superior discipline, and was left dead upon the field of battle with the greater part of his army.  So far the affair presented no unusual features; it was merely one more commonplace repetition of a score of similar episodes which had already taken place in the same region, under Tiglath-pileser III. or the early Sargonides; but Huvakshatara, the son of Phraortes, known to the Greeks as Cyaxares,* instead of pleading for mercy, continued to offer a stubborn resistance.  Cyaxares belongs to history, and there can be no doubt that he exercised a decisive influence over the destinies of the Oriental world, but precise details of his exploits are wanting, and his personality is involved in such obscuring mists that we can scarcely seize it; the little we have so far been able to glean concerning him shows us, not so much the man himself, as a vague shadow of him seen dimly through the haze.

* The original form of the name is furnished by passages in the Behistun inscription, where Chitrantakhma of Sagartia and Fravartish of Media, two of the claimants for the throne who rose against Darius, are represented as tracing their descent from Huvakshatara.

His achievements prove him to have been one of those perfect rulers of men, such as Asia produces every now and then, who knew how to govern as well as how to win battles—­a born general and lawgiver, who could carry his people with him, and shone no less in peace than in war.*

* G. Rawlinson takes a somewhat different view of Cyaxares’ character; he admits that Cyaxares knew how to win victories, but refuses to credit him with the capacity for organisation required in order to reap the full benefits of conquest, giving as his reason for this view the brief duration of the Medic empire.  The test applied by him does not seem to me a conclusive one, for the existence of the second Chaldaean empire was almost as short, and yet it would be decidedly unfair to draw similar inferences touching the character of Nabopolassar or Nebuchadrezzar from this fact.

[Illustration:  297.jpg MEDIC AND PERSIAN FOOT-SOLDIERS]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Coste and Flandin.  The first
     and third figures are Medes, the second and fourth Persians.

The armies at the disposal of his predecessors had been little more than heterogeneous assemblies of feudal militia; each clan furnished its own contingent of cavalry, archers, and pikemen, but instead of all these being combined into a common whole, with kindred elements contributed by the other tribes, each one acted separately, thus forming a number of small independent armies within the larger one.  Cyaxares saw that defeat was certain so long as he had nothing but these ill-assorted masses to match against the regular forces of Assyria:  he therefore broke up the tribal contingents and rearranged the units of which they were composed according to their natural affinities, grouping horsemen with horsemen, archers with archers, and pikemen with pikemen, taking the Assyrian cavalry and infantry as his models.*