spirit and tenacity, being a fair match for the legionaries under
ordinary circumstances, and superior to most other adversaries.

It is uncertain how the various arms of the service were organized
internally. We do not hear of any divisions corresponding to the Roman
legions or to modern regiments; yet it is difficult to suppose that
there were not some such bodies. Perhaps each satrap of a province
commanded the troops raised within his government, taking the actual
lead of the cavalry or the infantry at his discretion. The Crown
doubtless appointed the commanders-in-chief--the _Sparapets, Spaha-pets,
or Sipehbeds_, as well as the other generals (_arzbeds_), the head of
the commissariat (_hambarapet_ or _hambarahapet_), and the commander of
the elephants (_zendkapet_). The satraps may have acted as colonels of
regiments under the arzbeds, and may probably have had the nomination of
the subordinate (regimental) officers.

The great national standard was the famous "leathern apron of the
blacksmith," originally unadorned, but ultimately covered with jewels,
which has been described in a former chapter. This precious palladium
was, however, but rarely used, its place being supplied for the most
part by standards of a more ordinary character. These appear by the
monuments to have been of two kinds. Both consisted primarily of a pole
and a cross-bar; but in the one kind the crossbar sustained a single
ring with a bar athwart it, while below depended two woolly tassels; in
the other, three striated balls rose from the cross-bar, while below the
place of the tassels was taken by two similar balls. It is difficult to
say what these emblems symbolized, or why they were varied. In both the
representations where they appear the standards accompany cavalry,
so that they cannot reasonably be assigned to different arms of
the service. That the number of standards carried into battle was
considerable may be gathered from the fact that on one occasion, when
the defeat sustained was not very complete, a Persian army left in the
enemy's hands as many as twenty-eight of them.

During the Sassanian period there was nothing very remarkable in the
Persian tactics. The size of armies generally varied from 30,000 to
60,000 men, though sometimes 100,000, and on one occasion as many as
140,000, are said to have been assembled. The bulk of the troops were
footmen, the proportion of the horse probably never equalling one third
of a mixed army.