In 550 BC, the Persian prince Cyrus
overthrew the last King of the Medes and launched a series of campaigns
to conquer Babylon and Anatolia. Cyrus’ successors added Egypt,
northern India and a section of south-eastern Europe. The Persian army
of this period was based on levies of each satrapy (province) of the
empire, and was enormous even by the standards of 2000 years later. The
Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus, who is admittedly a source
given to hyperbole, estimated the Great King Xerxes’ army in 480 BC at
2.4 million, including 1.7 million infantry. The Roman historian,
Arrian, estimated that Alexander faced a Persian army of 600,000 at
Issos (333 BC), and one comprising a million infantry alone at
Gaugamela (331 BC); another Roman historian, Quintus Curtius Rufus,
estimated Persian strength at Issos to be a more conservative 119,000
and at Gaugamela to be 245,000, of which 200,000 were infantry. We
cannot verify these figures, but most accounts suggest a significant
proportion of these armies was of low quality and dubious commitment;
hence their repeated losses to smaller but better indoctrinated and
commanded Greek and Macedonian forces.



Troops were organized into hazarabam
(‘thousands’), divided into sataba (‘hundreds’), then into dathabam
(‘tens’).The backbone of early Persian armies was a regular infantry
force that relied upon massed bowshot, and that continued the Assyrian
practice of matching bowmen with shieldbearers. The front line of
infantry formations consisted of sparabara (pavise bearers), the spara
being a rectangle of leather interweaved with osiers, extending from
shoulder to ankle. Each dathabam would deploy in a file of 10, with the
dathapatis (section commander) holding the spara in front and nine
archers lining up behind. The dathapatis carried a 2m (6ft) long
thrusting spear to defend the rest of his section; should he fall, then
the archers defended themselves as best as they could with falchions
short, curved swords with an edge but no point. Interestingly, the
Persians did not initially use composite bows, but simple cane bows,
with an effective range of around 150m (492ft); Persian archery was
adequate for supporting cavalry charges but, for all its weight of
shot, lacked the power to break a determined charge, as the disasters
at Marathon and Plataea demonstrated. Once engaged hand-to-hand by
Greeks or Macedonians, the Persians were disadvantaged by their lack of
body armour; a glazed brick relief from the Persian Royal Palace at
Susa shows members of the Royal Bodyguard, the Immortals, wearing
ankle-length robes bearing appliqué regimental badges but no armour,
and we can assume that line infantry units were not any better
equipped. In a rare Greek tribute to Persian courage, Herodotus notes
that at Plataea (479 BC), once the line of sparabara was smashed in by
the Spartan phalanx, the Persian archers behind fought bravely, but
were beaten due to lack of armour and of training in hand-to-hand
combat. It is unsurprising, therefore, that wherever possible, Persian
troops tried to shoot from prepared positions or from behind natural
obstacles.



Persians and Medes aside, the bulk
of Persian infantry was levied from subject peoples, each contingent
using their own national weaponry, organization and tactics. Herodotus
recorded 35 different nationalities in Xerxes’ army in 480 BC. Many of
these tribal contingents seem to have been archers like the Persians
themselves, but the Arab contingent carried composite bows, the
Lydians’ ‘equipment was not very different from Greek’ (implying that
Xerxes may have had a small hoplite force) and the Thracians carried
‘javelins, bucklers and small daggers’ (suggesting these formed a large
body of skirmishers). Persian armies evolved over the next 150 years,
partially as a result of their experience in Greece in 490-479 BC.
Attempts were made to rectify the lack of heavy infantry through
re-equipping Kurdish, Mysian and other mercenaries as takabara,
fighting with thrusting spears and the taka, a large, leather shield.
When possible, the Persians hired Greek mercenaries, mainly hoplites
fighting in phalanx formation, but also peltasts and other skirmishers.
Of these, the best-known was Xenophon’s ‘Ten Thousand’, whose retreat
from the heart of the Persian empire after the battle of Cunaxa (401
BC) is recounted in his Anabasis, a detailed, first-hand account of
warfare of this period. Alexander faced 30,000 Greek mercenary hoplites
at Issos and also some 60,000 troops from the Kardaka, young Persian
noblemen described by Arrian – quoting one of Alexander’s subordinate
commanders, Ptolemy – as ‘heavy infantry’. However, Xenophon describes
them as accompanying the Great King on hunts carrying two javelins, a
bow and a bronze picklike battleaxe. It may be that some were converted
to hoplites by the Athenian mercenary commander, Timotheos, in the 370s
BC, while others re-trained as peltasts. This is suggested by their
deployment at Issos, 30,000 covering each flank of the Greek mercenary
phalanx. The Kardaka were apparently not at Gaugamela, but the Persian
Royal Guard were present, known as the ‘Apple Bearers’ after the
apple-shaped counterweight at the butt of their 2m (6ft) long thrusting
spears. Two are depicted in the famous mosaic found at Pompeii showing
Alexander attacking Darius Ill’s chariot; one of them carries a spear,
the other a bow, hinting that sparabara-type organization may have been
retained. The spearman carries a hoplon-type shield, while the bowman
wears a cuirass apparently made of leather strips reinforced with
bronze studs.



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