the pre-modern age (i.e pre Haber-Bosch nitrogen fixation and Mendel's opening of the doors to dramatic improvement in ability to select crops for improved yields) the surplus capacity of agricultural systems that could be drawn on by armies in a given region plus the peasants reserves that they could steal if needs be were not adequate to sustain the size of armies that ancient records claim to have been fielded with great regularity.  This is not to mention the literary tropes/subtle hints that encouraged ancient historians to increase the armies of their master's enemies much as modern fishermen increase the size of the fish they nearly caught.

We covered this in the Persian monster thread (and somewhere else if I remember correctly). One needs to keep in mind that you don't need a huge surplus of crop production to support massive armies since the number of mouths the state had to feed was exactly the same during peace or wartime. What you needed to do was move the food to where it could supply a huge army on the march and we examined how that could be done (well, examined/scoffed at).

As regards literary exaggerations, that's true but not by orders of magnitude. If the real army size was, say 60 000 men, you might exaggerate it up to 100,000 but not to 1,000,000. That's no longer propaganda - it's stupidity. Furthermore historians in the past did show more concern for the facts than perhaps the moderns give them credit for. Especially someone like Herodotus who didn't really have a dog in the fight.

[not]

#74

Ancient and Medieval History / Re: Obsessed with the Tang Dyn...

Last post by Keraunos - Sep 30, 2026, 08:20 AM

Personally, I think the T'ang would grossly outnumber any of the opponents you might be thinking of.  I mean, the side with the big battalions generally wins.   

The impression I get from my son (a graduate student of Chinese history with deep interest in military affairs) is that the Chinese records of military actions and the numbers involved in them are deeply unreliable and implausible.  Just because pre-modern China was a bigger, more populous place than most other powers did not mean that it was exempt from the same logistical limitations that constrained the size of armies that could be put into the field or the duration that they could be maintained once gathered.

Which resurrects the Achaemenid Persian army debate (any takers?  ). Primary sources from China, India and the West all speak of really big armies (in the hundreds of thousands) and all are dismissed by modern scholars based purely on the assumption that armies in Antiquity travelled and were supplied like 19th century European armies, i.e. the armies travelled entirely by road and carried all their supplies with them. But if you look at the primary sources they make clear that large armies could be supplied by pre-prepared food dumps or by sea and that armies travelled cross-country, not by road. The limitations on their size imposed by contemporary scholars then disappear.

My understanding is that modern scholars do not make assumptions that ancient armies travelled by a modern type of road network or were incapable of creating supply depots.  Rather, they are aware that, among other things, in the pre-modern age (i.e pre Haber-Bosch nitrogen fixation and Mendel's opening of the doors to dramatic improvement in ability to select crops for improved yields) the surplus capacity of agricultural systems that could be drawn on by armies in a given region plus the peasants reserves that they could steal if needs be were not adequate to sustain the size of armies that ancient records claim to have been fielded with great regularity.  This is not to mention the literary tropes/subtle hints that encouraged ancient historians to increase the armies of their master's enemies much as modern fishermen increase the size of the fish they nearly caught.

#75

Ancient and Medieval History / Re: Obsessed with the Tang Dyn...

Last post by stevenneate - Sep 30, 2026, 07:17 AM

And I thought the Sui dynasty never fell, because I had the army in 15mm. Hell will freeze over before I acknowlege those Tang usurpers!

[not]

#76

Ancient and Medieval History / Re: Obsessed with the Tang Dyn...

Last post by Justin Swanton - Sep 30, 2026, 05:51 AM

Personally, I think the T'ang would grossly outnumber any of the opponents you might be thinking of.  I mean, the side with the big battalions generally wins.   

The impression I get from my son (a graduate student of Chinese history with deep interest in military affairs) is that the Chinese records of military actions and the numbers involved in them are deeply unreliable and implausible.  Just because pre-modern China was a bigger, more populous place than most other powers did not mean that it was exempt from the same logistical limitations that constrained the size of armies that could be put into the field or the duration that they could be maintained once gathered.

Which resurrects the Achaemenid Persian army debate (any takers?  ). Primary sources from China, India and the West all speak of really big armies (in the hundreds of thousands) and all are dismissed by modern scholars based purely on the assumption that armies in Antiquity travelled and were supplied like 19th century European armies, i.e. the armies travelled entirely by road and carried all their supplies with them. But if you look at the primary sources they make clear that large armies could be supplied by pre-prepared food dumps or by sea and that armies travelled cross-country, not by road. The limitations on their size imposed by contemporary scholars then disappear.

#77

Ancient and Medieval History / Re: Obsessed with the Tang Dyn...

Last post by Keraunos - Sep 29, 2026, 10:49 PM

Personally, I think the T'ang would grossly outnumber any of the opponents you might be thinking of.  I mean, the side with the big battalions generally wins.   

The impression I get from my son (a graduate student of Chinese history with deep interest in military affairs) is that the Chinese records of military actions and the numbers involved in them are deeply unreliable and implausible.  Just because pre-modern China was a bigger, more populous place than most other powers did not mean that it was exempt from the same logistical limitations that constrained the size of armies that could be put into the field or the duration that they could be maintained once gathered.

#78

Ancient and Medieval History / Re: Obsessed with the Tang Dyn...

Last post by Justin Swanton - Sep 29, 2026, 07:34 PM

For fun I tried AI, comparing a T'ang army and a Byzantine army of the 10th century. I got this. Input anyone?

You want David A Graff's The Eurasian Way of War. Military Practice in Seventh-Century China and Byzantium (2016), which is one of the sources the AI is drawing on. The two have a lot in common.

....and? T'ang or Byzantium?

#79

Ancient and Medieval History / Re: Obsessed with the Tang Dyn...

Last post by Duncan Head - Sep 29, 2026, 05:12 PM

For fun I tried AI, comparing a T'ang army and a Byzantine army of the 10th century. I got this. Input anyone?

You want David A Graff's The Eurasian Way of War. Military Practice in Seventh-Century China and Byzantium (2016), which is one of the sources the AI is drawing on. The two have a lot in common.

#80

Ancient and Medieval History / Re: Obsessed with the Tang Dyn...

Last post by Justin Swanton - Sep 29, 2026, 04:41 PM

For fun I tried AI, comparing a T'ang army and a Byzantine army of the 10th century. I got this. Input anyone?

The AI needs to up its "research" as the bow not the crossbow was the main missile weapon of the Tang infantry.

There's the problem with AI. It absolutely makes it up too often.