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Median Horse Archer

Mounted bowman from Media in the Achaemenid army, about 550-479 BCE

In the game: Level 4: The Terrace

The Medes of the western Iranian plateau were the Persians' nearest kin and their first great conquest under Cyrus. Their horsemen, raised to ride and shoot, served in the King's cavalry. Greek writers describe the King's riders harrying infantry with arrows, and the Persian record shows Medes fighting and commanding for the King alongside the Persians themselves.

In the game: The game shows a rider who shoots from the saddle, outpaces infantry and loses to other horsemen. Herodotus says Median horse carried their infantry kit, spear and shield as well as bow, so the pure skirmisher is a simplification.

Medes in the King's army

Ancient account

Herodotus describes the Median foot in Xerxes' army of 480 as dressed like the Persians, in felt caps, sleeved tunics, scale armour and trousers, with wicker shields, short spears, large bows and cane arrows. He adds that this dress was really Median and that the Persians had adopted it. He says the Median cavalry was equipped like the infantry, so a Median rider carried spear, shield and dagger as well as a bow.

Herodotus 7.61-62; Herodotus 7.86

Riders who shot from the saddle

Ancient account

Herodotus says Persian boys were taught to ride, to shoot the bow and to speak the truth. At Plataea in 479 he describes the King's cavalry under the Persian Masistius attacking Greek infantry squadron by squadron, until Masistius fell after his horse was hit by an arrow. Later, he says, the horsemen harassed the Greeks with javelins and arrows, as mounted archers hard to close with. He does not single out Medes in these passages.

Herodotus 1.136; Herodotus 9.20-22; Herodotus 9.49

Medes in the Persian record

In the record

Darius's Behistun inscription records a Median revolt under Fravartish in 522-521, crushed by Darius and his generals, and Fravartish was impaled at Ecbatana. It also names a Mede, Takhmaspada, as commander of a Persian and Median army sent to Sagartia. On the Apadana stair reliefs at Persepolis, men in rounded caps and riding dress, usually taken as Medes, alternate with Persians in long robes.

DB §§24-33; Persepolis Apadana reliefs

How the cavalry really fought

Disputed

Historians debate how far Achaemenid horsemen were horse archers in the later steppe manner. Herodotus mentions javelins beside bows, and Xenophon, writing later, gives Persian riders javelins, so many think they used both. Herodotus also tells a story of Scythians teaching Median boys archery under Cyaxares, which some read as a sign of steppe influence. Whether Medes formed separate horse-archer units is unknown.

Herodotus 1.73; Herodotus 9.49; Xenophon, Cyropaedia; C. Tuplin, 'All the King's Horse', 2010