hields, and
bore their quivers suspended at their backs. Sometimes their tunic
was made into a coat of mail by the addition to it on the outside of a
number of small iron plates arranged so as to overlap each other, like
the scales of a fish. They served both on horseback and on foot, with
the same equipment in both cases.

There is no reason to doubt the correctness of this description of the
Median military dress under the early Persian kings. The only question
is how far the equipment was really the ancient warlike custom of the
people. It seems in some respects too elaborate to be the armature of a
simple and primitive race. We may reasonably suppose that at least the
scale armor and the unwieldy wicker shields (yeppa), which required to
be rested on the ground, were adopted at a somewhat late date from the
Assyrians. At any rate the original character of the Median armies,
as set before us in Scripture, and as indicated both by Strabo and
Xenophon, is simpler than the Herodotean description. The primitive
Modes seem to have been a nation of horse-archers. Trained from their
early boyhood to a variety of equestrian exercises, and well practised
in the use of the bow, they appear to have proceeded against their
enemies with clouds of horse, almost in Scythian fashion, and to have
gained their victories chiefly by the skill with which they shot their
arrows as they advanced, retreated, or manoeuvred about their foe. No
doubt they also used the sword and the spear. The employment of these
weapons has been almost universal throughout the East from a very remote
antiquity, and there is some mention of them in connection with the
Medes and their kindred, the Persians, in Scripture; but it is evident
that the terror which the Medes inspired arose mainly from their
dexterity as archers.

No representation of weapons which can be distinctly recognized as
Median has come down to us. The general character of the military dress
and of the arms appears, probably in the Persepolitan sculptures; but
as these reliefs are in most cases representations, not of Medes, but of
Persians, and as they must be hereafter adduced in illustration of the
military customs of the latter people, only a very sparing use of them
can be made in the present chapter. It would seem that the bow employed
was short, and very much curved, and that, like the Assyrian it was
usually carried in a bow-case, which might either be slung at the back,
or hung fr