'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎165r] (334/862)

SUMERIAN AND BABYLONIAN PERIOD 227
of Media and carrying missile weapons, bow and javelin. These
were used to destroy their enemy at a distance, whether the infantry
bowmen of the Assyrians or heavily armoured infantry such as the
Greek hoplites. When the Persians were forced to fight without
cavalry, or when its value was neutralized by the terrain, the Greek
hophtes or armoured pikemen were their masters, as at Marathon
(490) and Platea (479). When the Greek hoplite was organized in
the heavy Macedonian phalanx, and supported by cavalry armed
not with missiles but a thrusting spear, the Greeks were able to take
the offensive against Persian armies. Hence the Persian Empire
lasted till these conditions were established by Philip of Macedon
( 359 y 33 6 ) and his son Alexander (336-323), who outclassed the
Persians in the arts of war and of political organization. The Persian
weakness was first discovered by the division of Greek mercenaries—
Xenophon’s Ten Thousand—who were taken by Cyrus the Younger
in 4° 1 to Mesopotamia in his bid for the Persian throne. After the
battle of Cunaxa 1 and Cyrus’ death they fought their way back
through Kurdistan and Armenia to the Black Sea at Trebizond,
and entirely frustrated the attempts of the Persians to destroy them.
This phalanx system lasted till the Parthians reintroduced missile
armed cavalry in a more dangerous form, and overwhelmed the
Roman legions, themselves a development of the phalanx (p. 230).
Thence onwards cavalry was the arm of Asia, alike for the Sassanids
and, when adapted to new tactics, for the Moslems.
II. THE CLASSICAL PERIOD
Alexander and the Seleucid Empire, 331—c. 140 b.c.
As far as the life of the masses was concerned, there were no major
changes during the 200 years of the Achaemenid Empire. The clash
of Persia with Greece (499-375) left them unaffected until, after the
unification of Greece (338) by Philip of Macedon, his son Alexander
led his armies into Asia, overthrew the Achaemenids at the battle of
Gaugemela near Arbela (Erbil) (fig. 24), and advanced through Persia
into India. I he establishment of the new empire might have meant
only another change of dynasty, but Alexander and his successors
had the notion of establishing compact settlements of Greeks in the
key points of their dominions. These ‘colonies’ were self-governing
1 Identification uncertain; somewhere between Falluja and the head of the Nahr
Malik.