"And Haman said unto king Ahasuerus: 'There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of thy kingdom; and their laws are diverse from those of every people; neither keep they the king's laws; therefore it profiteth not the king to suffer them.
If it please the king, let it be written that they be destroyed; and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those that have the charge of the king's business, to bring it into the king's treasuries.'" Esther 3:8-9
How did Hamen come up with a number like 10,000 talents of silver?
I once hear from a Rav an interesting explanation based on a Tosfos (Megillah 17a). Hamen reasoned that as a nation, B'nei Yisrael can be evaluated according to the 1/2 shekel each adult (male) was to contribute to the upkeep of the mishkan. If 600,000 is considered the prototypical Jewish nation, it can be valued at 600,000 x 1/2 shekel or 300,000 shekalim. This is equivalent to 100 talents (3000 shekalim per talent). However, note that Haman described the nation as "scattered abroad and dispersed". He is claiming that there is no unity in this nation. Therefore, we have to evaluate them as individuals, not as a unified nation. And that we do according to the laws of erechin (see Vayikra 27:2), in which each adult male is valued at 50 shekalim. And 600,000 x 50 shekalim equals 10,000 talents!
It's really a great vort. Unfortunately, however, there are too many problems when you start to examine it more than superficially.
First, let's look at the sheer magnitude of 10,000 talents of silver. According to Wikipedia (R. Adin Steinsaltz concurs) the weight of a kikar (it is both a weight and a monetary measure) is approximately 27 kilograms. 10,000 kikkarim would weight 270,000 kilos, or almost 60,000 pounds! We're talking 30 TONS OF SILVER here, folks, an enormous amount! But how does that work out according to the value of the time?
It is commonly believe that Ahasuerus was Artaxerxes II, who reigned in Persia from approximately 404 BCE-358 BCE. This is close enough to the time of the Peloponnesian War in which it is described (again, thanks Wikipedia!) "that a talent was the amount of silver needed to pay the crew of a trireme for one month. Hellenistic mercenaries were commonly paid one drachma for every day of service, which was a good salary in the post-Alexander (III) days and years. 6,000 drachma made a talent. Based on this fact, assuming a crew of roughly 200 rowers paid at the basic pay rate of a junior enlisted member of the US armed forces (E-2), a talent would be worth nearly $300,000." So 10,000 talents would be the equivalent of $3 BILLION!!! Now I don't care how stinking rich Hamen was, $3 billion is a little over the top, don't you think?
Of course, the whole drasha suggests that Hamen learned! That he knew about laws such as erechin and the chatzi shekel, and therefore came up with this quite clever cheshbon. And if he is evaluating the Jews according to erechin - as individuals - then why would he use the 600,000 number? This only includes males from 20-60. What about all of the females, and what about the males below 20 and over 60, each category of which is evaluated differently? Why would he even care about how many adult males supposedly came out of Egypt and not about how many were in the lands that Artaxerxes controlled? Did he learn Kaballah and know about 600,000 root souls?
The most logical conclusion is that Megillat Esther is engaging in hyperbole when it says 10,000 talents. I believe that the number is being used to convey a theological lesson (possibly the writer of Esther himself thought that it would made for a nice vort!) and was never intended to be considered as historically accurate, like most of Tanach.