What are the Largest Battles of Ancient Greece? (500 BC - 1500 AD) DOCUMENTARY

The lands of Southeastern Europe have known the ravages of war for millennia, featuring some of the largest battles of the past, from the titanic clashes of the Greco-Persian Wars, to the Civil Wars of the Roman Era, to the Bulgarian Wars of the Byzantine Era, and the many sieges of Constantinople throughout the Middle Ages. The stories of each of these conflicts has been told many times in isolation, but rarely have they been contextualized together Today, let's explore the fascinating analytics behind the biggest battles of Antiquity and the Middle Ages in Southeastern Europe. I absolutely love diving under the hood of history to cover topics such as logistics, whose invisible hands play a far greater role in world affairs than we often give them credit for. You can learn much more about this unseen world through our sponsor CuriosityStream, the best place to find and watch documentaries about science, history, technology, nature, travel, and so much more. 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This is the place for people who want to know more. With new shows added every week and content available worldwide to watch across all your favorite streaming devices, I can highly recommend it. So go to curiositystream.com slash Invicta or scan the QR code for unlimited access to the world's top documentaries and non-fiction series. And for our fans, use promo code Invicta and you will save 25% off. It's already one of the most affordable and best deals in streaming, so dive on in. Once more, we must note several disclaimers. First, that the figures are derived from a limited and fuzzy dataset. Second, we have defined the period of antiquity as spanning from 500 BC to 500 AD and the Middle Ages from 500 AD to 1500 AD. And third, we have filtered out battles featuring less than 2,500 participants. With all this in mind, let us proceed with our next geographic area of study, southeastern Europe, which runs from Greece to the borders of Italy in the west and the mountains of the Carpathians in the north. This area of antiquity was a hotbed of activity. In fact, as we begin our timeline in 500 BC, we will just catch the beginnings of the Ionian Revolt, which in turn precipitates the Greco-Persian Wars. The climax of the first Greco-Persian War would be the Battle of Marathon. It would be here in 490 BC that roughly 10,000 Athenians and Plataeans would bottle up the large invading fleet and around 25,000 infantry in the plains of the bay. A standoff ensued until the five-day impasse was eventually broken by a charge from the Greeks. The exact details are uncertain, but it seems a strong assault upon the wings allowed the Athenians to collapse upon the center and drive the enemy to flight. Ten years later, the Persians under King Xerxes would return with an even larger force to subjugate the Greeks. The first major clash would be the simultaneous land battle of Thermopylae and the naval battle of Artemisium. The former of these famously saw a small force of 7,000 Greeks hold the hot gates against a massive army. Ancient sources claim the Persians numbered a million or more men. However, modern historians place this number closer to 100 to 200,000. What proportion of these were deployed at Thermopylae is unknown. Likely, many were diverted for other duties, such as taking part in the sea clashes near Artemisium, which boasted several hundred ships on either side. Estimates place the Greek fleet of 270 ships at 4,000 marines and 45,000 rowers, with the Persian fleet of more than two to three times its size boasting around 15,000 marines and 150,000 rowers. Of the two simultaneous battles, this was clearly the larger encounter when counting the ship crews. Yet after several days of sparring, the defeat of the Greeks at Thermopylae prompted the withdrawal of the allied fleet before either side could gain a decisive advantage. The next major action would occur at the Battle of Salamis a few weeks later. It would be here that 370 Greek warships would make their stand against the numerically superior Persian fleet of around 700 to 1,000 ships. Typical triremes carried a complement around 170 rowers and about a dozen marines. Thus, we might estimate that at Salamis the Greeks fielded some 5,000 marines and 63,000 rowers against the 15,000 marines and 150,000 rowers of the Persians. Despite the odds, the Greeks were able to leverage the terrain and deploy bold tactics to win the day, but this did not bring victory in the war. For the next year, the Persians settled in to occupy northern Greece while Xerxes returned home to administer the greater concerns of his realm. Some small clashes and sieges occurred in this period, but it would be the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC which served as the climax for the conflict. Here, the allied Greek forces mustered an incredible 80 to 100,000 man army against a slightly larger force of Persians which had remained under the command of Mardones. For a time, the