Victory

The term “parting shot,” to give someone a final riposte in an argument while departing, originated with ancient Iranian (Parthian) fast, light horsemen who would turn and shoot backward toward pursuing cavalry to lure them into an ambush of waiting heavy cavalry...a “Parthian shot.” Historians still debate as to who first used them but it is the simple invention of the stirrup that gave the armies of Genghis Khan, the Avars, Sarmatians, Scythians and Attila’s Huns the advantage in their conquests.

Throughout history, similar basic advances such as the Greek phalanx (and its Roman “testudo” de...