Amedée Jaubert, in 1806, estimated the population of the modern Persian 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 something more than three million pounds sterling: he thinks that the whole territory between the Euphratês 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 covered all Asiatic Turkey and Egypt besides.
[425] Herodot. iii, 102; iv, 44. See the two Excursus of Bähr on these two chapters, vol. ii, pp. 648-671 of his edit. of Herodotus.
It certainly is singular that neither Nearchus, nor Ptolemy, nor Aristobulus, nor Arrian, take any notice of this remarkable voyage distinctly asserted by Herodotus to have been accomplished. Such silence, however, affords no sufficient reason for calling the narrative in question. The attention of the Persian kings, successors to Darius, came to be far more occupied with the western than with the eastern portions of their empire.
[426] Thucyd. i, 138.
[427] Herodot. iii, 117.
[428] Herodot. i, 192. Compare the description of the dinner and supper of the Great King, in Polyænus, iv, 3, 32; also Ktêsias and Deinôn ap Athenæum, ii, p. 67.
[429] Plato, Legg. iii, 12, p. 695.
[430] Herodot. iv, 166; Plutarch, Kimon, 10.
The gold Daric, of the weight of two Attic drachmæ; (Stater Daricus), equivalent to twenty Attic silver drachmæ (Xenoph. Anab. i, 7, 18), would be about 16s. 3d. English. But it seems doubtful whether that ratio between gold and silver (10 : 1) can be reckoned upon as the ordinary ratio in the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. Mr. Hussey calculates the golden Daric as equal to £1, 1s. 3d. English (Hussey, Essay on the Ancient Weights and Money, Oxford, 1836, ch. iv, s. 8, p. 68; ch. vii, s. 3, p. 103).