* Herodotus tells us that Cyaxares was “the first to divide the Asiatics into different regiments, separating the pikemen from the archers and horsemen; before his time, these troops were all mixed up haphazard together.”  I have interpreted his evidence in the sense which seems most in harmony with what we know of Assyrian military tactics.  It seems incredible that the Medic armies can have fought pell-mell, as Herodotus declares, seeing that for two hundred years past the Medes had been frequently engaged against such well-drilled troops as those of Assyria:  if the statement be authentic, it merely means that Cyaxares converted all the small feudal armies which had hitherto fought side by side on behalf of the king into a single royal army in which the different kinds of troops were kept separate.

The foot-soldiers wore a high felt cap known as a tiara; they had long tunics with wide sleeves, tied in at the waist by a belt, and sometimes reinforced by iron plates or scales, as well as gaiters, buskins of soft leather, and large wickerwork shields covered with ox-hide, which they bore in front of them like a movable bulwark; their weapons consisted of a short sword, which depended from the belt and lay along the thigh, one or two light javelins, a bow with a strongly pronounced curve, and a quiver full of arrows made from reeds.* Their horsemen, like those of other warlike nations II of the East, used neither saddle nor stirrups, and though they could make skilful use of lance and sword, their favourite weapon was the bow.**

* Herodotus describes the equipment of the Persians in much the same terms as I have used above, and then adds in the following chapter that “the Medes had the same equipment, for it is the equipment of the Medes and not that of the Persians.”

     ** Herodotus says that the Medic horsemen were armed in the
     same manner as the infantry.

[Illustration:  298.jpg A MEDIC HORSEMAN]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a cast of the Medic intaglio in
     the Cabinet des Medailles.

Accustomed from their earliest childhood to all kinds of equestrian exercises, they seemed to sit their horses as though they actually formed part of the animal.  They seldom fought in line, but, from the very beginning of an action, hung like a dense cloud on the front and flanks of the enemy, and riddled them with missiles, without, however, coming to close quarters.  Like the Parthians of a later epoch, they waited until they had bewildered and reduced the foe by their ceaseless evolutions before giving the final charge which was to rout them completely.  No greater danger could threaten the Assyrians than the establishment of a systematically organised military power within the borders of Media.  An invader starting from Egypt or Asia Minor, even if he succeeded in overthrowing the forces sent out to meet him, had still a long way to go before he could penetrate to