Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/254

 236 HISTORY OF GREECE. the sum of seven thousand seven hundred and forty Babylonian talents, equal to something about two million nine hundred and sixty-four thousand pounds sterling: from the Indians, who alone paid in gold, there was received a sum equal (at the rate of 1 : 13) to four thousand six hundred and eighty Euboic talents of silver, or to about one million two hundred and ninety thousand pounds sterling. 1 To explain how it happened that this one satrapy was charged with a sum equal to two-fifths of the aggregate charge on the 1 Herodot. iii, 95. The text of Herodotus contains an erroneous sum- ming up of items, which critics have no means of correcting with certainty. Nor is it possible to trust the large sum which he alleges to have been levied from the Indians, though all the other items, included in the nine- teen silver-paying divisions, seem within the probable truth ; and indeed both Rennell and Robertson think the total too small : the charges on some of the satrapies are decidedly smaller than the reality. The vast sum of fifty thousand talents is said to have been found by Alexander the Great, laid up by successive kings at Susa alone, besides the treasures at Persepolis, Pasargadae, and elsewhere (Arrian, iii, 16, 12; Plutarch, Alexand. 37). Presuming these talents to be Babylonian or ./Eginaan talents (in the proportion 5 : 3 to Attic talents), fifty thousand talents would be equal to nineteen million pounds sterling ; if they were Attic talents, it would be equal to eleven million six hundred thousand pounds sterling. The statements of Diodorus give even much larger sums (xvii, 66-71 : compare Curtius, v, 2, 8; v, 6, 9 ; Strabo, xv, p. 730). It is plain that the numerical affirmations were different in different authors, and one cannot pretend to pronounce on the trustworthiness of such large figures without knowing more of the original returns on which they were founded. That there were prodigious sums of gold and silver, is quite unquestion- able. Respecting the statement of the Persian revenue given by Herodotus see Boeckh, Metrologie, ch. v, 1-2. Amede'e Jaubeit, in 1806, estimated the population of the modern Per- sian empire at about seven million souls ; of which about six million were settled population, the rest nomadic : he also estimated the Schah's revenue at about two million nine hundred thousand tomans, or one million five hundred thousand pounds sterling. Others calculated the population higher, at nearer twelve million souls. Kinneir gives the revenue at some- thing more than three million pounds sterling : he thinks that the whole territory between the Euphrates and the Indus does not contain above eighteen millions of souls (Geogr. Memoir of Persia, pp. 44 47 : compare Ritter, West Asien, Abtheil. ii, Abschn. iv, pp. 879-889). The modern Persian empire contains not so much as the eastern half of the ancient, which coveied all Asiatic Turkey and Egypt besides.