Herodotus claimed over two million for the Persian Army. The fun thing is, the number is almost exactly 10 times the actual size of said army. Possibly just a coincidence, but interesting nonetheless.Darth Wong wrote:That's because historians back then just threw out the number "a million" whenever they wanted to give an impression that the enemy army was vast.
Very much depends on the historian. Some actually did take care to record things with a high degree of accuracy, though it is true that everyone did at least embellish the truth to one degree or another.Rumour, innuendo, or outright fabrication were par for the course back then, and if enough people said something happened, then gosh darn it, it really happened and historians would write about it accordingly.
Certain historical claims are archaeologically verifiable. Thus it is possible to get an idea of how accurate they are overall by measuring their claims against the archaeological evidence. Josephus in particular is surprisingly correct. His descriptions of Jerusalem are very exact, and they largely match the remains of the city that have been found.Lots of talk, but no real evidence that he is either honest, accurate, or even competent.
His writings have actually been of practical use to modern archaeologists. He describes a fortress out in the middle of nowhere that was besieged by the Romans. It was found by consulting what Josephus said about its location, they also found traces of the Roman camp. Furthermore just this year Herod's tomb was found... pretty much right where Josephus said it was.
At the very least that guy can be considered highly reliable. The problem is not so much whether what he wrote is accurate, but whether he actually wrote certain passages in the first place.