Different armies and different cultures will meet that nutritional demand in different ways, but staple grains (wheat, barley, corn, rice) dominate rations in part because they also dominated the diet of the peasantry (being the highest calories-per-acre-farmed-and-labor-added foods) and because they were easy to move and store. Fruits and vegetables were, by contrast, always subject to local availability, since without refrigeration they were difficult to keep or move; meat at least could be smoked, salted or made into jerky, but its expense made it an optional bonus to the diet rather than the core of it. So the diet here is mostly bread; many armies reliant on wheat and barley agriculture came up with a fairly similar idea here: a dense but simple flour-and-water (and maybe salt) biscuit or cracker which if kept dry could keep for long periods and be easy to move
fucks me up every time im reminded that premodern armies were mostly living off bread. i feel like if i just ate bread i would start feeling very sick very quickly. however, he mentions later
Spartan rations on Sphacteria were 2 choenikes of barley alphita (a course barley flour) per man per day (Thuc. 4.16.1) which comes out to roughly 1.4kg
rough calculation says this is something on the order of 150g of protein a day, which is pretty high! it also says its 5000 calories though, which is insane. if we assume its more on the order of half that (worse barley? or something?) that's still like 75g of protein a day, which is pretty solid. why dont we all just live off barley flour + water + salt
Scurvy.












