Where did this claim about the Egpytian Theban army come from?
score:4
According to Homer, Egyptian Thebes had 100 gates, each capable of issuing 200 hors*m*n with associated chariots and horses (Iliad, book 9, as translated by Alexander Pope, ca. 1720):
Not all proud Thebes’ unrivall’d walls contain,
The world’s great empress on the Egyptian plain
(That spreads her conquests o’er a thousand states,
And pours her heroes through a hundred gates,
Two hundred hors*m*n and two hundred cars
From each wide portal issuing to the wars)
According to the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela's De chorographia (book I, chap 9, in a 1585 English translation)
...Thebes, which hath (as is reported in Homer) a hundred Gates, or (as other saye) a hundred Pallaces, the houses of so many Princes, eche of which Pallaces (as the state of affayres required) was wont to send foorth ten thousande armed men.
More recently this exaggeration has been repeated in fiction, where a character says
"It is," said the Doctor of Sorbonne, "because the stock of faith has greatly decreased."
A great deal was said about Thebes and its hundred gates, and of the million of soldiers that issued out of those gates with the twenty thousand chariots of war.
"Shut the book there," said Mr. Andrew. "Since I have taken to reading, I beg to suspect that the same genius that wrote Garagantua, used of yore to write all the histories."
and in nonfiction by the same author
But, who can possibly believe, that through each of the hundred gates of Thebes, there went out two hundred chariots of war, and one hundred thousand combatants ? That would amount to twenty thousand chariots, and one million of soldiers; and, if we reckon one soldier to every five inhabitants, the amount of the population of this single city, would be five millions; in a country which is not so large as Spain or France
(I cannot explain the funny math involved with 100 times 100,000 equaling one million.)
More post
- 📝 How do I interpret this 17th century English ledger?
- 📝 What in Confucianism reduced the importance of the clan structure and made these societies more secular?
- 📝 Other than Mr. Putin, has there been occassion of an ex-secret agent becoming the primary executive power holder?
- 📝 What would be the GDP of the Roman Empire?
- 📝 What was the purpose for Kaiser Wilhelm's visit to Jerusalem?
- 📝 Who stood for the Roman consulship in absentia?
- 📝 Has anyone come across WW1 large brass casing engraved with French cities?
- 📝 History of scientific regression
- 📝 Were some Yugoslav "nationalities" more pro-Axis/Allied than others during World War II
- 📝 What were the long-term effects of Reconstruction in the South?
- 📝 What quality were Japanese troops in Japan in 1945?
- 📝 What was the size of the British East India fleet at the end of the War of 1812?
- 📝 Looking for a documentary on history of communication
- 📝 A question about the definition of heresy (13th. C)
- 📝 What is the earliest known writing associating the number three with the dimension of the world?
- 📝 How far did Malcolm X get with taking the United States to the United Nations?
- 📝 How long did it take for a diplomat to travel between Berlin and Vienna in the 1770's?
- 📝 Why did not Spain manage to keep any colonial possessions in the new world?
- 📝 Why is the capital of Turkey Ankara rather than Istanbul?
- 📝 Exactly what time of the day was the UN charter official?
- 📝 What did General McAuliffe actually say at Bastogne?
- 📝 Dunkirk little ships collection
- 📝 What is the oldest road in the world that has been in continuous use?
- 📝 Could the U.S. have used "Lend Lease" to force Germany onto the horns of a dilemma?
- 📝 Why did leaders seem to overlook diseases in their campaigns?
- 📝 Who were the "international statesmen" Hitler referenced in his last will as having started the war?
- 📝 What did US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart study as an undergraduate?
- 📝 What did the ancient Egyptians think of Khufu?
- 📝 Where did 15th century English serfs live?
- 📝 Did Charlemagne's Christian conquest of Germany cause the Vikings to hit back at Britain?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Where did this claim about the Egpytian Theban army come from?
- 📝 Where did the “vikings wear helmets with horn” stereotype come from and why?
- 📝 Where did the money come from to build the Colosseum?
- 📝 Why did the British "Indian" army come disproportionately from particular regions?
- 📝 Where did the masquerade ball come from and what was its original concept?
- 📝 Did Albert Einstein really receive this rejection letter from the University of Bern?
- 📝 Where did the archived discussions in Google Groups come from?
- 📝 Where did the term "Middle Ages" come from?
- 📝 Why did this anti-communist pamphlet, from the USA in the 1950s, include UNESCO among its targets?
- 📝 From where does the superstition about Friday the thirteenth originate?
- 📝 Where did the design of the US Colonel insignia come from?
- 📝 Did the Russian Empire have a claim to Sweden? Was there ever a time where they could have pursued it?
- 📝 How did the Roman army go from constantly losing battles in the middle of the 3rd century to winning almost everything?
- 📝 How did the British Army unit size and structure in WWI change from 1915 to 1918?
- 📝 How close did Germany come to interdicting Soviet oil shipments from the Caucasus in 1942?
- 📝 Where did the term "Radical Republican" come from?
- 📝 Where did the demand for textiles during the industrial revolution come from?
- 📝 Where can I find documents from the Nuremberg trials about war crimes of the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union?
- 📝 Where did one-in-a-million chance of nuking the atmosphere come from?
- 📝 Where did this coin come from?
- 📝 How come the British did not notify the Poles about the Molotov-Ribbentrop secret protocol?
- 📝 Where did the names of these Tyrian kings come from?
- 📝 Why did Black and Asian immigrants from the Empire not come to Britain in substantial numbers until after WW2?
- 📝 Did syphilis, polio, hepatitis, and encephalitis come to general world from the Americas?
- 📝 Did a German Jew in the US Army save his home district from bombing?
- 📝 Where did the profits for the founders of the Bank of England come from?
- 📝 Do NKVD files say that during WWII, Soviet leadership knew about the rape of Soviet women liberated from labour camps and did nothing to stop it?
- 📝 Did the invention of crowns/diadems come from a desire to ward off headaches?
- 📝 How did a travelling Roman army decide where to temporarily camp for the night?
- 📝 When and where did the myth about solar eclipse affecting pregnant women start?