Why were the armies of antiquity so much bigger than the armies in the late middle ages sometimes armies early modern era?

by Street-Policy2825

And I'm not talking about Rome or Carthage or Persia here, I'm talking about small not very populated states like Epirus (in the Pyrrhic War) and Macedon (in the Macedonian Wars), who were able to field at least 25000 men, which was already larger than many medieval armies and nearly as large as the fully mobilized French army at that time.

gynnis-scholasticus

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