ClIAl'. I.J 



EAi;i:iKST CAVALHY. 



18 



custom was originated, l)ut a very .short time would 

 elapse before it would l)e universal, and before the whole 

 peo[)le woidd beeome so habituated to riding as almost 

 to live upon horseltaek. 



They were evidently very skilfid with horses, and 

 continually in the habit of mounting them, long before 

 the (Jreeks had conceived the idea of men riding upon 

 horses at all, for it is clear that the fable of the Centaurs 

 was originated by the (Jreeks having seen or heard of 

 the horsemen, whom tlu-y mistook for single animals 

 half-man and half-horse. This would be the most natural 

 idea of a non-riding nation in reference to a people who 

 were continually on horsebaek. The Scythians do not 

 appear to have used chariots of war at all, so that all 

 the evidence seems to point to them as the earliest 

 cavalry nation, unless indeed reliance can be placed 

 upon the statements of Pere Amyot in reference to 

 the Chinese, 



Their weapons were l)ows rmd arrows. The arrow- 

 heads, according to Herodotus,^ were brass or bronze, 

 although Ammianus Marcellinus,^ describing the same 

 people 800 years afterwards, says that the arrow-points 

 were of bone. Besides their bows and arrows they used 

 lances, knives, and battle-axes. They wore bronze breast- 

 plates, and were good archers and excellent riders." 



The Scythians fought tumultuously, without any fixed 

 order, in groups of trianguhir shape, firing their arrows 

 at a distance, and retreating if attacked, but rarely if 

 ever coming to a close hand-to-hand combat,* By this 

 system they wearied their enemies out, and a force 

 invading their country was continually in a species of 

 investment, which ever pressed upon them, but against 

 which a crushing blow could not be delivered. There 

 was no art and but little organization among them, the 

 most skilful chiefs being the foremost in leading them 

 into action,^ 



Recent researches into the monumental tablets and 

 inscriptions of Assyria, as well as the close study of late 



' Herodotus, iv. SI. - Ammianus Marcellimis, xxxi. 2. 



5 Rawlinson's Parthia, 119. ■• Carrion Nisas, i. 79. ^ Ibid. i. 79. 



