Cavalry in the Hellenistic Period
Cavalry in the Hellenistic Period:
Its uses, types, and evolution from the death of Alexander through the death of Cleopatra, with a focus on the period after 280 B.C.
Our knowledge of the use of cavalry in the Ancient World is minimal, comprising for the most part secondary sources and snatches of battles seen darkly through history’s glass. This knowledge is further corrupted by misconceptions fueled by anachronistic views of the capabilities of cavalry. Though I cannot hope to address the former without becoming an archaeologist, this monograph will hopefully help clear the mists of the latter. For the record, the ideas expressed herein are primarily based on Philip Sidnell’s Warhorse: Cavalry in the Ancient World (that's also where I got most of the citations, but I have checked them over), but some of the thoughts on Persia, Bactria, and the Italian tribes are based on my own research over the last several years. This is a pretty sparse overview of a complex topic, though, so I recommend buying the book if you'd like to learn more.
Part I – The development of cavalry up to the death of Alexander
Although we will focus upon Hellenistic Period cavalry, a little historical grounding is always helpful. Historians of cavalry sometimes make the error of assuming that Alexander’s Companions sprang, fully formed, from the great king’s head. In reality, they were merely an evolutionary adaptation of existing shock cavalry for a particular moment in history.
The heavy armour of Greek hoplites and a political ethos that intentionally emphasized the contributions of the democratic hoplites over the aristocratic hippeis prevented shock cavalry from achieving much fame in the chronicals of Ancient Greece. Many records don’t focus on cavalry actions, but the simple lack of a mention of cavalry action in the record of a battle doesn’t mean they were impotent. It may just mean that the terrain wasn’t suited to it or that they were evenly matched and just made faces at each other the whole time. Even when cavalry did act, chroniclers had every incentive to downplay their contributions in favor of the more middle-class phalanx.
Whenever a hoplite army fell out of its phalanx, it had to be fearful of a cavalry assault, for only in a phalanx were men likely to stand firm against a cavalry charge. The finest heavy infantry, even when victorious, still had much to fear from a cavalry assault. [i] For example, Theban cavalry at Platea slaughtered 600 pursuing hoplites and scattered the rest.[ii] The same thing happened with Athenian hoplites against Syracusan cavalry.[iii] I cannot emphasize too much that both of those examples were victorious hoplites, drawn out of position to chase a fleeing foe. How much more terrifying must have a cavalry charge been to men taken by surprise or from behind during a battle not yet won?
Some historians argue that Greek cavalry of the time was incapable of fighting in melee, given its lack of saddles and stirrups. Before subscribing to this view, though, we would do well to look to Xenophon. He advises equipping cavalry with two stout javelins instead of a spear, since he was concerned that the spears used at the time frequently broke at the climax of the charge. How, though, could they break if cavalrymen couldn’t deliver a heavy blow without saddles/stirrups? The old general’s concerns are incoherent unless one accepts that a mounted spearman could deliver a firm blow. Interestingly, Xenophon seems to consider throwing these javelins of secondary importance, since he advises only training as many as convenient to throw them effectively. If the other riders weren’t using those javelins in melee, what were they supposed to be doing with them? Xenophon also specifically mentions that the retained javelin is to be used to attack in all directions, a rather hard task if riders without saddles and stirrups really were unsteady. [iv]
Alexander, then, was born into a culture with a healthy tradition of heavy cavalry. The Thessalians, in particular, were outstanding cavalry. As we shall see, they were likely just as good as the Companions of Alexander, and certainly proved their worth in his campaigns. The Companions were always Alexander’s hammer, but none of his victories against the vastly larger armies of Darius would have been possible if the Thessalians had not managed to protect his other flank against much larger forces of Eastern cavalry. In fact, this job was arguably harder than being on the offense, since cavalry tends to do best in the initial onslaught. The Companions at the Hydaspes found themselves in a bit of a bind when they found something that didn’t flee them promptly.