two were at a standstill until the repositioning of the Greek army precipitated an assault by the Persians. In the chaotic brawl which followed, the Greeks managed to turn the tide, sweeping the enemy from the field and storming their camp. This would be the end of the Persian offensive into Greece. The following years would see allied momentum push the foe out of Europe and chase them into Asia Minor and beyond. Thus, these conflicts will fall out of our geographic area of focus for now. The next conflicts which enter our field of view will be those which took place when Greeks turned on Greeks. This occurred soon after the immediacy of the Persian threat waned and the burgeoning Athenian Empire under the guise of the Delian League came to take up the mantle of the oppressor. What followed would be nearly a century of bloody conflict which largely fell under the umbrella of the Peloponnesian Wars. We won't have time to cover this in much detail, other than to point out the high frequency of clashes which at times did rival those of the Greco-Persian Wars. When Sparta ultimately toppled the Athenian Empire, it was not long before others fought against their hegemony. Thebes in particular seemed ready to be the next king of the hill upon defeating the Spartans at the Battle of Lutra. For instance, in 363 BC, we see both Sparta and Athens join together to challenge them at the Second Battle of Mantinea. Here, the Thebans deployed 27,000 men against a coalition force of roughly 22,000. Though Thebes proved victorious, it would come at the cost of their brilliant leader Epaminondas. His loss and that of several other prominent leaders left them crippled in the aftermath. This in turn paved the way for the Macedonians to now take advantage of the situation. Under Philip of Macedon, the Northern Kingdom waged a campaign to establish control over the Greek city-states. This would climax at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC. In this clash, Philip led a force of 32,000 against a mix of Greek forces numbering 35,000. Details of the battle are disputed, but Macedon ultimately emerged victorious, effectively ending the war and eventually leading to the formation of the Hellenic League with Philip as its leader. When he died, Alexander the Great was forced to wage another series of bloody campaigns to pacify the region. When this was completed, the Hellenic powers were finally able to turn their attention outwards in pursuit of Alexander's Grand Eastern Campaigns. Yet upon his unexpected demise in 323 BC, revolts broke out across Greece. For instance, in 322 BC, an uprising of 28,000 Greeks would be met by Antipater's force of 48,000 men. Though the Macedonians proved victorious, it was not long before further instability and death spread across the Hellenistic world with the Wars of the Diadochi and invasions by barbarian tribes. These were among the bloodiest conflicts since the Second Greco-Persian Wars. But soon, even this violence would be escalated with the arrival of the Romans who waged a series of Illyrian and Macedonian campaigns over the decades to conquer the region. The Battle of Pydna in 168 in particular stands as one of the major climaxes of this struggle. It would be here that 41,000 Romans came face to face with and ultimately overcame the 47,000 Macedonians and their feared pike wall. For a time, the region came to no peace. However, this was shattered by the Roman Civil Wars and their Methodatic Wars of the 1st century BC. The Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, between the Second Triumvirate and the so-called Liberators, stands as one of the largest of these. With up to around 200,000 men on the field, it eclipsed all battles which came before, and perhaps even surpassed the Battle of Plataea which had occurred four long centuries ago. It should be noted that while our attention has mostly focused on mainland Greece, there had also been other, less documented conflicts in the northern lands of Dacia and the western lands of Illyria. Both of these areas would receive more scrutiny in the 1st century AD. The Great Illyrian Revolt did so in a major way when ancient sources report that a million of their countrymen rose up against the occupiers. Exact figures are hard to come by, but it seems that when the Romans deployed 15 legions and many auxiliaries, the total number of combatants in the war may well have exceeded 200,000. The Dacian Wars of Domitian and Trajan also saw the large-scale deployment of legions to fight a series of wars along the frontier. Over the following years, these borders would be defended by the deployment of several legions and the establishment of a series of fortifications. Such defenses would be tested on many occasions, though many of these events lack records of troop counts. From the 3rd century onwards, however, we see a substantial uptick in the level of fighting across the region as civil wars and barbarian invasions stained the lands in blood. While not the largest of these conflicts, the Battle of Adrianople in 378 AD