Let me begin by saying that the name of the Persian Empire at this time was the "Achaemenian Dynasty". This way, people who are skeptical of pro-Spartan myths are not confused as to which Persian Empire I am referring to.
Now, I tell you the military structure:
- First, there were the leather-armored and unarmored guys who were the only caste in the Persian army to have interwoven wicker & bamboo shields: The Auxiliaries. Armored Persians wore conical helmets and an armor of interlocking scales (that is, lamellar). All had hood-like headscarves, and showed only their hands and faces on the battlefield. These Auxiliaries had, like all castes of all Ancient Greek armies, 1-foot bladed swords, they used wicker shields, they had copper-headed (leaf-shaped), copper-butted (the butt end featured an apple-shaped piece of solid metal) Persian spears which were roughly 6 feet tall (Persian people were [and are] 5 foot 8 and 160 pounds on average [Persian women were {and are} probably 5' 7" and about 150 pounds on average]), and copper-headed arrows (Persian arrows had leaf-shaped heads of either 2 or 3 flanges) with recurve bows made from wood. The only reason Auxiliaries were alive was to overwhelm the enemy through larger numbers alone (but in much smaller numbers than Herodotus suggested)
- Next Caste up are the Warriors, the medium-quality troops who received medium pay and could afford medium-quality gear at best. Every trooper in this caste was armored, with iron helmets and iron lamellar. This lamellar armor for all Persians consisted of a cuirass (torso-guard), vambraces (forearm guards), and greaves (shin guards), the only non-lamellar part being the conical helmet. Each scale was 2 inches long, 1 inch wide, and one-eighth of an inch thick. This ironclad caste was given 2-foot bladed swords, similar to Ancient Roman swords, also being made of iron. They also had iron-headed, iron-butted spears; iron-headed arrows, and recurve bows made of ivory (as in horn & antler). These guys were the ones who could take out a basic Roman soldier (as opposed to a Centurion) or basic Spartan soldier (as opposed to a Hoplite) in a one-on-one fight. This was due to the Persians starting training at age 5, rather than age 7, and finishing at the mutual graduate age of 25. The shield carried by each Persian Warrior was a layer-by-layer of a half inch of wood, quarter inch of wicker, and a quarter inch of leather, held together by an iron rim.
- The elite caste were founded by Cyrus the Great as the "Companions", a troop type consisting of 10,000 soldiers until around the 1600s AD, when they were reduced to 5,000 soldiers. Then these admirable Guardsmen were discarded and replaced with the barbaric Revolution Guard in 1979 AD. The thing that made the Companions unique from 539 BC to 1979 AD is that they never left dead behind on the battlefield so foreigners never saw a dead Companion. More unfathomably, every time a Companion died, a Middle-caste trooper (Warrior) would adopt that Companion's wargear and take his or her spot in the army. This gave them the far more common name "Immortals". During Achaemenid times, these 10,000 followed the Achaemenid Warrior mode of wargear, but using bronze armor and steel weapons, instead of iron armor & iron weapons. Plus, the Companions were armed with 3-foot shafted axes that each axe was backed by an anti-armor spike as their primary short range weapon. Furthermore, Companion swords reflected the Macedonian Kopis rather than reflecting the Roman Gladius. Companion shields were figure-8 shields of 2 feet by 3 feet, the largest shields in the Achaemenid army, and were made like the Warrior shields but with a metal boss in the center pushed out during forging from a quarter-inch thick layer of steel that replaced the wicker layer found in Warrior shields.
- The Persian army on a whole was formed with squares of 100 infantry of three troop types (fencer, archer, spear-man) and formations of 100 cavalrymen of two troop types: Cataphracts, shield-bearing fencers on heavily armored horses; and horseback archers, bowmen skilled enough to use their primary weapon from the back of a speedy, unarmored horse. Plus, the Persian army had light ballistas called Bolt Throwers (similar to the Roman Scorpion turret) and a humongous fleet of two-horse chariots and four-horse chariots that all had 3-foot scythes on their wheels and were all drawn by lightly armored horses.
That is the Persian military structure of the Ancient Age. Contrary to popular belief, the Achaemenian military was a decently-structured force that could only be disadvantaged by deeper-thinking generals like Themistocles of Athens, and Persia's conqueror, Alexander the Great of Macedonia.
