546 
FOURTH BAS-RELIEF. 
taineers and Arabs. There can scarcely be a doubt, that during 
both the Arsacedian and Sassanian dynasties, the military dress 
and weapons of the Persian nation varied little from what they 
had been before the conquest by the Macedonians, details of 
which may be gathered from various ancient authors. Heliodorus 
in particular, in the description he gives of the Cataphracti, or 
heavy-armed cavalry, minutely designates the plates and scales 
placed over each other in the armour of the horseman ; in fact, 
he comprises the image, by saying, that such a soldier, fully 
accoutred, resembled a moving statue of metal. The figures in 
this sculpture, before time or rude hands despoiled them, have 
all, originally, been completely clad in this kind of scale-work. 
But that the horsemen of all countries, who, in those days 
warred together, were on pretty equal terms, we may readily 
suppose ; both parties being usually quick enough in adopting 
military improvements. The heavy and long pike in the hands 
of these adversaries in the present bas-relief, is precisely what 
Heliodorus describes as the ancient Persian weapon, nearly what 
we see in the sculptures of the age of Cyrus, and almost exactly 
what we read of in other authors, as in the hands of the Grecian 
invaders of Persia. But no people perhaps, unless we may 
except the English bow-men, ever arrived at such an excellence 
in the use of the bow, as the Persians. Plutarch, in his Life of 
Crassus, draws a dreadful picture of the distress which the Roman 
soldiers under his command suffered from the Parthian arrows, 
which fell upon them in showers, piercing them in many places, 
and, wherever they pierced, inflicting the most excruciating 
tortures. When Crassus, in the last crisis of the battle, repeatedly 
called on his soldiers to charge home upon the enemy, they 
showed him their hands nailed to their shields, and their feet 
