Stathi, without opening that interminable debate, Alexander will not ever have raised such forces because the Persians never did. The logistics - 2,400 year old logistics - make the wielding and supporting of such an army an impossible task.Efstathios wrote: Also, in the occassion of assembling an army, Alexander wouldnt probably assemble 300.000 or more Persians as the Persian Kings used to, due to different strategy. Plus, the soldiers were treated differently, and not all like just sheeps for slaughter, as the Persian Kings used them.
Any reading of Diodorus' books 18&19 will quickly and succinctly demonstrate the difficulties of massing armies totalling (Eumenes' and Antigonus' together) some 70,000 - the biggest armies operating in the immediate Diadoch period - specifically the billeting and feeding. Indeed the battle of Paraetacene was fought largely over foraging rights to the unplundered Gabiene. After the battle of Gabiene Antigonus has to split his forces (now numbering near to 70,000) so as to provision them. At Issus in 301 we can see some 150,000 men in the field - both sides taken together - and this from, essentially, the entire empire less Egypt. Money was not limiting the size of these arrays but you can bet logistics and provisioning certainly did.
In 190, at the seminal battle of Magnesia, Antiochus III (“The Great”) defended his empire against Eumenes and Rome with 70,000 men and elephants. This was a do or die struggle and his force was assembled from an empire that ran all the way to the Hindu Kush and included all territories in the old empire other than Egypt and the Pergamese territory in north-eastern Anatolia. Aparrently he felt no need to front up with 300-600,000 men as the Greek-Macedonian sources would have the Persians.
Interestingly, Rome settled this issue with two legions, 10,000 Italian allies and some 10,000 from Eumenes of Pergamum.
Hannibal, with some 50,000, was content to defeat some 80,000 Romans at Cannae. Scipio was content to defeat 50,000 odd Carthaginians at Zama. Flamininus was content to defeat 25,000 Macedonians at Cynoscephale. These are all sensible. It is only when we get to the Greeks and Macedonians that The Greeks must defeat 350,000 at Plataea; Xenophon has to face the flagrantly ridiculous figure of 900,000 Persians at Cunaxa; Alexander must defeat 600,000 and 1,000,000 Persians at Ipsus and Guagamela.
There is a serious problem here and it is not with the Persians or the Romans. Only Greeks and Macedonians feel the need to defeat huge hordes. The others are content to defeat armies of continent figures.