Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-34992768-20180909131747/@comment-31763506-20180918234334

58.151.223.14 wrote: The city-states prior to the Dark Ages were pretty large in Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome and places like Jerusalem. FYI: It's safe to assume any number you read about the population of Jerusalem being more than ~10,000 and that of the territory encompassing modern Israel/Palestine being much more than 100,000... are garbage. All numbers from ancient sources are unreliable (even when they aren't just made up). The claim that the Romans killed a million people in the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE is particularly laughable.

Jewish and Christian historians wrote the history of Jerusalem, and immensely distorted its importance as an economic and political center.

Yes, Athens might have gotten up to 100,000 or 200,000 people at its absolute height, and Rome might have gotten over a million, same with Alexandria, but these were major commercial and political centers for large areas with an enormous population.

Keep in mind that records are a bit better from the Renaissance on, and the biggest battle in British history where the size of the armies and the casualties are reliably estimated was Towton in 1461, which had something like 60,000-70,000 combatants when both sides were combined and ~28,000 casualties, and the result was the complete defeat of the Lancastrian party. There were only one or two or three million people living in England at the time, so this was an apocalyptic contest.

When you see Tacitus saying Agricola fought an army in Scotland several times larger than Robert the Bruce's forces at Bannockburn, or that Boudica attacked London with an army twice the size of Wellington's at Waterloo, you can be pretty sure he's full of shit.