ewhat savage
country the simple and primitive habits of the race. Though their arms
were of indifferent character, they were among the best soldiers to
be found in the East, and always showed themselves a formidable enemy.
According to Ctesias, when Cyrus invaded them, they fought a pitched
battle with his army, in which the victory was with neither party.
They were not, he said, reduced by force of arms at all, but submitted
voluntarily when they found that Cyrus had married a Median princess.
Herodotus, on the contrary, seems to include the Bactrians among the
nations which Cyrus subdued, and probability is strongly in favor of
this view of the matter. So warlike a nation is not likely to have
submitted unless to force; nor is there any ground to believe that a
Median marriage, had Cyrus contracted one, would have made him any the
more acceptable to the Bactrians.

On the conquest of Bactria followed, we may be tolerably sure, an attack
upon the Sacae. This people, who must certainly have bordered on the
Bactrians, dwelt probably either on the Pamir Steppe, or on the high
plain of Chinese Tartary, east of the Bolar range--the modern districts
of Kashgar and Yarkand. They were reckoned excellent soldiers. They
fought with the bow, the dagger, and the battle-axe, and were equally
formidable on horseback and on foot. In race they were probably Tatars
or Turanians, and their descendants or their congeners are to be seen
in the modern inhabitants of these regions. According to Ctesias, their
women took the field in almost equal numbers with their men; and the
mixed army which resisted Cyrus amounted, including both sexes, to half
a million. The king who commanded them was a certain Amorges, who was
married to a wife called Sparethra. In an engagement with the Persians
he fell into the enemy's hands, whereupon Sparethra put herself at the
head of the Sacan forces, defeated Cyrus, and took so many prisoners
of importance that the Persian monarch was glad to release Amorges in
exchange for them. The Sacse, however, notwithstanding this success,
were reduced, and became subjects and tributaries of Persia.

Among other countries subdued by Cyrus in this neighborhood, probably
about the same period, may be named Hyrcania, Parthia, Chorasmia,
Sogdiana, Aria (or Herat), Drangiana, Arachosia, Sattagydia, and
Gandaria. The brief epitome which we possess of Ctesias omits to make
any mention of these minor conquests, while Herodotus