their lines into confusion, and completed their discomfiture by a vigorous pursuit. In a charge the infantry also might employ lance and dagger ; but the essential point was that the archers should be mobile and their use of the bow unhampered.
Consequently, only a few distinguished warriors wore shirts of mail. For purposes of defence the rank and file merely carried a light hide-covered shield, which the infantry, in shooting, planted before them as a sort of barrier against the enemy's missiles. Thus the Persian army was lost, if heavy-armed hoplites succeed ed in gaining their lines. In spite of all their bravery they suc cumbed to the Greek phalanx, when once the generalship of a Miltiades or a Pausanias had brought matters to a hand-to-hand conflict; and it was with justice that the Greeks—Aeschylus, for instance—viewed their battles against the Persian as a contest be tween spear and bow. None the less, till Marathon, the Persians were successful in discomfiting every enemy before he could close, whether that enemy consisted of similarly accoutred bow men (as the Medes), of cavalry armed with the lance (as the Lyd ians), or of heavily armoured warriors (as the Babylonians, Egyptians and Greeks).
To all this should be added the superiority of their leaders ; Cy rus especially must have been an exceedingly able general. Obvi ously, also, he must have understood the art of organizing his peo ple and arousing the feeling of nationality and the courage of self sacrifice. In his time the Persians were a strong manly peasantry, domiciled in a healthy climate and habituated to all hardships—a point repeatedly emphasized, in the tales preserved by Herodotus, as the cause of their successes (e.g., Herod. ix. 122). Herodotus, however, also records (i. 135) that the Persians were "of all man kind the readiest to adopt foreign customs, good or bad," a sen tence which is equally applicable to the Romans, and which in the case of both nations goes far to explain, not merely their suc cesses, but also the character of their empires.
Darius followed in his steps and completed the vast structure. His role, indeed, was peculiarly that of supplementing and perfecting the work of his great predecessor. The organization of the empire is planned throughout on broad, free lines ; there is nothing mean and timorous in it. The great god Ahuramazda, whom king and people alike acknowledge, has given them dominion "over this earth afar, over many peoples and tongues"; and the conscious ness is strong in them that they are masters of the world. Thus their sovereign styles himself "the king of kings" and "the king of the lands"—that is to say, of the whole civilized world. For the provinces remaining unsubdued on the extreme frontiers to the west, the north and the east are in their view almost negligible quantities. And far removed as the Persians are from disavow ing their proud sense of nationality ("a Persian, the son of a Per sian, an Aryan of Aryan stock" says Darius of himself in the in scription on his tomb)—yet equally vivid is the feeling that they rule the whole civilized world, that their task is to reduce it to unity, and that by the will of Ahuramazda they are pledged to govern it aright.
This is most clearly seen in the treatment of the subject races. In contrast with the Assyrians and the Romans the Persians in variably conducted their wars with great humanity. The van quished kings were honourably dealt with, the enemy's towns were spared, except when grave offences and insurrections, as at Mile tus and Athens, rendered punishment imperative ; and their in habitants were treated with mildness. Like Cyrus, all his success ors welcomed members of the conquered nationalities to their service, employed them as administrators or generals and made them grants of land : and this not only in the case of Medes, but also of Armenians, Lydians, Jews and Greeks. The whole popu lation of the empire was alike bound to military service. The subject-contingents stood side by side with the native Persian troops ; and the garrisons—in Egypt, for instance—were composed of the most varied nationalities.