. History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria . the larger one. Cyaxares saw that defeat was certain solong as he had nothing but these ill-assorted masses tomatch against the regular forces of Assyria: he thereforebroke up the tribal contingents and rearranged the units ofwhich they were composed according to their natural 1 G. Rawlinson takes a somewhat different view of Cyaxares character;he admits that Cyaxares knew how to win victories, but refuses to credithim with the capacity for organisation required in order to reap the fullbenefits of conquest, giving as his reason for t
. History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria . the larger one. Cyaxares saw that defeat was certain solong as he had nothing but these ill-assorted masses tomatch against the regular forces of Assyria: he thereforebroke up the tribal contingents and rearranged the units ofwhich they were composed according to their natural 1 G. Rawlinson takes a somewhat different view of Cyaxares character;he admits that Cyaxares knew how to win victories, but refuses to credithim with the capacity for organisation required in order to reap the fullbenefits of conquest, giving as his reason for this view the brief duration ofthe Medic empire. The test applied by him does not seem to me a con-clusive one, for the existence of the second Chaldsean empire was almost asshort, and yet it would be decidedly unfair to draw similar inferencestouching the character of Nabopolassar or Nebuchadrezzar from thisfact. CYAXARES REARRANGES HIS ARMY 297 affinities, grouping horsemen with horsemen, archers witharchers, and pikemen with pikemen, taking the Assyrian. MEDIC AND PERSIAN FOOT-SOLDIEKS. cavalry and infantry as his models.^ The foot-soldiers worea high felt cap known as a tiara; they had long tunics Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Coste and Flandin. The first andthird figures are Medes, the second and fourth Persians. ^ Herodotus tells us that Cyaxares was the first to divide the Asiaticsinto difierent regiments, separating the pikemen from the archers andhorsemen; before his time, these troops were all mixed up haphazardtogether. I have interpreted his evidence in the sense which seems mostin harmony with what we know of Assyrian military tactics. It seemsincredible that the Medic armies can have fought pell-mell, as Herodotusdeclares, seeing that for two hundred years past the Medes had beenfrequently engaged against such well-drilled troops as those of Assyria : ifthe statement be authentic, it merely means that Cyaxares converted all thesmall feudal armies which had hitherto
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