Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

64 2 Warfare
give way in clashes but supports the hand of the rider, which only gives direction
to the blow; the rider, however, exerts himself and presses for the wound to be even
harsher; through his force he destroys everyone whom he encounters, and with
one blow he may often transfix two.
Maurice, Strategikon xi.1
The Persian nation is wretched, dissembling and servile, but also patriotic and
obedient. It obeys its rulers out of fear. Because of this the Persians are capable
of enduring their work and engage in wars on behalf of their fatherland. Eager
to deal with most serious matters rather by way of counsel and strategy, they pay
attention to order and not to courage and rashness. Raised in a hot climate, they
easily bear the annoyance of heat, thirst and the lack of food. They are awesome
when they lay siege, and even more awesome when they are besieged; they are
extremely apt in hiding their pain, in holding out nobly in adverse circumstances
and turning these to their advantage. And in negotiations they are irreconcilable so
that they do not offer themselves what they want to choose for their own benefit
but as recipients are offered this by their enemies. They are armed with cuirass or
thorax, bows and swords, 2 and experienced in quick – but not forceful – archery,
more than all other warlike nations. Going to war, they encamp within fortified
boundaries. When battle arises, they create a ditch and a sharp palisade around
themselves; they do not leave the baggage train in this but create the ditch to have
a refuge from a critical situation in battle. It is not their practice to let their horses
graze but to let them gather their feed from the hand. They are set up for battle
in three equal parts, the centre, the right and the left, with the centre having up
to 400 or 500 selected men in addition. They do not create an even depth within
the formation but try to line up the cavalry in each unit in the first and second
line or phalanx and to keep the front of the formation even and dense. They place
the supernumerary horses and the train a short way behind the main line. When
they are in battle against pike men it is their practice to place their main line in the
roughest landscape and to use their bows in order that the attacks of the pike men
against them are dispersed and easily dissolved by the difficult terrain. Not only
before the day of the battle do they like to delay the fighting, in particular when
they know that the enemies are well prepared and ready for fighting, encamping
on the most inaccessible ground, but also during the battle itself, in particular
in the summer, they like to make their attacks around the hottest hour, in order
that through the boiling heat of the sun and the delay in time the courage and
spirit of those lined up against them slackens, and they make their charges step
by step in an even and dense formation, because they walk gently and attentively.
They are, however, distressed by the following: the cold and the rain and the south
wind, which ruin the force of their bows; a formation of infantry that is carefully
composed; a place with an even surface or a bare one because of the charges of
pike men; dense fighting because showers of arrows become useless from close
by and because they themselves do not use pikes and shields; pressing forward in
2 Rostovtzeff 1943: 174–87; Paterson 1969: 29–32; Overlaet 1989: 741–55 and Masia 2000: 185–9.