01-03-2010, 12:58 PM
The 'chained' reference is an excellent example of a mistranslation being repeated extensively in secondary and tertiary sources until it becomes received wisdom and broadly accepted. Despite being completely wrong! Sasanian foot were much better than generally supposed as lazy writers have confused the Paighan footmen with the levied peasants brought along for labouring. I wrote an article for Slingshot on Persian infantry that might be of interest.