The Duke of Ragusa (in his voyage en Hongrie, Turquie, etc.), after mentioning the prodigiously exaggerated statements current about the numbers slain in the suppressed insurrection of the Janissaries at Constantinople in 1826, observes: “On a dit et répété, que leur nombre s’étoit élévé a huit ou dix mille, et cette opinion s’est accréditée (it was really about five hundred). Mais les Orientaux en général, et les Turcs en particulier, n’ont aucune idée des nombres: ils les emploient sans exactitude, et ils sont par caractère portés à l’exagération. D’un autre coté, le gouvernement a dû favoriser cette opinion populaire, pour frapper l’imagination et inspirer une plus grande terreur.” (Vol. ii, p. 37.) Ktesias gives the total of the host at eight hundred thousand men, and one thousand triremes, independent of the war-chariots: 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. Ælian assigns an aggregate of seven hundred thousand men: Diodorus[61] appears to follow partly Herodotus, partly other authorities. None of these witnesses enable us to correct Herodotus, in a case where we are obliged to disbelieve him. He is, in some sort, an original witness, having evidently conversed with persons actually present at the muster of Doriskus, giving us both their belief as to the numbers, together with the computation, true or false, circulated among them by authority. Moreover, the contemporary Æschylus, while agreeing with him exactly as to the number of triremes, gives no specific figure as to the land-force, but conveys to us, in his Persæ, a general sentiment of vast number, which may seem in keeping with the largest statement of Herodotus: the Persian empire is drained of men,—the women of Susa are left without husbands and brothers,—the Baktrian territory has not been allowed to retain even its old men.[62] The terror-striking effect of this crowd was probably quite as great as if its numbers had really corresponded to the ideas of Herodotus. [61] Ktesias, Persica, c. 22, 23; Ælian, V. H. xiii, 3; Diodorus, xi, 2-11. Respecting the various numerical statements in this case, see the note of Bos ad Cornel. Nepot. Themistocl. c. 2, pp. 75, 76. The Samian poet Chœrilus, a few years younger than Herodotus, and contemporary with Thucydides, composed an epic poem on the expedition of Xerxes against Greece. Two or three short fragments of it are all that is preserved: he enumerated all the separate nations who furnished contingents to Xerxes, and we find not only the Sakæ, but also the Solymi (apparently the Jews, and so construed by Josephus) among them. See Fragments, iii and iv, in Næke’s edition of Chœrilus, pp. 121-134. Josephus cont. Apion. p. 454, ed. Havercamp.