The classical Near East was shaped by successive empire building. Beginning with the Neo-Assyrians in the tenth century BCE, new Iron Age empires expanded across Mesopotamia and the Levant, swallowing smaller kingdoms to form larger states. The most successful of these early Iron Age empires was the Achaemenid Persian empire (559-330 BCE) initiated by Great King Cyrus II (r. 559-529 BCE), known to history as Cyrus “the Great.”  Despite having a wealth of pictorial evidence of Assyrian warfare, we have few accounts of the origin, course, and outcome of specific battles.  We do, however, have more information concerning how the Achaemenid Persians fought on the battlefield, much of it coming again from Herodotus (484-425 BCE) and Xenophon (435-354 BCE), with both authors giving some indication of how the Achaemenid’s used tactics featuring military archery on the battlefield.  At the battle of Thymbra in 547 BCE the Persians displayed a mastery of combined-arms operations using a multi-national army, a hallmark of Achaemenid warfare.

Right: Persian spearmen and archers were known as sparabara or archer-pairs (spara is Old Persian for large shields and the troops that carried the spara were called sparabara or “shield bearers”). The Assyrian archer-pairs were composed of two different units of troops of equal strength, operating together in a tactical formation comprised of only a single line of archers behind a single line of shield-bearers.  However, when historians find sparabara operating in the Persian army, both types of troops are operating in the same ten-man file or dathabam at a ratio of one shield-bearer for every nine archers.

Cyrus the Great was about twenty-five years old when he crossed into Anatolia seeking to expand the Persian Empire westward to the Aegean Sea.  Standing in his way was the small kingdom of Lydia. The Lydians were an Indo-European people who settled in western Asia Minor in the late Bronze Age and created a vibrant and wealthy civilization in the seventh century BC that controlled lucrative silver and gold mines (the Lydians purportedly invented coinage) and overland trade routes to Mesopotamia, as well as access to the Black, Aegean and Mediterranean seas. Thoroughly Hellenized due to their prolonged contact with the Greek world, their king Croesus (r. 560-547 BC) ruled from his capital of Sardis (modern Sart in western Türkiye) and had ambitions of expanding eastward past the lower Halys River Valley into what was now the new Persian frontier of Cappadocia.

Herodotus relates a famous story concerning King Croesus’ reaction to the capture of Astyages, who was by marriage alliance his brother-in-law. When Croesus learned of Cyrus’ victory, he reportedly sent an embassy to Delphi on the Greek mainland to ask the Oracle there if he should wage war against the Persians. The Oracle responded in its usual obscurely prophetic manner that if the Lydian king attacked the Persian army, a great kingdom would fall.  Of course, Croesus believed the kingdom that would fall was Persia.  He was proved wrong when he invaded Persian-held Cappadocia in 547 BC with a well-equipped army consisting of armored infantry, including Ionian Greek hoplites, with its centerpiece being Lydian heavy cavalry lancers. Like all armies of this period, this core was supplemented by large numbers of local militias called to arms for specific campaigns and well-trained mercenary troops that always served wealthy kingdoms. Herodotus tells us that the Lydians sieged the capital of the region, Pteria, and sold its inhabitants into slavery.  Provoked into action, Cyrus marched northwest from his capital at Ecbatana (he was building a new capital at Pasargadae in Fars province in modern Iran) towards Anatolia, crossing the Tigris River near the plains of Gaugamela, swelling the ranks of his multinational army along the way (Gaugamela is also where Alexander the Great defeated Darius III two centuries later and won the Achaemenid Empire). Cyrus’ Anatolian campaign may have been born out of fear of an expansion of Lydian hegemony east into Azerbaijan, where Croesus’ could threaten the Iranian heartland.

The first meeting between the Lydian and Persian hosts on the plains near Pteria was inconclusive, something attributed by Croesus to having too few troops. His army still intact after the battle of Pteria, the Lydian king retreated west back to Sardis the following day, shedding his regional auxiliary militias along the way as was normal when agricultural societies went to war. Once behind the safety of his walls, Croesus disbanded his mercenary troops and sent embassies to enforce treaties with his powerful neighbors, asking his Egyptian, Babylonian, and Spartan allies to come to his aid within five months of receiving his ambassadors.  Perhaps knowing that international assistance would be on its way the following campaigning season (spring of 546 BC), Cyrus acted quickly, shadowing the Lydian army as it returned to its capital.  Even without this assistance, the Lydian army was larger than the invading Persian host  Xenophon states that Cyrus led an army of 200,000 men against Croesus’ army of 420,000.  It is more likely that Cyrus invaded with somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 troops, and the Lydian King defended his realm with perhaps twice that number of 100,000 men, a sizable classical army by any standard.

Right: (L)  Although renown as archers during the Persian Wars against Greece, Persian bowmen were also issued defensive sidearms to defend themselves in close quarter combat.  Here, a Persian archer is seen carrying both his composite bow and a single-edged falcata to defend himself against a Greek soldier pictured on the opposite side of the wine and water mixing vessel. (R)  Archaic and early Hellenic Greek geometric vase paintings provide examples of different kinds of bows wielded in these eras, including simple segment self-bows, single curved composite bows, and double convex Scythian bows. In fact, archers are often found in classical Greek art, especially on pottery, but they are primarily foreign Scythians or Persians.

