Logisticaly speaking, modern armies require a giant logistical branch. With a massive supply chain to supply food and gear. All supplied by mechanised factories and transport vehicles.
How did the Achaeans seige Troy for 10 year. Their food storage couldnt have been that large.
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Armies would forage for food as they traveled they wouldn’t take all their food with them. They probably would have some stores of things that lasted but they would much rather steal your grain and hunt your animals then eat their stores of flour. As far as gear they would travel with blacksmiths who would repair gear when they camped
– The Iliad is a work of fiction. It may be roughly based on real events, but details like army sizes and the duration of the siege are most probably made up.
– Until the 19th century, an army on campaign required mostly one thing, and that was food. Troy being on the shore, the Achaeans could have had grain shipped in from anywhere, but in most other places the only feasible source of food was to take it from the local peasants.
The siege of Troy was most likely fictional. The Greeks did not differentiate much between fact and fiction so we have to take their writings with a pinch of salt. For the more realistic campaigns it often takes ten years to gather supplies and then a huge logistics branch which dwarfs the army. For example the battle of Marathon was an attack on the Persian supply lines which consisted of the largest fleet ever seen up until that day. Without their supplies the Army, who went over land, were forced back and had to spend ten years until they could attack again. This time the logistics also went by land and resulted in the battle of Thermopoly.
The way a lot of these campaigns worked was that they gathered most of their supplies as they marched. This meant that soldiers had to detach from the main army to attack cities and farms along the way to gather food for the army. Even going so far as picking up farm tools to harvest the crops and animals that was still in the fields. There were usually only a few professional soldiers at this time and most of the army were composed of farmers so they were skilled at this. It is possible that in a prolonged siege the soldiers would maintain the local farms after driving the local farmers away so they would get enough food for themselves.
But there were also big supply chains following the army. If the army were unable to find enough food or when they were stationary for some time they needed supplies from the stores back home. So a big part of the army were concerned with transporting these supplies. The entire society were part of a campaign. Farmers would preserve and store any excess food they had, smiths would make armour and weapons whenever they had some time over from making farm equipment. Whenever the order to gather the army went out it was not only the farmers son who had to leave for the army, he was accompanied by wagonloads of food and weapons needed for the campaign. The farmer would send anything he could part with and start rebuilding for the next campaign.
Armies are not just soldiers. You need cooks, and blacksmiths, and hunters, and tailors, and all sorts of jobs. Today, those jobs can be all over the world while the soldiers do their thing. Back then, everybody was coming along for the ride.
On top of that, armies would simply steal/pillage as they moved through enemy territory. It wasn’t just “them being bad guys”. Destroying a village weakens the enemy by removing one of their resources, and strengthens your army by getting fresh supplies. It’s strategic.
> How did the bronze age field such large armies
With supply chains.
Supply chains don’t *require* mechanized factories or mechanized transport vehicles. Those things make a supply chain much more efficient, but they are not *requirements*. Humans with pick-axes, caravans of mule or camels, and the occasional sailing ship get the job done, too.
As this is Reddit so I’m sure I’ll be corrected if I’m wrong but I think a teacher once told me that wars back then weren’t constant but seasonal. So something like the siege of Troy would be on and off for 10 years, not last a solid 10 years. Most of the army wouldn’t be professional soldiers so they would go back home and very now and then and have to tend to the harvest, for example. And then go back to soldiering when they more or less had time.
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