In this light, the Companions should be viewed not as a sui generis development, but rather the outgrowth of a long Greek tradition of heavy cavalry, given new emphasis, slightly superior weaponry and horses, and superb leadership. The chief Macedonian developments were likely the acquisition of better equine bloodstock from the Thracians (who were in turn getting it from the Scythians, who had been developing warhorses for four thousand years at this point), the use of the wedge formation, and the development of a sturdier lance. The xyston was not unbreakable, but seems to have been a substantial improvement over the “reed spears” mentioned by Xenophon. At the Granicus, this weapon was key to their defeat of the Persian cavalry, a far cry from the humiliation the javelin-armed Persian cavalry had handed the Spartan King Agesilaus’s spear-armed cavalry half a century earlier. [v] The only cavalry that stood a chance against the Companions were the heavy cataphracts of Armenia and Bactria, and Darius undertook a desperate and ultimately futile attempt to re-arm his best cavalry in their image prior to his death.
The true origins of the cataphracts are lost in the mists of time, but they seem to have appeared in the steppes of Central Asia around the time of Alexander’s adventures far to the south. The earliest cataphracts seem to have been primarily armoured artillery platforms, carrying a mixture of javelins and bows, with some employing lances.[vi] This is quite sensible, as steppe horsemen would have had to contend with mobile light cavalry more often than great masses of infantry. Only as the cataphract enters the more populated, settled territories does it seem to take up the lance. Even much later, during the Roman expansion into the Caucasus, an Albanian cataphract is recorded as attacking the Pompey with a javelin.[vii] As the Albanians were the closest in the region to the steppe peoples, this would seem to support the hypothesis that the earliest cataphracts were primarily missile units.
The idea that cavalry could not perform in a shock role prior to the advent of stirrups must be firmly put to bed by the cataphracts. Cataphracts were an important part of armies of everyone in that area of the world for a thousand years, mostly before the advent of stirrups. If they were just for showing off the wealth of rich men, as some have argued, they wouldn’t have been so widely used for so long, or made up such a substantial part of cavalry forces.
Part II – Cavalry in the Hellenistic World
The Hellenistic World shattered after the death of Alexander, and cavalry in each of the regions evolved separately.
The shield begins to appear in Greek cavalry by the middle of the Third Century B.C. This development may have been driven by the Italian campaigns of Pyrrhus, the Celtic invasion, or the spread of the Scythian saddle after the campaigns of Alexander. In any case, shielded cavalry tended to revert to the “two short javelin” method of fighting, since holding a xyston and shield is pretty much impossible. This doesn’t mean that cavalry was entirely skirmishing, though. The much-cited fight at the battle near Athacus was probably between Romans and Macedonian light screening cavalry. The Macedonians had heavier cavalry perfectly capable of melee with the Romans.[viii] Likewise, Thracians deployed both light and heavy javelin-armed cavalry, although their numbers never recovered from the depredations of the Gallic invasion.
In Macedonia, the aristocrats who comprised the cavalry were decimated by the emigration into Persia and the subsequent invasion of the Gauls. Along with the rise of shields, this forced a change in their cavalry forces. Light forces were hippakontistai, which probably gradually adopted the shield in imitation of the Tarantines. Aspidophoroi served as the main shock arm, with some body armour, heavy shields much like a hoplite’s, and weaponry much like Xenophon’s ideal (two stout javelins and a sword, usually the machaira). A few hetairoi still existed, remnants of the old style of shock cavalry. Pyrrhus’s heavy cavalry was likewise modeled on the hetairoi, and seems to have picked up the shield late, if at all.
We have little information about the Bactrians, but it appears that the country was heavily settled by Alexander’s Thessalians. (The remainder of whom had quit early and retired to the aptly-named city of Larissa-on-the-Orontës in Syria, but more on them later.) Numismatic and other evidence leads us to believe these men developed the early Bactrian shock cavalry in the Thessalian style, but later adopted the bow along with their heavy panoply, probably to deal with the light steppe cavalry.[ix]
The Sogdians and the steppe tribes provided much of the light cavalry of Bactria, and the more settled Bactrians (as well as the wealthier Sogdians—Sogdiana was not without its great trading centers) provided additional heavy cavalry armed in the cataphract style. In discussions of the Persian army, Bactrians, Sogdians, and Armenians are consistently mentioned as the finest and most heavily armoured cavalry, and they seem to have served well in that capacity well into the Hellenistic Period (much longer, in the case of the Armenians).
