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Abu Obediah preferred the bolder course, and, in spite of the dissuasions of his chief officers, threw a bridge of boats across the stream, and so conveyed his troops to the left bank. Here he found the Persian horse-archers covered with their scale armor, and drawn up in a solid line behind their elephants.
The primitive Modes seem to have been a nation of horse-archers.
The eunuchs, the harem women, the soft-handed pages, had escaped with their master to luxurious Sardis, the remnant of the fleet fled back across the Ægean. But the brain and right arm of the Persians, Mardonius the Valiant, remained in Hellas. With him were still the Median infantry, the Tartar horse-archers, the matchless Persian lancers,—the backbone of the undefeated army.
The town contained within it a copious fountain of water, which was liable, however, to acquire a disagreeable odor in the summer time. Seven legions, of the moderate strength to which legions had been reduced by Constantine, defended it; and the garrison included also a body of horse-archers, composed chiefly or entirely of noble foreigners.
Socrates at another time, as I well remember, had the following conference with a general of the cavalry: "What was your reason," said Socrates, "to desire this office? I cannot think it was that you might march first at the head of the troops, for the horse-archers are to march before you. Nor can I believe it was to make yourself be known, for no men are more generally known than madmen.
In the civil war that followed on the murder of Julius the Parthians are declared to have actually taken a part. It appears that about B.C. 46 a small body of Parthian horse-archers had been sent to the assistance of a certain Bassus, a Roman who amid the troubles of the times was seeking to obtain for himself something like an independent principality in Syria.
The writer of the book of Judith gives Holofernes 12,000 horse-archers, and Ezekiel seems to speak of all the "desirable young men" as "horsemen riding upon horses." The sculptures show on the whole a considerable excess of cavalry over chariots, though the preponderance is not uniformly exhibited throughout the different periods.
The monarch himself invariably rode forth in his chariot, arrayed in his regal robes, and with the tiara upon his head: he was accompanied by numerous attendants, and generally preceded and followed by the spearmen of the Royal Guard, and a detachment of horse-archers.
First of all marched the heavy cavalry, accompanied by the horse-archers; next came the elephants, bearing iron towers upon their backs, and in each tower a number of bowmen; intermixed with the elephants were a certain amount of heavy-armed foot.
This, with the confusion in front, and a rumor that part of the army was beaten, carried terror into the rear ranks, and vast numbers, who had hardly seen an enemy, galloped madly from the field. The arrows discharged by the horse-archers now began to tell on the front line of the enemy: the quick eye of Sir John Chandos marked it waver and open.
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