The Persian army that arrayed for the battle of Thymbra was constituted in a manner unfamiliar to the defending Lydians.  Here, Herodotus tells us that the experienced Median general and royal counselor Harpagus convinced Cyrus to bring the camels from the supply train forward to serve as cavalry. Both the Medes and Persians, coming from the steppes, understood that the horses needed to be trained around the strange sights, smells, and sounds of camels to be effective (horses need to be trained around elephants for the same reasons). Gambling that the excellent Lydian cavalry had never served around camels, Cyrus arranged his smaller army in three closely packed lines with the camels forward, followed by his heavy infantry screening his infantry archers in their deep sparabara formation prepared to offer volley support. Cyrus commanded the cavalry and chariotry on the right wing, while his general Harpagus commanded the left wing. Cyrus did not attempt to match the wider frontage of the Lydian army, planning instead to entice Croesus into executing a double envelopment of his center position, while keeping his more mobile units (mixed cavalry and bow-wielding chariotry) on both wings in an echelon reserve.  Xenophon describes the Lydian advance in his biography of Cyrus, the Cyropaedia:

“When Cyrus had completed his round of the troops, he passed on to the right wing. And Croesus, thinking that the center, which he commanded in person, was already nearer to the enemy than the wings that were spreading out beyond, gave a signal to his wings not to go out any further but to halt and face about. And when they had halted, and stood facing Cyrus’ army, Croesus gave them the signal to advance against the foe. And so, the three phalanxes advanced upon the army of Cyrus, one from in front, the other two against his wings, one from the right, the other from the left. Cyrus’ army was encompassed by the enemy on every side, except the rear, with enemy horsemen and hoplites, with targeteers [shield bearers] and bowmen and chariots.”

With his center nearly surrounded, Cyrus began singing the Persian war paean to embolden his troops, and when the song was finished,

“Cyrus dashed forward; and at once he hurled his cavalry upon the enemy’s flank and in a moment, he was engaged with them hand-to-hand. With a rapid movement, the infantry followed him in good order and began to envelop the enemy on this side and on that, so that he had them at a great disadvantage; for he clashed with a phalanx against their flank; and, as a result, the enemy soon were in headlong flight.”

This camel strategy worked. The Lydian horsemen lost cohesion after encountering the camels screening the Persian infantry divisions, with the uncontrollable horses hastily turning back and pushing through their own lines, some with their riders, others riderless, their masters dismounting to enter the fray on foot. With the Lydian cavalry neutralized but the rest of the Lydian army advancing, Cyrus relied on Perso-Median defensive doctrine and ordered his light infantry archers in their sparabara formations to pepper the ranks of the Lydians attempting to encircle their position in the Persian center, as the cavalry and chariots units held in reserve galloped into action, striking the Lydian line on both flanks. Herodotus is silent on the precise role of Persian horse archers and chariotry bowmen in this action, although they were certainly present on the wings and no doubt saw action in their fire and maneuver role or as pursuit troops once the battle had turned. Eventually, Croesus’ army broke under the strain of this counter envelopment, and the survivors retreated back to the walls of Sardis.

Right: Cyrus the Great and his successors conquered the largest empire the world had yet seen, including not only the old centers of power in the Near East and Egypt, but also extending into Thrace and Asia Minor in the west and northwest India in the east. At its height in the early fifth century BCE, the Persian Empire consisted of over three million square miles of territory, with fifty million inhabitants. With each successful conquest came additional troops for the Persian war machine.

Despite an urgent appeal to the Spartans for military aid, Sardis fell after a fourteen-day siege and the Lydian kingdom was annexed. Defeated, Croesus was brought before Cyrus, who made the Lydian king an advisor in his court.  Croesus would serve Cyrus for the remainder of the Persian king’s life. These campaigns brought the Phrygians, Carians, Lycians, and Ionian Greeks into the growing Achaemenid Empire and Persian control to the eastern coast of the Aegean Sea and the edge of Europe, while increasing tensions with Greek mainland, which would pull Persia’s Goliath into direct conflict with Greece’s David in the Persian War. Cyrus the Great would die in 530 BCE campaigning in the east against the Saka Massagetai and their queen Tomyris, the ruler of a formidable archery culture similar to the original Persians who migrated off the Iranian Plateau centuries earlier. Herodotus provides additional insight into both Persian and Saka tactics in his The Histories:

“It is said that the battle began with each side shooting arrows at each other while still far apart. Then, when their supply of arrows was exhausted, they fell upon each other at close quarters with spears and daggers. For a long time they fought fiercely and neither side was willing to flee. But at last the Massagetai prevailed.”

Cyrus’ successors, Cambyses II and Darius I (r. 522-486 BCE) continued to expand the Achaemenid realm, conquering the Egyptians and the Massagetai before turning their attention towards the Aegean. Under Darius, the Persians would initiate the Persian Wars (499-449 BCE) with Hellenic Greece, forever altering how the Greeks pursued warfare.   

Suggested Readings:

Primary Sources

Strassler, Robert B. ed. The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories. Translated by Andrea Purvis. Anchor, 2009.

Xenophon. The Complete Works of Xenophon-Cyropaedia. Translated by Henry Graham Dakyns. E-Artnow, 2019.

Secondary Sources

Carey, Brian Todd, Joshua B. Allfree, and John Cairns. Warfare in the Ancient World. Pen and Sword, 2006.

Davis, Paul K. 100 Decisive Battles: From Ancient Times to the Present. Oxford University Press, 2007.

Farrokh, Kaveh. Shadows in the Desert: Ancient Persia at War. Osprey, 2009.