"Herods like the Istomins" (иродам Истоминым)

Chekhov's advice to Kiseleva -- "pity your stories when you hand them over to Herods like the Istomins with their towheaded children" -- calls the Istomin family "Herods," invoking the biblical King Herod's proverbial cruelty and rapacity as a stock term of Russian abuse for someone grasping or merciless (here, apparently, in extracting free literary work or favors). This is a private, personal insult aimed at a specific family, not an ethnic or religious slur: "Herod" functions in Russian idiom as a generic byword for a tyrant or exploiter, unconnected to the Istomins' own background, which is not otherwise identified in the corpus as currently built. Compare the letter's earlier and distinctly different antisemitic remark, which does turn on ethnic caricature; the two should not be conflated.