Topic: military (1)

• Survey essayWarfare & the Army

  A survey of the Achaemenid armed forces under Darius I and his successors: the seasonal levy of the subject nations set beside the standing royal guard the Greeks called the Immortals; the shield-and-bow files, the bow as the national weapon, the cavalry and the scythed chariot; the great ethnic army-list of Herodotus and the modern case against its millions; supply, pay and the navy; fortification and siege; and, throughout, the gap between the Greek image of a vast, soft oriental horde and the professional reality the documents disclose.