38 fflSTOKY OF GREECE. well believe that the numbers of Xerxes were greater than were ever assembled in ancient times, or jjerhaps at any known epoch of histoi-y. But it would be rash to pretend to guess at any positive number, in the entire absence of ascertained data : and when we learn from Thucydides that he found it impossible to find out the exact numbers of the small armies of Greeks who fought at Mantineia,' we shall not be ashamed to avow our ina- bility to count the Asiatic multitudes at Doriskus. We may remark, however, that, in spite of the reinforcements received afterwards in Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly, it may be doubt- ed whether the aggregate total ever afterwards increased; for Herodotus takes no account of desertions, which yet must have been very numerous, in a host disorderly, heterogeneous, without any interest in the enterprise, and wherein the numbers of each separate contingent were unknown. Ktesias gives the total of the host at eight hundred thousand men, and one thousand triremes, independent of the war-chari- ots : if he counts the crews of the triremes apart from the eight hundred thousand men, as seems probable, the total will then be considerably above a million. MUaix assigns an aggregate
- Thucydid. v, 68. Xenophon calls the host of Xerxes innumerable, —
avap'f&fiTjTOv arpaTtuv (Anabas. iii, 2, 13). It seems not to be considered necessary for a Turkish minister to know the numbers of an assembled Turkish army. In the war between the Rus- sians and Turks in 1770, when the Turkish army was encamped atBabadag near the Balkan, Baron de Tott tells us : " Le Visir me demanda un jour fort serieusement si I'armee Ottomane etoit nombreuse. C'est k vous que je m'adresserois, lui dis-je, si j'e'tais curieux de le savoir. Je I'ignore, me repondit-il. Si vous I'ignorez, comment pourrois-je en etre instruit ? En lisant la Gazette de Vienne, me repliqua-t-il. Je restai confondu." The Duke of Eagusa (in his voyage en Hongrie, Turquie, etc.), after mentioning the prodigiously exaggerated statements current about the ntmibers slain in the suppressed insurrection of the Janissaries at Constan- tinople in 1826, observes : " On a dit et re'pete, que leur nombre s'e'toit elev^ a huit ou dix mille, et cette opinion s'est accreditee (it was really about five hizndred). Mais les Orientaux en general, et les Turcs en particulier, n'cnt aucune ide'e des nombres : ils les emploient sans exactitude, et ils sont par caractere portes a I'exageration. D'un autre cote, le gouvemement a dA favoriser cette opinion populaire, pour frapper I'imagination et inspirer one plus grande terreur." (Vol. ii, p. 3?.)