stands as one of the most famous battles of the period when an army of around 15,000 Goths crushed an eastern Roman army of 20,000 men, including the Emperor Valens himself. The early medieval period would see many new foes take swings at the eastern Romans. This included several sieges of Constantinople by the Sassanids, the Umayyads, and the Rus. One of the most brutal conflicts, though, would be the many Bulgarian Wars of the 9th and 10th centuries. The Battle of Pliska in 811 AD was a particularly large conflict which saw 50,000 Bulgarians under Krum the Fearsome destroy an army of 70,000 Byzantines, including the Emperor Nikephoros I. The 968 and 971 AD invasions of Sviatoslav also stand as other periods of intense conflict with some 80,000 soldiers taking part in the action. Over these years, the eastern Romans would take many hits, but it would be the siege of Constantinople in 1204 AD that would be backbreaking. Here, some 22,000 men of the 4th Crusade overcame the defenders, utterly sacking the Byzantine capital. In the aftermath, successor states attempted to carry on the torch but played a smaller role in geopolitical affairs. From the mid-14th century on, it would now be the encroaching Ottomans who increasingly came to dominate affairs in the region. In these matters, they would be challenged by the local Christian nations and crusading armies sent forth from the west to stop them. The Battle of Varna in 144 AD was a particularly critical moment in which the roughly 50,000 men Ottoman force defeated the comparably sized coalition of crusaders. Victory allowed them to continue their advance until in 1453 they took Constantinople itself in a great siege. This was a watershed moment for the era which marked the effective end of the last vestiges of the Roman Empire. The remainder of the 15th century would see the Ottomans take up their mantle with continued wars of conquest meant to dominate the former lands of the Byzantines. Certainly, there is much more history to tell here, but this is where our admittedly arbitrary date cutoff ends. Looking back on the data of this region, we see how the initial Greco-Persian wars certainly had some of the largest battles of the era, but that the average size of battle seems to have risen gradually up until the 1st century BC. From then on, we see a rather sustained level of large-scale battles which carried on across the next 1,000 years, with the last 500 seeing an initial dip as the Byzantines fall, followed by a sharp spike as the Ottomans rise to take their place. Applying some basic statistics on our battles of antiquity vs the middle ages yields the following boxplots. These confirm that while the earlier period may have had some larger battles, overall the later period had a slightly larger average battle size. However, a major contributor to this observation is the idea that many of the smaller battles of the medieval period just don't seem to show up in our records, giving more weight to the larger ones which might also suffer from some inflation. Yet even with these caveats, it's an interesting counterpoint to prior trends which had shown a more precipitous drop in figures when passing from antiquity to the medieval era. Let's now pull in the data from our previous coverage of the regions of France and the British Isles. It's a lot to look at, so let's overlay some moving averages. In a second, I'll further abstract this with smooth lines to help improve visibility, so feel free to pause now to absorb this more granular data before we continue. Okay, so now you can see some of the broader trends come into focus. Data is mostly missing for early antiquity, but comes in with a bang coinciding with the Roman invasions of the 1st century BC. From then on, you see how there is a general decline with a pronounced increase around the crisis of the 3rd century that seems to have impacted all regions. From then on, the British Isles essentially collapse in our dataset, while Gaul slowly trends down, and Southeastern Europe holds a fairly steady level of violence which exceeds the other regions. As a final metric, let's now show the whisker plots for all regions. Here you can see the same patterns as before. In addition, we see how antiquity has the largest outliers from across all regions, with Gaul being the most prominent theater of war in antiquity, and Southeast Europe being the largest in the medieval era. This is quite a clear result of the levels of centralization maintained in the Roman East, which persevered for most of the medieval period. Stay tuned for more episodes in the series as we dive into the analytics for additional regions and compare them. I'm particularly excited to present the data for Italy, which shows off the activity of the Romans during their dramatic rise to power. A huge thanks to the patrons for supporting the channel, and to the researchers, writers, and artists for making this episode possible. Be sure to like and subscribe for more content, and check out these other, related episodes. See you, in the next one.