The Travels of Marco Polo

Polo uses large numbers to describe the vastness of an assembled army or an imperial palace or even of a group of people who hold high rank but still owe fealty to the Great Khan. In one chapter, the Khan is said to have the command of 12,000 barons: “On these twelve thousand barons he bestows thirteen changes of raiment, all different from one another” (2281-82).In a battle Polo describes, the armies are very large: “On both sides there were about a hundred thousand horsemen” (4433-34). Of Kublai Khan’s four wives, Polo says that “[n]one of them has fewer than three hundred young female attendants of great beauty” (1989). In the realm of gifts, on New Year’s Day, “His Majesty receives at this festival has no fewer than a hundred thousand horses” (2258-59).