Xerxes’ resolution is shaken by Artabanos’ advice. He even decides to follow it, though warned in a dream not to change his resolution. The warning comes a second time. He consults Artabanos, and suggests that he should put on the royal apparel and sleep in the royal bed, and so make experiment whether the dream would come to him. To him also the vision comes; and he, too, is converted. So jealous are the gods of human greatness, and so persistent were they in leading the great king into disaster! ◆H. vii. 20.◆ Having decided on the expedition, Xerxes proceeded with his preparations. Herodotus says that he took four whole years in making them, and that he began them immediately after suppressing the revolt of Egypt. No useful end can be gained by following in detail through the pages of Herodotus the exaggerated estimate which the Greek formed of the magnitude of the expedition and of the preparations made for it. All that will be attempted here will be to show what, on a sober estimate of possibilities and probabilities, may be assumed to have been the actual facts of the case. The obvious exaggerations of the Greek estimate have led writers in modern times to what must be regarded as exaggerated depreciations of the magnitude of this supreme effort on the part of the great Empire.[92] Whatever the obscurities of the detailed evidence, one reliable fact seems to stand forth: that this was an unusual effort on the part of Persia. The levy of troops for the expedition was certainly an extraordinary one. Allowing for the Greek exaggeration of numbers, there is reason to suppose that the ordinary full levy of the Persian land forces produced an army of about half a million. It had been called out for the Scythian expedition, nearly twenty years before this time. This full levy was, however, rarely made, and only when circumstances imperatively demanded it. It is also noticeable that on such occasions the Great King assumes the command. It is quite possible that the number of troops put into the field during the Ionian revolt amounted from beginning to end to numbers even exceeding those of the ordinary general levy; but it is a noticeable feature of that war that the Government at Susa carries it on by means of reinforcements despatched at various times. There is nothing of the nature of a single great levy. It must be concluded that the troops employed on land in the campaign of 480 amounted to more than half a million.[93] In Herodotus the numbers of the expedition run into millions. The exaggeration is so hopelessly great that it is impossible to draw any conclusion from the statements made.[94] #NUMBERS OF THE PERSIAN EXPEDITION.#