That brings us to the Seleucids, whose adventures in Transoxiana in the late Third Century B.C. seem to have brought them face-to-face with cataphracts for the first time. The circumstances of this meeting are not recorded (oh, curse and spite!), but it made quite an impression on them. Their previously Alexandrian-style heavy cavalry was promptly converted to be primarily cataphracts, leaving only the Greek settler cavalry armed in the old hetairoi style. To placate them, though, they remained the Emperor’s personal guard, with another guard of cataphracts being created alongside them.
The Seleucids otherwise had a wide array of cavalry from which to recruit. The Armenians (and others in that area) seem to have been heavily armed in the Persian style until their conversion to cataphracts. Cappadocians were well known for their heavy cavalry, though it was not as good as the Armenians. Gauls in Anatolia provided typical Gallic cavalry, light and heavy. In the far east (when it was under their control) Sogdians and Arachosians seem to have provided unusually well-armoured light cavalry. Media, of course, was legendary for the quality of the heavy cavalry to be found there, and it appears that the Medes were the ones who were mostly converted to cataphracts.
As these areas were lost to other empires, the Seleucids were forced to look closer to home for their cavalry. The desert of Arabia provided horse archers and other forms of light cavalry, if never in large numbers. Loss of access to recruiting areas for Tarantine-style Mediterranean mercenary cavalry forced them to look to their Mesopotamian Greek settlers for similar light cavalry. Likewise, loss of access to Media forced them to rely primarily on cavalry recruited in Syria, notably from the descendants of the Thessalians settled at Larissa-on-the-Orontës.[x]
Thessalian cavalry deserve special mention here. Their tradition of excellence appears to have continued well into this period, although sources about them peter out. In the Lamian War, they consistently overmatched their Macedonian opponents, although they did tend to outnumber the Macedonians by a non-trivial amount. More relevantly, at the Battle of Crannon, 3,500 Thessalian cavalry barely beat back 5,000 Macedonian cavalry, but they were unable to buy enough time and space to prevent the Macedonian infantry from winning the day.
I have little to say about Ptolemaic and Pergamene cavalry. The former seems to have been very similar to the Alexandrian model[xi], while the latter seems to have been composed primarily of local mercenary light cavalry, with a heavy core of xystophoroi.
Part III – The Cavalry North Africa and Spain
I will likewise dispense quickly with the cavalry of Carthage itself. It was excellent heavy cavalry, although its miserable performance at Zama may indicate that its recruitment barrel was too small to survive a prolonged war without scraping the bottom. [xii] Roman citizen cavalry appears to have had a similar problem eventually, fading away after the losses of the Second Punic War and the massive expansion of the Roman Army.
Numidian cavalry is worth rather more attention, as it was a mainstay of Carthaginian and Roman armies for centuries. We should first discuss that Numidian (and the similarly armed Mauretanian) cavalry was very light. The men wore little clothing, and the horses no armour or tack. In battle, they fought primarily with javelins.[xiii] That said, the Numidians were perfectly capable of shock action when an opportunity presented itself to attack an opponent from the rear.[xiv] The Numidians were even capable of fighting competently in close quarters, although they took unusually high casualties for it.[xv]
Spanish cavalry was known for its high-quality horses, skilled warriors, and less than stellar loyalty. [xvi] The men tended to carry the small caetra shield (about 50-75cm wide, on average), a sword, and either a spear or (less often) two stout javelins. Their swords were either the falcata (much like a machaira), or a heavy straight-bladed Celtic sword. Armour was what the horseman could afford, usually either a light breastplate or chain mail. Lusitani cavalry were known for being especially good, fast, and well-armoured.[xvii]
Part IV – Roman and Italian Cavalry
Though Polybius believes that the Roman cavalry were armed as light cavalry in the not-too-distant past, by the time Pyrrhus invaded (and almost certainly earlier) they had switched to the role of heavy cavalry. This fits with the behavior of the other cavalry forces (Capuan, Frentani) from the plains of Italy. The mountain peoples appear to have had much lighter cavalry, and possibly the identification of them as “proto-Romans” by the ancients caused some confusion.
