Achaemenid soldier

Achaemenid soldier, a photo by mehr-zad on Flickr.

Achaemenid Army
By: Professor A. Sh. Shahbazi
The Achaemenian/Achaemenid Army is well known through descriptions by Herodotus, Xenophon, and Arrian as well as by illustrations on Persepolitan and Greco-Persian monuments. Of particular importance for the topic are the Greek representations of Persian warriors and the evidence of the so-called Alexander Sarcophagus from Sidon. The Persians whom Cyrus the Great united did not possess a professional army: as in days of old, the "people" of a region was represented by its backbone, the "military force," so the two words were used synonymously in one Old Persian term, kara (cognate with Lithuanian karias/karis "war, army," Gothic harjis "army," and German Heer "army,"), a sense still retained in the New Persian term kas-o kar "relatives and supporters."
At first the Achaemenid army consisted wholly of Iranian warriors, and even when other regions were subjugated, Iranian formed the nucleus of the imperial army. Darius the Great advises his successor: "If thus thou shalt think: `May I not feel fear of (any) other,' protect this Persian kara; if the Persian kara shall be protected, thereafter by the will of Ahuramazda happiness shall come down uninterruptedly and eternally upon this royal house". With the expansion of the petty kingdom of Persis into a world-empire embracing all Iranian groups from Central Asia to the Danube, a standing army was formed from Persians, Medes, and closely related peoples, and an imperial army was organized by incorporating warriors of all subject nations. Persepolitan representations, and official Persian economic and military documents ultimately used by Herodotus prove that the closer a nation was to the Persians, the more it shared in the domination of the empire by paying less tribute but contributing more soldiers. Thus, the Medes who had the second position in the empire furnished more soldiers than others and indeed many of the imperial generals were chosen from the Medes (Mazares, Harpagus, Taxmaspada, Datis, etc.). Then came the Sacians, Bactrians, Hyrcanians, and other East Iranian groups.

The general term for the professional army was spada. This consisted of infantry (pasti), cavalry (asabari "horse-borne," and occasionally usabari "camel-borne"), and charioteers (only the noblest warriors used the then obsolete but symbolic chariot), and a large number of camp followers. From the moment they met the Greeks, the Iranians incorporated subject or mercenary Greeks in their army. As the time went by, not only Iranian satraps in Asia Minor but also the King of Kings employed Greek mercenaries, each of whom received free board and a monthly wage (a gold Daric per month in 401 BCE). By the time of Alexander, these mercenaries had become a regular part of the spada and their leaders had been incorporated into Iranian aristocracy. They played a major role in Greco-Iranian cultural relations, and helped an eastward expansion of Greek culture.