The Persian army was organised along a very strict decimal organisation that ran right from divisions of ten thousand men, known as a Baivarabam, to ten man squads which included two officers . The reports on the decimal organisation of the Persian army come from Herodotus’ description of Xerxes’ march out of Sardis and Xenophon who had the fortune of both fighting against and alongside the Persian military . His testimony is confirmed by Persian ration tablets found at Persepolis which give us both the original Persian names for the unit divisions and also confirm the evidence given to us that they were organised by tens . This level of close supervision ensured that a high level of military discipline and loyalty was maintained throughout the army as a whole. Moreover the command structure ensured that no soldier was far from an authority figure with the correct orders. This system worked all the way up to the supreme commander or even the Great King himself so no division, regiment or ten-man squad was left without orders or leadership. It also meant that the loss of the supreme commander did not mean ultimate loss for the rest of the army. It is traditionally supposed that the Persian army was too reliant on its commander’s presence on the field. This supposition comes originally from Herodotus’ description of Mardonius’ death at Platea but also the later examples of Darius III at the battles of Issus and Gaugamela. However this interpretation has found its way into modern scholarship as well . By contrast to this ideal we have multiple examples of the Achaemenid Persian army being able to maintain discipline and even fight on to victory after facing the loss of their commander. During the Ionian revolt the Persian general Artybios was charged with the re-conquest of Cyprus. During the land battle Herodotus specifically describes the death of Artybios at the hands of Onesilos and his Carian shield bearer but then goes on to state that Persians were able to go on to win the battle . Whilst the fate of the battle was certainly sealed by the retreat of Stesenor it is clear that the Persian force was able to maintain discipline and finish the fight without Artybios. Moreover, the command structure of the Persian army allowed for the allocation of separate theatres of battle to separate commanders. Because of this, Artabazos was able to keep his division in order after the rout of the Persians at Platea and get the entire corps to safety . Even during the retreat from the Spartans towards the Persian camp the Persian army was sufficiently disciplined by the remaining sub-officers to order the cavalry to screen the infantry’s retreat and get the infantry to rapidly mount the defences of the palisade before the raging Greek army was upon them. Thanks to the initiative and quick action of the army in flight the Persians were able to mount a heavy resistance at their camp until the walls were taken and despair overtook them . Finally the battle of Mycale paints an incredibly disciplined picture of Persian soldiers maintaining their position in the battle line and fighting on despite being assailed by the enemy and their previous allies . The last element of the command structure that was of great importance was the Persian system of field signs and standard bearers. Xenophon tells us that each commander had his own colours for his regiment . This is confirmed by the large amount of attic pottery depicting Persian standard bearers in states of defeat by hoplites . These field signs allowed both orders to be given easily and for messengers to find commanders quickly. Sophisticated communications systems can only be the mark of a well organised and disciplined war machine rather than the stereotypical mass of levy spearmen.

The command structure of the army simply took the smallest tactical unit and scaled up to a strategic level. As such, to acquire a better understanding of the particular discipline the Persian army adhered to it is important to analyse their basic tactical unit named the Satabam. The Satabam was a one hundred man unit comprised of a combination of archers and spearmen commanded by a Satapatis. The spearmen formed up a solid shield wall whilst the remaining archers drew up in ranks behind them. Xenophon tells us the spearmen made up only the front two ranks of the unit . The one hundred men were divided into ten squads of ten men. This squad was called a Dathabam and was commanded by a Datapatis with his second in command, the Pascadatapatis. Under the supervision of these two command units the Dathabam was ordered into ranks and able to maintain the high level of discipline needed to sustain both a shield wall, an effective close quarters squad and a missile barrage in the same unit. The unit’s aim was to deploy within bowshot of the enemy and discharge their arrows as the enemy moved to engage them. The missile barrage was intended to throw the enemy into disarray and lower their morale before the shield bearers, or Sparabara, in the front ranks of the Satabam engaged and finished the enemy off with the help of flanking cavalry movements. However the Satabam was a flexible unit that could be used for multiple operations. During the Persian wars Iranian contingents fighting in the Satabam formation were deployed to fight exclusively as close quarters troops at Thermopylae, ahead of the heavily armed Lydian hoplites, Ionian hoplites or the well-armoured Assyrian soldiers, albeit with little success . This sort of organisation, even on a low level, is the opposite of the image that Green would have us believe.

