Quote Originally Posted by Ibrahim View Post
so based on this, would a persian army as Issos or gaugamela actually be around 90-150000? interesting-changes everything about Alexandros
Nope; Though Issus has been less looked upon than Gaugamela, again we must look at the common ratios in the inflated numbers given by Graeco-Roman sources. Again, Curtius Rudus lands at the comfortable spot of 250,000 men, though in all other instances, the numbers are drastically reduced in comparison to Gaugamela. I personally think no more than five myriads (50,000 men), because we need to heed the fact that Darius' army was campaigning to meet the threat (Apparenty, Alexander needed to execute a whole wheel movement, once the news of pursuit reached to him); Going as high as 100,000 means strained logistics. I also think no more than five "armies" (Each consisting of ten thousand men), because the sources mention precisely five men who are presumably commanders. Each of them could have been a baivarâpâtîsh or separate army commanders. The Achaemenid military organization was always rigidly decimal, so it seems to me the most plausible cap. The eminent Hans Delbrück believed that at Gaugamela, Darius had as little as 52,000 men, a significant portion of them cavalry, mainly due issues in logistics but also because of miniaturizations per ratio.

Gaugamela on the other hand, I've already mentioned 52,000 men, as given by Delbrück, but most others believe that Darius' army swelled upwards 92,000 to 94,000 men. Most estimates move around the 90,000 range. The difference lie mainly in the assessment of cavalry; The likes of John Warry estimate 40,000 mounted troops (Out of a total of about 90,000), while Delbrück thinks 12,000 is a more plausible figure (Out of 52,000). Both of them give a completely different picture of the Achaemenid army, even though the corpus of infantry more or less is the same (Only the figures of peltasts vary with any significance), because Delbrück brings some balance to a heavily equestrian contingent, though consistently within the flexible axiom of "For five infantry one cavalry" in Iranian terms; Warry's estimate provides us with a force where almost half of the total are cavalry.