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Short description

Deadly with a bow and highly mobile, horse archers are thorns in the side of any opponent.

Description

The Horse archer had a very wide and varied reign. The first to terrorise all of the middle east, were the Scythians, who, at the invitation of the Assyrians wrought havoc on all they met. This, in turn aided many of the Assyrian neighbours to join forces and destroy them utterly. Then the Neo-Babylonian empire rose along with the Median one to the North. Persians (dwelling in present day S. Iran to N. Iran) took power and they, in turn, under Cyrus annihilated the Neo-Babylonian empire, allowing the Israelites to return to their native land and rebuild the Temple. A big part of Median power were the Horse Archers. Even as Persians won supremacy over the Medes, by 216 BCE Medians were coalescing into a Atropatene-Median state. Not as good as their Northern neighbours whom they called "Dahae" or "robbers" as they were civilised and sedentary, not nomad, but they could pack a punch, dressed in their gear. They are depicted in the Achaimenid stele of 6th cent. BCE at King's court where a guardsman is depicted in Median dress. This indicates that Medians, along with the Persians, were both the "Royal troopers" or part of the "Royal Agema" or "King's army" in the Macedonian terminology.

Medians were Iranians, and the first to form a large empire, whom the Persians under Cyrus took over. When Megas Alexandros took over their state along with the rest of the area, they waited for the wars of the Diadochi to declare independence. They formed their own state which existed until well into the first century CE when the Parthians dissolved Atropatene Media and made it a part of their own empire; and later the Sassanid Empire. Even as they were famous archers, light troopers, Kardaka and archer spearmen, they also were Horse Archers. There seemed to be a move away from the Achaimenid strategy, (which had cost them their empire) and a move towards cavalry, both light and heavy. Medes followed along with the rest of the Persian states who did this, as the one sure mention we have of Atropatene Media speaks of their heavy cavalry. If they hadn't been so introvert, they might have been the ones to resurrect the Persian empire of the Achaimenids, instead of the Nomadic Parthians. Whatever the case, Medians were valiant fighters, not to be underestimated, especially in their new mounted archer doctrine. They may never be as good as their nomad cousins of the North, but they will fight. Atropatene Media and her independence throughout all of the Diadochi era proves their worth.