The individual arms of the Sparabara were light for the most part. Herodotus tells us that helmets were only worn by the cavalry of the Persian army . The Persian infantryman wore instead a felt cap upon his head. It is again another misinterpretation to say that the Persians went to war without defensive armour. Herodotus states the lack of Persian armour was the reason for their defeat at Platea . However earlier on in his description of the regular line infantry of the Persian army he states that they wore scale iron corslets . Masistus wore this same style of scale armour during a cavalry raid against the Greek position at Platea. What is interesting is that the Greeks were unable to pierce his armour with their spear thrusts and had to stab him in the eye . The most likely explanation for this contradiction is that the front two ranks of Spearmen in the Satabam wore this scale armour whilst the archers to the rear were much more lightly armoured. This corresponds exactly to many examples of attic pottery depicting the Persian invasion that show Persian archers wearing what appear to be linen cuirasses being assailed by hoplites . From the reliefs at Persepolis we can see that the Persian spear was about 2.2 metres long and had a counter weight at its butt instead of a spike . The feared Persian bow is also seen to be of the powerful re-curve design . The Persians are noted not have worn greaves like their Greek counterparts however the shields they took to war were of the tower design and as such covered their legs . The spara shield was designed primarily to protect the spearman against incoming missile fire from enemy troops. However it appears to have only been able to serve as viable protection for a short while against concentrated enemy heavy infantry. The battle of Mycale is an excellent example of the Persian Spara being very effective whilst upright but prone to crumble after repeated efforts to break though . What we can infer from this is that the Persian line infantry were not supposed to be engaged in a melee for prolonged periods of time. Instead, when facing close combat troops the Persian line was to hold until the cavalry could flank the enemy, charge and win the day. This was exactly how a Persian army defeated Histaios and his army of hoplites at Malene . The cavalry of the Persian army were in Herodotus’ words “armed like the infantry .” However, Xenophon’s later description of the Persian cavalry has them using javelin’s rather than bows and arrows. This is in accordance with the seal of Cyrus the first, which depicts a mounted soldier discharging javelins at his enemy and also a document of the later 5th century describing the equipment a cavalryman was supposed to carry including two spears . In this way it is possible that the Persian cavalry included units using both the Javelin and the bow. Herodotus specifically states that the cavalry Mardonius commanded fired both at the Greeks however the mounted archers would likely have been the Scythian contingents which Herodotus praised as the best of the horsemen.

The reason for the development of the Persian infantry as light armed in comparison to the Greek hoplites has very much to do with the geography of their homeland and the social structure of their society. Unlike a Greek city-state, the Persian feudal society left very little room for a comfortable middle class to emerge that could afford sophisticated arms and armour. By contrast the Persians relied on a system of granting land to subjects in return for military service. The King would grant certain subjects a military estate named as either a “Bow Estate,” “Horse Estate” or “Chariot Estate.” The mention of “chariot estates” almost certainly means the system of military colonisation, known as the “Hatru” from the Murasu archive, was present before the Persian conquest under the Assyrians . The commoners would be rewarded after their military service which Strabo , Xenophon and Herodotus all maintain that Persian youths undertook once they had matured. Whilst they disagree upon the age that the Persian youths would be incorporated into the army, they all agree that after their years of service they would be de-mobilised but remain liable for military service. It was during this period of demobilisation that the Persians were rewarded with land grants that identified how they fought. The King thus kept his people dependent on him and tied to the land which he personally granted them. As such the class divisions that arose came specifically from those on estates large enough to support a cavalryman’s wage against those on a simple infantryman’s plot. Above all of this of course being the nobility with their personal estates and retinues. Examples of these noble units and bodyguards are plentiful in Herodotus as his description of Xerxes’ army on the march shows us four separate regiments, or Hazarabam, of one thousand noble Persians . Moreover he describes possibly one of these regiments or Mardonius’ personal retinue fighting at Platea . Herodotus describes this noble Hazarabam with much praise, which suggests that they could afford far better equipment and a greater level of training in war. However for the simple soldier tending a “Bow estate” there left very little room for personal aggrandizement and the development of a class able to afford more luxuries or battle equipment than that which they were accustomed to. Nonetheless the geographical nature of the Persian Empire dictated that the light equipment of the Sparabara and archer was in fact the most efficient and tactical for the jobs at hand. All too often it is assumed that the Greeks were simply technologically superior to the Persian army and this was the reason that they favoured heavier arms . However this completely ignores the fact that on the wide-open and sun-smitten plains of the Middle East, a heavily armed and armoured infantryman was simply a very slow and undoubtedly exhausted target for cavalry and light missile troops. When Xenophon’s ten thousand mercenary hoplites of the ill-fated expedition to mount prince Cyrus upon the throne found themselves on a perilous journey home through Asia, Xenophon wisely ordered the creation of both a cavalry unit and the promotion of the use of missile weapons like the sling . Thusly the fugitive Greeks were able to ward off harassing cavalry and missile attacks from their enemies on the plains. Hence what we can note is that the Persian army evolved its equipment to face as many different types of combat as there were different types of terrain in the empire. The idea that they were unable to compete with the advanced Greek methods of war is hence invalid.

