Horse armours....

[AqD]

Hi all!

I found that many cavalry units in EB have armours for their horses - but in my knowledge only the cataphracts have horse armours at that time. Since EB aims to be historical, there must be some evidence/story showing horse armour was used by hetairoi and sacred band cavalry etc, so could somebody tell me where to find these information?

I tried and cannot find any related web-pages on google. And on wikipedia there is only one: Sacred Band Cavalry

Their superbly bred Iberian horses are barded with fine lacquered lamellar

And it lacks source and pictures......
________
Laguna Bay Condo Pattaya

[eggthief]

Sacred band cav and those others with some armor aren´t cataphracts only the horses that are completely or almost completely armored are cataphracts afaik.

[Ludens]

I can't give you any sources, but I do know that Cataphracts didn't fall out of the clear sky. The steppe people had already been experimenting with partial armour (like the breast pieces that are featured on several noble cavalry unit) for their mounts. These developments were taken over by Persians, and presumably the Hellenes got it from them. That doesn't explain where the solid bronze breastplate from the Hetairoi comes from, though.

[DR. Hobo. PHD.]

the nomadic saka were one of the first to pioneer horse armour, and it spread from there, most notibly the parthian, sarmatians, dahae, tocharians, and then the yuezhi/kushans

[AqD]

Thanks a lot.

Now I'm going to add those cool horse skins to RTR
________
ANAIH cam

[Watchman]

The Persians had picked up the frontal bard and chamfron already when Xenophon wrote his Peri Hippikes, for that matter.

It's not like it required particularly inspired genius to fix the issue with the horses - rather big targets - being rather vulnerable to attacks through the exact same method as worked right well with humans, ie. armour. (Late Bronze Age chariot horses sometimes had bards, for example.) It's just that it was bloody expensive to actually do so - not only did the bard itself cost a whole lot, but breeding a horse capable of bearing the load plus that of a fully armed rider wasn't a piece of cake either.

[AqD]

I see. But then how the nomads began to use horse armours? I think they're very poor, and their horses, if like the mongol horses, couldn't bear the weight of armour at all.
________
Sunset Boulevard Residence Condo

[DR. Hobo. PHD.]

well they had several breeds, like the nisean (i know i spelt that wrong) was breeded for that one purpose, and the nomads were far from poor. thier nobility was just as rich as any hellenic lord.

[Watchman]

Specialised warhorse breeds were developed that had rather higher performance specs than the frankly rather unimpressive run-of-the-mill steppe horse (which is certainly very durable and all, but kinda short on load-bearing strenght and combat stamina under load). Very expensive in terms of resources of course, but then only the nomadic aristocracy ever fought as heavy cavalry anyway.

And, yes, the pastoral bigwigs could be filthy rich indeed. If I've understood correctly the Scythian ones imported a lot of their finer metalwork, armour etc. from settled peopled often quite far away, sometimes including custom jobs to order... These guys sat on some pretty major trade-routes after all, and owned great herds.

Also, you can make pretty decent armour out of hide and leather, which the pastoralists had no particular shortages of. And something they had a certain interest in developing was a defense against the ubiquitous archery of their homelands...

[DR. Hobo. PHD.]

scythian and sarmatian burials have helmets from greece to even celtic helmets.
yeah they werent that bad off some of them.