Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Coste
and Flandin. The first and third
figures are Medes, the second and
fourth Persians.
It was at this unique juncture of apparent grandeur and prosperity that Phraortes resolved to attack Assur-bani-pal. There is nothing to indicate that his action took place simultaneously with some movement on the part of other peoples, or with a serious insurrection in any of the Assyrian provinces. For my part, I prefer to set it down to one of those sudden impulses, those irresistible outbursts of self-confidence, which from time to time actuated the princes tributary to Nineveh or the kings on its frontier. The period of inactivity to which some previous defeat inflicted on them or on their predecessors had condemned them, allowed them to regain their strength, and one or two victories over less powerful neighbours served to obliterate the memory of former humiliation and disaster; they flew to arms full of hope in the result, and once more drew down defeat upon their heads, being lucky indeed if their abortive rising led to nothing worse than the slaughter of their armies, the execution of their generals, and an increase in the amount of their former tribute. This was the fate that overtook Phraortes; the conqueror of the Persians, when confronted by the veteran troops of Assyria, failed before their 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 Chaldæan 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.
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.*
* 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.