This is clear from some of Rome’s earliest clashes with the Gauls. At Sentinum, the equites have no problem going into melee with the Gauls and driving them back twice.[xviii] Later, at Telamon, outnumbered Roman+alae cavalry defeated the Gauls.[xix] This is likely because the equites were heavy cavalry, and the alae were from the plains (Etruscans and Volscii) and also probably heavy cavalry, whereas the Gauls likely had their normal mixed bag of heavy and light cavalry, the latter being ferocious but not much good in a standstill melee. Interestingly, the Italian alae cavalry at Cannae also behave as heavy cavalry, not light cavalry, since they aren’t able to come to grips with their Numidian opposites, but neither are the Numidians able to do much damage to them.[xx] If they were light cavalry, the Numidians should have been able to damage them, and they should likewise have been equipped with missile weapons to damage the Numidians.
Numerous accusations to the contrary, the Roman cavalry does not appear to have been terrible. At Heraclea, the Roman cavalry was an even match for Pyrrhus’s, although it did outnumber his 3:2. Still, Pyrrhus’s cavalry was an impressive force, including veteran Thessalians. That the Roman cavalry put up such a solid fight is a credit to them. Equites actually did quite well against Carthaginian Cavalry, being defeated easily only when outnumbered 2:1 or more. In addition, although Capuan cavalry gets much more credit for being skilled than do the Roman equites, when they fought on even terms the outcome was consistently a stalemate. [xxi]
The unfamiliarity of the Roman cavalry with mounted action has frequently been “proven” by examples of the men dismounting to fight. That these examples are used to this purpose says more about the scholars’ lack of familiarity with mounted combat than it does the Romans’, though. In each case, the equites dismounted only when the fighting had come to a standstill, and the horses were so tightly packed that no more could reach the front lines. A man could slip through where a horse could not, and furthermore, a stationary horse presents a large target (with a very soft underbelly) to a man with a gladius. Once or twice equites are reported dismounting to fight in a defensive line with their spears, but this only occurs prior to our time period and on ground that would be poor for a cavalry action. Given the danger posed to stationary cavalry by…well…almost everything, dismounting to hold a fixed position was almost certainly the only intelligent choice.
The most famous example of dismounted action by equites is probably at Cannae, and it is precisely here that the idea that the equites were intentionally dismounted makes the least sense. The equites, as you may recall, were stationed on the right flank of the Roman army, nearest the river. If Varro had wanted his flank anchored to the river with heavy infantry, he had more than enough at his disposal. Instead, he placed his equites there, opposite the Carthaginian cavalry (comprising Carthaginians, Spanish, and Gauls – the Numidians were on the other flank). This only makes sense if he thought his badly outnumbered equites stood a better chance against the Carthaginians than his legions – a strong implied argument for the acknowledged power of shock action, albeit from one of history’s worst generals.
Part V – Gallic and Germanic Cavalry
At the start of our time period, the Gauls were the most common barbarians in Europe, and as a result got involved in almost every side of every war that occurred during the period. As Ueda-Sarson notes, though, “Galatian mercenaries did not have a great reputation - one source does indeed claim that no Seleucid ruler would go to war without them, but that is not the same as saying they were especially feared - the fact that they were so numerous and cheap is a much better argument as to why they were so ubiquitous.”[xxii]
Gauls everywhere generally fought mounted in the same manner. Their light cavalry was spear-armed, with javelins to harry the foe. Their heavier cavalry comprised nobles who could afford armour and a sword, or just long-term mercenaries who’d acquired armour in one way or another. These Gauls were ferocious on the charge, and an even match for Roman cavalry. They could also, as we have seen, chase off Numidians, and destroy them if they managed surprise.[xxiii]
In Britain, where Gallic culture seems to have stagnated somewhat, their forces were slightly different. The light cavalry seems to have been almost exclusively missile-oriented, without the melee capability of their Continental counterparts. Instead of heavy cavalry, they still used war chariots. Indeed, they made quite an art of the use of the war chariot, but their cumbersome nature made it an obviously dying art.[xxiv]
Germanic cavalry shows up later in our time period, but eventually makes quite a splash. The Bastarnae (a mysterious people who were likely some combination of Celtic, German, and steppe stock) were noted as having superb cavalry, but we know little about them beyond that.
