Note 580 — Chapter XX · EGYPTIANS.

Theokritus (Idyll, xvii, 83) celebrates Ptolemy Philadelphus king of Egypt as ruling over thirty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-three cities: the manner in which he strings these figures into three hexameter verses is somewhat ingenious. The priests, in describing to Herodotus the unrivalled prosperity which they affirmed Egypt to have enjoyed under Amasis, the last king before the Persian conquest, said that there were then twenty thousand cities in the country (ii, 177). Diodorus tells us that eighteen thousand different cities and considerable villages were registered in the Egyptian ἀναγραφαὶ (i, 31) for the ancient times, but that thirty thousand were numbered under the Ptolemies.