How do the scale and rate of casualties of WWI battles like the Somme or Verdun compare to ancient battles like The Cannae?

by Erpp8

My question is inspired by listening to Dan Carlin's Blueprint for Armageddon. He talks about how the size of ancient armies and how their casualties were nothing compared to WWI. But according to Wikipedia, 50-70k Roman troops died in one day. And in WWI, 22k was close to the one day max.

So was WWI really not that extreme compared to ancient battles?

chrisps989

The closest contemporary account we have of the battle is Polybius, who wrote it 50 years after it had happened. Ancient sources also have a tendency to greatly over-exaggerate the number of men involved in a battle. Don't just blindly accept incredibly high numbers like that.