Histories

Herodotus

Herodotus. Godley, Alfred Denis, translator. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann, Ltd., 1920-1925 (printing).

This they did, and the army passed between. First went the baggage train and the beasts of burden, and after them a mixed army of all sorts of nations, not according to their divisions but all mingled together; when more than half had passed there was a space left, and these did not come near the king.

After that, first came a thousand horsemen, chosen out of all Persians; next, a thousand spearmen, picked men like the others, carrying their spears reversed; and after them ten horses of the breed called Nesaean, equipped most splendidly.

The horses are called Nesaean because there is in Media a wide plain of that name, where the great horses are bred.

Behind these ten horses was the place of the sacred chariot of Zeus,[*](That is, of Ormuzd.) drawn by eight white horses, with the charioteer following the horses on foot and holding the reins; for no mortal man may mount into that seat. After these came Xerxes himself in a chariot drawn by Nesaean horses; beside him was his charioteer, whose name was Patiramphes, the son of Otanes, a Persian.