Note 121 — Chapter XVII
Reading edition
The modern Persian horseman has changed the bow of his ancestors for a matchlock, but the mode of using his arms is the same. The Parthians are described, in their successful contests with the disciplined legions of Rome, as carrying on their attacks, not against the army but the supplies by which it was supported.
"The mode in which the Parthian warrior took his unerring aim, while his horse was carrying him from his enemy," says the author of the History of Persia, "may be viewed as a personification of the system of warfare by which his nation, during this era of its history, maintained its independence. The system was suited to the soil, to the man, and to the fleet and robust animal on which he was mounted; and its success was so certain, that the bravest veterans of Rome murmured when their leaders talked of a Parthian war."—History of Persia, vol. i. p. 88.