this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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History Memes

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Context: Modern historians debate and argue over historical events. Meanwhile the sage Vyasa dictating the Mahabharata to Lord Ganesha, showing that ancient historians simply recorded massive, made-up casualty counts - something shared across the globe.

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[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 12 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Part of it is that many pre-modern armies also had extremely limited ability to estimate the numbers of their enemies, as they often lacked professional scouting units who specialize in such matters - even some early modern 'rationalized' attempts at scouting with collations of multiple scouts' record-keeping and long-distance observation tools like binoculars, like the Pinkertons in the US Civil War, could come up with double or triple the actual numbers of the enemy.

On the other hand, Procopius, a Late Roman/Byzantine writer, accuses Emperor Justinian of killing a trillion people ('a myriad myriad of myriads' - '10,000 * 10,000 * 10,000'), and 50 million in Libya alone. So uh, there's definitely a taste for big numbers with some pre-modern writers.

[–] papalonian@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

accuses Emperor Justinian of killing a trillion people ('a myriad myriad of myriads'

Guy kinda sounds like a dick

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 8 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I mean, Procopius also wrote that Justinian walked around with his head detached from his body in that same text, so it may not be the most accurate of sources.

(even speaking as someone who fucking hates Justinian)

[–] Dupelet@piefed.social 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

How would YOU know, you weren't there to see for yourself. Dude was probably a Dullahan.

[–] papalonian@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Justinian walked around with his head detached from his body

Massive dick

[–] raman_klogius@ani.social 5 points 4 days ago

Also the Buddha had lived for trillion times the theoretical age of our universe (big bang to heat death) before reaching enlightenment