THYMBRA, BATTLE OF. This battle of 546 B.C. was the decisive act in Cyrus the Great's overthrow of Croesus, king of Lydia, which in turn led to his subjugation of Asia Minor, and thus brought the Persians in contact with the Greeks—with mo mentous consequences to both. (See GRAECO-PERSIAN WARS.) As described in Xenophon's Cyropaedia the battle is rather instruc tional than historical, yet even so of far-reaching historical impor tance. For this projection on to an historical screen of Xenophon's conception of the "model" commander and the "model" battle, affected the course of many wars yet undreamt of. It served as the foundation of the study and reflection of the great captains of antiquity—Scipio, for example, is said to have carried the Cyropaedia with him throughout his campaigns. And with the Renaissance, and the revival of Greek studies, it lightened afresh the path of the great captains of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. As pictured by Xenophon, Croesus draws up his army in the cus tomary single line many ranks deep, while Cyrus forms his in a deep series of lines, each only a few deep, capable of mutual sup port and manoeuvre. When Croesus uses his superiority of num
bers to wheel inwards his far-stretching wings in order to crush Cyrus's wedge-like formation between them, Cyrus fends them off by lines of scythed chariots charging outwards, while his cavalry and camelry reserve attacks the flanks of the inwheeling Lydian wings. Then under cover of a frontal chariot attack on Croesus's centre, a small picked reserve of horse and foot is hurled at the point where one of the enemy wings joins on to the centre. This pierced, the cut off centre is "played on" by arrows and javelins until it surrenders.
There is an extraordinary parallel between this sequence of action—distention of the enemy's line, dislocation of a joint, fol lowed by a disruption which decides the issue—and the funda mentals of Napoleon's tactic more than 2,000 years later.