Estimates on size of armies

[sulla1982ad]

I believe some of the forces only hit the ten thousand mark. Typically armies were in the hundreds arriving from different area before they mobilize into a larger force.

Hannibal apparently had the biggest army of its era on a size completely unknown at the time (~40,000), but Hannibal is subject to lots of Roman propaganda. You might think "Why would Roman's lie about Hannibal, wouldn't they want him squished?", the thing is, by having this massively unbeatable army and framing Hannibal as some military genius (very debatable) the Romans and Scipio family in particular benefit hugely, with the Scipio name becoming immortalized for their glorious victory against an unstoppable foe.

Not very probable! I think Scipo had enough detractors to stop his version of events from spreading, even if he was behind those figgures, (Are you saying Polybius was induced to make the figgures up? ) would they of been allowed to stand?

Also if you compare the figgures of Roman battles to battle figgures from other ancient civilizations, they do seem to be more realistic.

[ajaxfetish]

Not so sure about antiquity, but for many later medieval campaigns and such there are detailed economic records (numbers of horseshoes purchased, wagons, fodder, boot soles, etc.) that can be used to estimate how large an army could have been supported.

Ajax