Mithridatic Wars- Historical note

[moonburn]

the same way that romans considered any more heavily armoured soldier as being armed in the roman style any easterner armed with a slightly longer spear would probably be considered a pikeman and not an haploi

as for numbers and about that remark about the losses sulla took depends what he considered his soldiers if he only considers the men he came in with from italy then any other loss from already existing roman cohorts allies and auxiliary wouldn´t be counted but then again if we considered the medieval agincourt batle then it´s possible

furthermore he could have risked off those who where injured since they survived the batle because mainly an hoplite based forçe is meant to only hold and pin down the enemy and not necessarly kill it that would be for the chariots cavelary and flankers wich sulla managed to nulify

as for the terrain an army with kapadokians should fare better then the romans or hoplites (the ones i believe the romans mistaken for pikeman sarrissa armed ones) so it was missuse of resources

the romans where outnumbered but i doubt they where outgunned wich is why that besides the inflation on their numbers we must also consider that mainly the original 120.000 where better represented then what they trully were

anyway i´m a sulla admirer and i consider him the last man who trully tryed to prevent the dissollution of the republik instead of playing politiks for his own personal gain

[vartan]

seleucid empire (referring to the user here), I'm glad you are interested in history here, but don't get your feet too drenched in the sea of false glory and honor that the layman would impose upon history. If you're here hoping to crack the code, as it were, and determine precisely or anywhere near-precisely how many warriors were mustered by each faction in these wars, I'm sorry to say it's not going to happen. Also, you should ask yourself if you mean the numbers of warriors (those who would fight) or the combined numbers of warriors and those others who would be there to offer a variety of support measures (we don't need to get into this of course)?

[seleucid empire]

it seems a shame that historians would inflate numbers for the sole purpose of exciting readers or glorifying Roman generals

[vartan]

it seems a shame that historians would inflate numbers for the sole purpose of exciting readers or glorifying Roman generals

seleucid empire, we're not talking about post-modern historians here. We're talking about historians of antiquity. These two sets of historians separated by time and space do not approach history the same way. Sorry for the sad truth, if this is indeed news for you.

[Brave Brave Sir Robin]

A lot of ancient "historians" (I use that term loosely) did not even view themselves as historians though so it would be unfair to judge them as such.

[Ludens]

Also, it's not as if the chroniclers of that period would have an easy time getting accurate records. They would have access to commentaries written by the general (Caesar was not the first to do this), but obviously these weren't impartial. Sometimes the best the historian could hope for was to find out how many slaves were sold afterwards. Of course, that number would have included stable boys, armourers, ox-cart drivers, etc. Eastern armies did tend to have a lot of those, so part of the inflation could have come from there.