Persian military history.

The Persians were an Iranian-speaking, Indo-European people. As described in both the Rigveda and the Avesta, the sacred texts of Hinduism and Zoroastrianism respectively, warriors played an important part in Persian society. The warrior class, from which chiefs and kings were chosen, was second in status only to that of the priests. However, these religious texts, written by priests, may overemphasize the importance of the priest class within Persian society. Horses were important to the Persians, who used them effectively against both the native inhabitants of the Iranian plateau and their Mesopotamian neighbors, especially the Assyrians, whose military technology was the most advanced in the world in the first millennium b.c.e. Ancient Persian history can be divided into three periods: the Achaemenid Persian period (550-330 b.c.e. ), the Hellenic and Parthian period (330 b.c.e. -224 c.e. ), and the Sāsānian period (224-651 c.e. ).