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How accurate were the Greek scholars who accompanied Alexander?

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How accurate were the Greek scholars who accompanied Alexander?

Was it right on the dot or did they exaggerate the numbers of the enemy side to make Alexander more impressive? It's written that Alexander defeated a million Persians when he sieged Persia but modern estimates put it at 100, 000.

Thoughts?
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>>2734212
bump
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If they claim it to be 1 million in a single battle, then it is obviously exaggeration. However, to say that throughout his campaigns in the Persian Empire he defeated multiple armies at multiple battles/sieges eventually totalling 1 million or more is not really out of the question in my opinion. They were able to gather quite large armies, they were just ill-equipped and often poorly organized on the battlefield.
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>>2734319
>However, to say that throughout his campaigns in the Persian Empire he defeated multiple armies at multiple battles/sieges eventually totalling 1 million or more is not really out of the question in my opinion. They were able to gather quite large armies, they were just ill-equipped and often poorly organized on the battlefield.

But that's throughout the course of an entire war. That happened a lot. I'm talking about all at once.
I'm not surprised that the Persian armies were just hordes, but reading through his conquests it seems like his scholars would overstate his enemies forces (and the amount of soldiers that were killed) and would understate Alexander's own hits.

I looked online for anybody that was talking about it but I couldn't find much.
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>>2734337
For sure they exaggerated, just look at some of the numbers for some of the battles that some of his followers quoted. His biggest battle with the Persians was Gaugemela, and that was roughly between 100,000-200,000 on the side of the Persians, whereas his followere quote well over 1 million, which was simply not possible at the time due to logistics. The Persian Empire would have to have been organized on the same level as the early Roman Empire to be even remotely capable of raising such a large army for a single battle. Aka it never happened and was really just a large unarmored and spear armed horde with decent Bactrian cavalry that got whooped.
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>>2734337
One thing to note though, was that his losses weren't really understated. In a battle, when one side won, it tended to win really fucking hard, and when a side lost it tended to lose really fucking hard. Meaning that he never lost too many men in a single battle since he won every single one by a massive margin, other than the battle of the Hydaspes River, which is supposed to be his most "catastrophic" loss even though he still lost basically no soliders while virtually destroying the Indian army.
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