05-19-2005, 08:22 PM
Quote:Think that, how did Herodotus get his number?
He may very well have guessed. I have seen that H. is not the best guesser. There is one fascinating passage regarding the Egyptians. In H's time, the Egyptians knew the names of 333 of their previous kings. (Side Note: It's amazing to me, how the Egyptians could keep such excellent historic records for so long, only for it to be almost completely lost soon after, waiting to be partially rediscovered in modern times!)
From this Herodotus calculated that the regime went back 11,000 years! Assuming that the average reign was 33 years long. If you think about it though, 33 years is really a very long reign for a king. 10 years is probably much more like it as an average, which results in 3330 years, which is pretty close to what we believe today.
When it comes to math, it doesn't take much to get the final result very wrong. If H. had used this kind of estimating for each component of the Persian army, things could easily get out of hand. Although, that doesn't actually prove that he was as far off as people think.
Rich Marinaccio
