What views are there on what was the best army of ancient times?

Answer 1

in ancient world(not based on rank)

Greece

persia

china

India

out of these chandra gupta maurya in india developed an army of 600000 infantry 9000 war elephants 8000 chariots 80000 cavalry.

selucid nicator was defeated by chandragupta maurya.

alexander feared crossing ganges because dhana nanda(who was also defeated by chandra gupta maurya) was waiting eagerly for alexander.

now so i think chandragupta maurya as the greatest king and mauryan army as the ancient greatest army.

He was a great leader no doubt. But Alexander did not fear fighting them, his army did. This may have been as much due to exhaustion and being to far from home as their fear of facing elephants. However, Alexander was not afraid to use new weaponry. He did adapt and use some horse archers after he fought them. So he could have found a way to use his own war elephants if he continued. You also have to ask how practical would his army have worked outside of the terrain that made up much of the territory he conquered. How long would it have been before the Greeks or some other competitor found a good counter to elephants like using fire to spook them? If this was the greatest ancient Empire why did it not continue to expand? How would this army fair against the heavy armor units frequently found in nations further west or against Ancient China? Did he have the resources, supplies, logistics, navigation, and strategem to deal with the various peoples, weaponries, and strategies of all those cultures?

Having lots of troops or cavalry does not necessarily mean you have a great or powerful army either. Nang Wa had many times the troops and horsemen of his enemy yet he still lost the war. Numbers does not always mean the greatest. How good of quality of troops and horsemen did he have? Or was the use of Elephants or many Elephants the prime factor in his victories? If this is the case, estimates of the Roman Army at it's height range up to nearly 4 million troops. Though this maybe exaggerated, Rome at its height probably had at least 400,000 if not closer to 700,000 and this was probably not even during times of crises. It has been estimated Persia could field anywhere from 400,000 up to well over 1,000,000. The numbers you stated is one of the higher estimates of the size of his forces. Alexander is estimated to have had 32,000 up to 60,000 troops and yet he conquered a fairly sizable territory. Could Chandra Gupta have done that with so little?In ancient China, large or national armies could be anywhere from a couple hundred thousand to 2 million. These numbers are for one fraction of China. If each of many kingdoms can muster even 200,000 and there were anywhere from 3 - 7 sizable states and sometimes many more smaller states. Athens had something like 10,000-16,000 troops tops and yet it also had a fairly large empire well before the Maureyans. Sargon the Great who was arguably the first to ever create an empire of any kind may have had as few as 5000 troops and yet look at how much he controlled. Another question comes to mind, did Chandra have a large army because he chose to or because he needed one so large to take what he conquered where others in the past and against war experienced cultures established sizable empires.

The question is not as simple as who had the largest army. Perhaps it should be who could do the most with the least. Even there however, Alexander maybe in for steep competition. Guan Yu once took a vast region for Lui Bei with as few as 500 troops. Leonides successfully fought an army of at least 200,000 with only 6,900 men of whom only 300 were highly trained, he only suffered loss when he was eventually flanked but he saved most of the army from being annihilated at a high cost to the enemy. You could argue the best ancient army could be made up of any of the following or combination of the following:

Most deadly one on one.

Most effective

Most efficient

Most advanced

most powerful

largest

most versatile

most adaptable

most tactical

most strategic

Most enduring

Most Diverse

The Spartans surely would be at the head of several categories or near the top. They lack adaptability and versatility.

Macedon and Alexander would score fairly high for tactics, efficiency, effectiveness, and adaptability but lower for strategy since he did not plan long term well nor effectively secured his family in power or consolidated what he gained before moving on.

Rome scores high on endurance, power, efficiency, effectiveness, and advances. They suffer however in that some of the very things that made them strong were forgotten in the later years. So they score low in adaptability because though they adapted things early on and for years, in the later years they neglected to do this enough. They also suffer a bit from tactics with examples against Hannibal. They score high for strategy though.

China scores high in many categories too. However, they have had some stability issues and advancement lapses. One of the greatest empires ever that hit upon almost all qualities of a great army was probably the Ming. But this is a bit late to qualify as ancient. Though Qin and the Han, are about the closest of the specific ancient Chinese cultures. Like Rome they suffered from stability issues though out the period and perhaps worse than Rome, they suffered from management issues that rendered efficiency pretty moot at least toward the end of the Han.

It would be hard to find any one culture that scores high in every category that shapes and defines what makes the best overall army of all.

It might be easier to break the list down into categories and list 10 in each in relative order.

If you look at staying power and legacy and who or what lasted longest with relatively the same basic culture. You have to give top nods to China, Egypt, India, and Rome and even Greece. These cultures also have among the greatest impact and influence in the history of the world. Persia came about as many different cultures that existed in about the same area so if they were not fighting each other they often one of the others on the list in some form or another. Persia saw many different entities, Medes, Persian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Elamites.