hey asshole stop putting in the redundant phrase a claim unsupported by other modern or ancient sources shitface the encyclopedia iranica does indeed find support in the ancient sources considering how many troops ariobarzanes brought with himself to the battle of gaugamela and the nature of the location of the battle of the persian gates which could impossibly house any of the estimates given by hammond or waldemar heckel the greek numbers given are obviously inflated and have no root in historical reality how can ariobarzanes magically summon more troops than darius iii codomannus at ecbatana where the greater part of the nobility followed him explain that to me cuntface so stop being a shithead pretty please i will not relent in removing that phrase it is stupid on so many levels and serves only as an attempt to discredit the encyclopedia iranica when in fact it does a better job at cutting down customarily inflated greek estimates than hammond who takes his numbers straight from the imperial roman author curtius rufus which was a thinly veiled political exaltation of emperor vespasian fucking idiot