Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers with me.

Murray, I've got a question from Greg today.

Hi, I'm a 12-year-old Italian guy, so I'm presuming it's Gregario or Gregorio.

But Greg, hi Greg, and I love ancient history and ancient warfare, and I have a question for you, Murray,

how many casualties were there at the Battle of Magnesia? How many casualties were there really

at the Battle of Magnesia? The Roman sources say 53,000s for the Seleucids and only 350 Romans died,

or 349, technically speaking. Is this true?

Golly gosh.

Okay, wonderful question.

Thank you for your question, Greg.

Of course, you can ask us a question too.

You can send us an email.

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If you listen to one of the others, the addresses there.

Now, casualty discrepancies in casualty rates are sort of a standard trope of ancient warfare,

and they are also a massive problem in the sense that most modern historians don't accept them.

Weirdly, though, a lot of the low casualty numbers are very specific.

So indeed, as you say, at the Battle of Magnesia, there are indeed a massive discrepancy between the casualties in the Roman forces, 349, and the Seleucid forces, 53,000 dead, as well as 1,400 captured, and 15 war elephants captured.

Now, it's a really weird one in the sense that a lot of ancient battles have this massive

discrepancy between the winner and the loser. One aspect of that, of course, is that in shield

wall warfare of ancient warfare, for instance, if you think about a hoplight battle where one shield

...