As has been mentioned, Persian society lacked the means to produce a middle class capable of affording better quality arms and armour. However the Persian Kings dealt with this inherent problem in feudal monarchy by creating and supporting a standing army that was in attendance of the Great king. The so-called “Immortals” constituted a Baivarabam of picked Persian infantry that was armed and adorned by the richest standards in the army after the nobility . However the name “Immortals” is almost certainly a mistake on Herodotus’ part. Weishofer believes that Herodotus mistook ‘Anusyia,’ the Persian word for ‘attendant’, for ‘Anausa,’ meaning ‘Immortal .’ What is interesting to note is that Herodotus’ clear distinction made for these soldiers is that their unit was always kept up to full strength. This hints at the idea that the other Persian Baivarabam’s were prone to falling under strength. This is a theory that is confirmed by some Aramaic documents found in the Persian garrison at Aswan. Ration documents issued to the soldiers allow us to reconstruct the number of men present and shows that at least one Satabam had fallen to only fifty or sixty men . Their repeated depiction in the Persian royal palaces of Susa and Persepolis suggest that during peacetime they were in permanent attendance on the King. As such they did not have farms to return to or harvests to collect. The repeated colour schemes on the reliefs at Susa have given rise to the idea that the King issued them uniforms and as such their armour and equipment could well have been personally provided by the king as well. Even if this were not so it is clear from Herodotus that they were afforded large salaries and luxuries and as such would clearly have been able to afford the sort of scale cuirasses that Masistus wore and Herodotus describes for the Persian infantry. Moreover the Persepolis reliefs show the guardsmen depicted with wooden shields rather than wickerwork Spara. It is clear these shields are wooden since they are rimmed with metal and embossed with a circular bronze emblem in the centre. One such boss, which clearly mimics the designs at Persepolis, was found at the Heraion of Samos . In this way we can see that this regiment was equipped to be able to sustain much more protracted melee battles as well as being able to discharge missiles.

What a fascinating statement. The commenter assumes, for some reason, that Cyrus' mercenary contingent of some 11,000 Greeks consisted "mainly of Spartans". I'm afraid the source material (Xenophon's Anabasis ) does not back up that assumption. Perhaps the commenter has confused the command of Clearchus – a Spartan "in exile" and Chirisophus – with the notion that this was a Spartan army of some description.

Xenophon (Anab. 1.1 – 1.2.4) records the contingents of this mercenary force and how it came together. There is little room in that description for this army to comprise of "mainly Spartans".

Cyrus was Sparta's estwhile finacier – at the pleasure of the Great King. Sparta might well have allowed the occasional "advisor" to join this army but it would – at this moment – shy at the prospect of breaking the alliance with Persia that had won it the Peloponnesian War. That would come later with Thibron, Dercilidas and Agesilaos. The Great King, always holding the whip hand, would smack Sparta back into line by finacing Athens via Conon and bringing his forgetful Greek policeman back to the negotiating table through Antalcidas.

The writer might inaccurately describe Xenohon as "Spartan". What is certain is that Xenophon was no Athenian. He might more accurately be described as "Peloponnesian" for that was certainly his outlook and, indeed, his world. His sons underwent the Spartan agoge and his Peloponnesian idyl was rudely cut short by Epaminondas, Pelopidas at Leuctra. He neither forgave nor forgot – to scrub them as far as possible from his history that is.

Interesting, but a distillation of secondary sources. Writing does not flow well. Exempt the obviuosly academic and arcane prose, this works as a primer for Hellenistic warfare.