Germans first appear in Roman chronicles in the great invasion of the Teutones and the Cimbri. There were 15,000 German heavy cavalry at Vercellae, but Marius’s cavalry outnumbered them. They used swords, with two heavy javelins for throwing, and wore armour.[xxv] Allegedly. I have a serious problem with those numbers. First, no army of the period fielded a cavalry arm composed solely of heavy cavalry. That could have been looted armour, though, so I’ll grant Plutarch that. The larger problem is the numbers. Based on the cavalry percentage in past deployments, the Romans shouldn’t have had more than about 8,000 cavalry, total, and it was probably closer to 6,000. Yet Plutarch says not only that Marius’s cavalry outnumbered them, but that Marius specifically picked the ground for his cavalry. Based on this, I think it is probably best to divide Cimbri numbers by at least three.
Germans make a much better impression in Caesar’s chronicles, although he disdains their native horses.[xxvi] They consistently beat larger Gallic forces, and in one case routed a Gallic force six times their size. [xxvii] This would seem to indicate that saddles weren’t necessary for a superb melee cavalry force, since the Gauls did use saddles while the Germans did not. [xxviii] For the next several centuries, Germanic cavalry formed the elite units of the Roman Empire.
Germans used an elite fast spear/javelin unit to back up their cavalry. Similar, but less skilled, units were found among Gauls and Numidians.[xxix] These units were useful to provide emergency cover for otherwise lightly-armoured cavalry units, though if caught without the support of their own cavalry these lightly-armed units were usually slaughtered.
Part VI – Cavalry as a Renewable and Limited Resource
Although Rome: Total War makes it easy to forget, trained men cannot simply be ordered into existence. There is a limited supply, and it can be exhausted. Cavalry doubly so, with its reliance upon both horses and men.
Fine warhorses have always been a limited resource, and this was more even more true in the Hellenistic Period than it is today. Many parts of the world were forced to rely on small horses, not much larger than ponies, while areas that had managed to develop larger horses soon became legendary for their cavalry. Scythians, as heirs to the horse breeding traditions of the lands where the domestic horse originated, were especially important in this respect.
Armenia and Media, both occupied only a few centuries prior by the Scythians, had some of the finest horses in the world. Bactria, too, a neighbor of Scythian tribes, was known for its great horses even as far off as China. On the other end of the Asian steppes, Thracians benefitted from their proximity to the Scythian breeding grounds, as did the Macedonians. On the other end of the scale, Caesar was so unimpressed with German horses that he had his mercenaries remounted.
It takes more than horses to make cavalry. Trained men are also needed to fight from horseback (especially before saddles--I've said elsewhere that it was possible to fight without a saddle, but that doesn't mean it was easy). Heavy cavalrymen were generally born as nobles, and always had to train for many years to become competent. When this supply of men ran out (or emigrated to Persia), new ones had to literally be grown. In addition, such men did not exist everywhere in the world. Mountainous regions or hot ones tended to train few men as heavy cavalry, since there would be no point in that terrain.
Another very limited resource in most regions was men trained as mounted archers. This is arguably one of the most difficult martial arts to master in all of history, and only men who'd spent their lives in the saddle tended to be any good at it. Settled peoples simply did not produce large numbers of mounted archers...mounted javelinmen were as close as they could get.[xxxi] The greatest weapon of the steppe peoples, then, is also the one that was most likely to disappear with their success. Later Parthian armies (in the 58-63 war) employed much higher ratios of cataphracts to mounted archers than they used at Carrhae, and lost badly for it. I strongly suspect they were victims of their own success, for as they settled into the land and became its lords, fewer and fewer would keep to the old nomadic ways.
Part VII – Conclusion
So, what does this all mean for the Extended Realism Mod for Rome: Total War? We’ll be able to implement most of those ideas in the game. Shock cavalry will cause fear in infantry, and we’ll balance cavalry units to reflect the idea that Roman cavalry was decent and that cavalry units in general were capable of effective melee action.
