According to Herodotus, the "Alarodians" ("Alarodioi"), presumably a variation of the name "Urartian"/"Araratian", were part of the 18th Satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire and formed a special contingent in the grand army of Xerxes I. According to this theory, the Urartians of the 18th Satrapy were subsequently absorbed into the Armenian nation. Modern historians, however, have cast doubt on the Alarodian connection to the Urartians as the latter are never recorded as having applied an endonym related to "Ararat" to themselves.