Scythed chariot

The Greek general Xenophon (430−354 BC), an eyewitness at the battle of Cunaxa, tells of them: "These had thin scythes extending at an angle from the axles and also under the driver's seat, turned toward the ground".

[full citation needed] Serrated bronze blades for chariot wheels have also been excavated from Zhou-era pre-imperial Chinese sites.

Dismissing completely 17th to 19th century ideas of a Canaanite, Assyrian, Indian or Macedonian origin,[1] Historian Alexander K. Nefiodkin challenges Xenophon's attribution of scythed chariots to the first Persian king Cyrus,[1] pointing to their notable absence in the invasion of Greece (480−479 BC) by one of his successors, Xerxes I.

Here is one recorded encounter where scythed chariots were on the winning side: The soldiers had got into the habit of collecting their supplies carelessly and without taking precautions.

[5] The only other recorded example of their successful use seems to be when units of Mithradates VI of Pontus defeated a Bithynian force on the River Amnias in 89 BC.

On other occasions the Romans fixed vertical posts in the ground behind which their infantry were safe (Frontinus Stratagems 2,3,17-18) There is a statement in the Scriptores Historiae Augustae Severus Alexander LV that he captured 1,800 scythed chariots.

Late in the Imperial period, the Romans might have experimented with an unusual variant of the idea that called for cataphract-style lancers to sit on a pair or a single horse drawing a "chariot" reduced to a bare axle with wheels, where the blades were only lowered into the fighting position at the last moment.

However, a scythed chariot appears in The Cattle-Raid of Cooley (Táin Bó Cúailnge), the central epic of the Ulster cycle of Early Irish literature.