'A Dictionary, Persian, Arabic, and English; with a Dissertation on the Languages, Literature, and Manners of Eastern Nations' [‎16r] (36/1826)

DISSERTATION.
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lespont, attended by no fewer than 5,283,220 souls,
and escaped back alone in a fishing-boat; the
whole almost of this mighty host perishing by the
sword, by famine, or by disease. The destruc
tion of such a number would have convulsed the
whole of Asia, had it been united under one
empire: could it possibly have been unfelt in Per
sia ? Can any man who has made the least obser
vation, at the same time, on history, suppose, for
a moment, that such myriads could by any means
have been maintained in one collected body; even
in the present times, when the art of war, in that
particular department, has arrived at a degree of
perfection unknown in those ruder ages. The
greatest armies, of which we have any rational in
formation, are those of Changlz Khan and Tamer
lane, the most despotic and the most powerful
conquerors on record: yet these princes, in all their
mighty achievements, were seldom followed by
400,000 men. We are told, indeed, that the army
of Tamerlane, on his return from the conquest of
India, when he meditated the destruction of Bajazet,
and of the sultans of Egypt and Bagdad, amounted
to near 800,000 men, previous to the battles of
Damascus and Ancyra. Yet those troops were
dispersed in different divisions ; they were besieg
ing many distant places at the same period of time;
and were not, after all, a sixth part of the reputed
army of Xerxes: though Tamerlane possessed then
an empire and an authority incomparably superior
to that of the Persian monarchs in the highest
zenith of their power ; and was then marching
against potentates of infinitely greater political con
sequence than the Grecians, at the supposed period
of this tremendous invasion . 34
But the states of Greece appear, in reality, with
regard to the Persians, to have been too far re
moved from that degree of importance which could
hold them up as objects of such high ambition or
of such mighty resentment. Till the reign of
Philip of Macedon, they are hardly mentioned by
the Persian writers, but as tributaries to the Per
sian empire. Those famous invasions have there
fore an appearance of being simply the movements
of the governors of Asia Minor, to regulate or en
force a tribute which the Greeks might frequently
be willing to neglect. Marathon, Salamis, and
other celebrated battles, may indeed have been real
events ; but “ numerous as the sands on the shore,”
is an idea which, in all times, has been annexed to
defeated armies: and the Grecian writers, to dig
nify their country, may have turned the hyperbole
into historic fact; and swelled the thousands of the
Persian Satrap into the millions of the Persian King.
Some of those famed events, it is not impossible
too, might have been the mere descents of pirates
or private adventurers ; either with the view to
plunder, or to retaliate some similar expedition of
the Greeks ; who appear very early to have been a
race of freebooters extremely troublesome to the
surrounding coasts. The Argonauts, if such heroes
ever did exist, are not entitled to a more reputable
appellation : and indeed the practice seems to have
been too universal to carry with the Greeks the
remotest imputation of dishonour. If we look into
Homer, Thucydides, Diodorus, and others, we
shall discover piracy to have been considered as a
profession; but without connecting with it the
least opprobrious idea. Strangers are carelessly
asked whether they are traders or pirates ; and the
discovery of either character does not seem to
heighten or diminish that respect or degree of hos
pitality which the manners of the times had an
nexed to the rank of those roving guests : “ Are
“ you merchants bound to any port (says Nestor,
“ at Pylos, to Telemachus and Mentor) ? or are
“ you pirates, who roam the seas, without a des-
“ tined place, and live by plunder and desolation?”
—In this honourable profession of pirates there
may have been many subjects of the Persian empire.
Greece, as well as other countries, may have been
often the theatre of their rapine and devastation ;
whilst their success or discomfiture must have been
events of too little moment to reach the ears or
engage the attention of the Shahinshah, or King
of Kings, at the remote cities of Persepolis and
Balkh. Suppose, if such an illustration may be
allowed, an English pirate to have landed in former