Assault Raider, Mercenary Bactrian Hillmen

Description

Most of the northern European tribes were not naval powers, but there were still able seafarers to be found amongst them. Shipbuilding techniques were well understood, so while many vessels were small leather-skinned boats for inland and inshore use, bigger sea-going vessels were also made. Shipwrights used heavy planking for hulls, stitched together and then fastened to a wooden skeleton to create sturdy craft able to cope with Atlantic conditions. Julius Caesar was surprised at the quality of the enemy ships when his fleet clashed with the Veneti from modern-day Brittany. The Veneti vessels had flat bottoms to cope with shallows, but were also of heavy oak construction to cope with rough seas. This made them tough opposition for Roman galleys, and capable of shrugging off a ramming attack. Caesar said that the enemy ships "...were constructed of planks a foot in breadth, fastened by iron spikes the thickness of a man's thumb; the anchors were secured fast by iron chains instead of cables”. When the Romans were forced to board, they faced fearsome warriors used to close-quarters fighting at sea.

The Bactrian plain is to the west of the Hindu Kush in what is now Afghanistan. It first enters records of antiquity through Ctesias, a Greek historian (circa 400BC), who falsely claimed that the Assyrian King Ninus defeated the Bactrians in 2140BC. A fertile and developed land, Bactria was prosperous and so, during the expansion of the Achaemenid Empire, it inevitably drew the interest of the newly crowned Cyrus the Great. Under the Achaemenids, Bactria enjoyed the special privilege of being ruled by the crown prince, or heir-apparent to the royal line. It has been suggested that before the Persians, however, Bactria was ruled by the Median Kingdom before they, too, fell to the expansionist Achaemenids. Like many other Persian satrapies, Bactria attempted to rebel against its overlords in the wake of Darius III's defeat by Alexander the Great, only to be subdued by the victorious general.