One thing that popped up repeatedly in Sidnell’s book as that most cavalry can’t repeatedly break off and charge, or stop pursuing a fleeing enemy to return to the battlefield. Only the greatest cavalry commanders were able to keep their cavalry in order throughout a battle. I’m not sure how to replicate this, though. Maybe the “Impetuous” trait?
One thing that will be difficult to emulate from a gameplay perspective is that mounted javelinmen (hippakontistai) had a very difficult time throwing javelins behind them (for obvious physical reasons), and as a result were often vulnerable to constant pursuit by other light cavalry.[xxxi] Ideally, cavalry could only throw javelins from a standing position or a Cantabrian Circle, but I don’t believe we can implement this.
As for recruitment, we'll be adding a visible horse resource to regions that had a tradition of heavy cavalry. Your faction's light cavalry (if it has any) will still be recruitable anywhere, but you will be limited in your recruitment of heavy cavalry to regions that actually produced it in decent numbers to start with. So no more being able to recruit an army of hetairoi in Cilicia.
Overall, though, I think we will be able to implement the vast majority of these ideas in the next version of the ExRM. I intend to start working on the rebalancing promptly, and I’m already planning the new units that we’ll need. As you can probably guess, I’m excited about the additional realism possibilities we’ll be able to bring to the game. My overarching goal is to create a game where players can not only replicate the results of battles like Magnesia and Cannae, but will understand why ancient generals made the tactical choices they did.
[i] William Tomkinson, The Diary of a Cavalry Officer 1809-15, (Staplehurst, 1999) p. 280.
[ii] Herodotus, Histories, IX, c.69
[iii] Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, V, c.73
[iv] Xenophon, On Horsemanship, c.12
[v] Xenophon, Hellenica, iii, c.4
[vi] Diodorus, Universal History, XVII, c.5
[vii] Plutarch, Pompey, c.35
[viii] Livy, The History of Rome, xxxi, c.33
[ix] See the substantial evidence compiled by Sardaukar One in this post:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums//showthread.php?p=6815050#post6815050
See also Valerii.P.Nikonorov, The Armies of Bactria
[x] Bezalel Bar-Kochva, The Seleucid army: organization and tactics in the great campaigns, p.27. See also Bar-Kochva’s other works on the topic and Luke Ueda-Sarson’s articles:
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/luke/ueda-sarson/Tarantines.html
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/luke/ueda-sarson/ImpSelDBM.html
[xi] See http://www.ne.jp/asahi/luke/ueda-sar...cessorDBM.html
[xii] Polybius, Histories, XV, c.12
[xiii] Polybius, Histories, III, c.116
[xiv] Polybius, Histories, III, c.65
[xv] Polybius, Histories, III, c.45
[xvi] Livy, The History of Rome, xxiii, c.29
[xvii] Appian, Roman History, VI, c.11
[xviii] Livy, The History of Rome, x, c.28
[xix] Polybius, Histories, II, c.30
[xx] Polybius, Histories, III, c.116
[xxi] Livy, The History of Rome, xxv, c.19
[xxii] http://www.ne.jp/asahi/luke/ueda-sarson/ImpSelDBM.html
[xxiii] Anonymous, The African War, c.18.
[xxiv] Imagine two Gallic armies in Snowdonia attempting to attack each other with chariots.
[xxv] Plutarch, Marius, cc.25-27
[xxvi] Caesar, De Bello Gallica, VII, c. 65
[xxvii] Caesar, De Bello Gallica, IV, c. 12
[xxviii] Caesar, De Bello Gallica, IV, c. 12. Caesar says the Germans found saddles effeminate.
[xxix] Caesar, De Bello Gallica, I, c. 48
[xxx] http://www.ne.jp/asahi/luke/ueda-sarson/ImpSelDBM.html
[xxxi] Caesar, Civil War, II, c.41. See also Anonymous, The African War, c.18.
Reply With Quote
) in thinking that it's the trait which can make units charge without orders?
Originally Posted by Carados
. 
