Quote Originally Posted by konny View Post
I seriously doubt the Roman opponents' numbers in any of the above listed battles. Approved army sizes of well organized Ancient states, like Rome or the Diadochs, usually did not exceed 50,000 men, with only very few exceptions much above this number, like Cannae.

Armies of more than 100,000 men were not regulary used before the late Napoleonic Wars. But that was achieved by dividing up the large body into smaller corps that did only join for short periods of a few days to full force, and were broken up again immediatly after battle (exception would be the main French army in Russia with the known consequences). Sizes of 200,000 and above were not possible before the late 19th Century because they require a railroad system to supply them.

Therefore I can't see how the so called 'Barbarian' opponents of the Romans (and Greeks as well) should have solved the logistical nightmare of moving around and supplying several 100,000 men time and again on the basis of a smaller population and weaker infrastructure where everyone else failed in this task. And of course, it is hard to imagine what stupied tacticans these strategical geniusses must have been, when they allowed their monster armies to be defeated time and again by a tenth of their strength.
The whole of the point around huge numbers isn't that they fielded them, and kept them mobilised and supplied for months on end. In most of the examples they were gathered together for a very short time, and often rarely directed or commanded by anyone in particular. Even if they won the encounter, they'd disperse almost immediately because they'd exhaust the supplies in any one area.