Roman cavalry refers to the horse mounted forces of the Roman army

Roman army

The Roman army is the generic term for the terrestrial armed forces deployed by the kingdom of Rome , the Roman Republic , the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine empire...

 through the many centuries of its existence.

Early cavalry (to ca. 338 BC)

Romulus

Romulus

- People:* Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome* Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman Emperor* Valerius Romulus , deified son of the Roman emperor Maxentius* Romulus , son of the Western Roman emperor Anthemius...

 supposedly established a cavalry regiment of 300 men called the Celeres

Celeres

The Celeres were a personal armed guard of 300-500 men maintained by Romulus, the mythical founder of ancient Rome. The Celeres were associated with Celer, the lieutenant of Romulus responsible for Remus' slaying in some stories. Livy mentions that they served in peacetime and in war, unlike the...

("the Swift Squadron") to act as his personal escort, with each of the three tribes supplying a centuria

Centuria

Centuria is a Latin substantive from the stem centum , denoting units consisting of 100 men. It also denotes a Roman unit of land area: 1 centuria = 100 heredia...

(century; company of 100 men), This cavalry regiment was supposedly doubled in size to 600 men by King Tarquinius Priscus

Tarquinius Priscus

Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, also called Tarquin the Elder or Tarquin I, was the legendary fifth King of Rome from 616 BC to 579 BC. His wife was Tanaquil.-Early life:According to Livy, Tarquinius Priscus came from the Etruria...

 (conventional dates 616-578 BC). According to Livy, Servius Tullius also established a further 12 centuriae of cavalry. But this is unlikely, as it would have increased the cavalry to 1,800 horse, implausibly large compared to 8,400 infantry (in peninsular Italy, cavalry typically constituted about 8% of a field army). This is confirmed by the fact that in the early Republic the cavalry fielded remained 600-strong (2 legions with 300 horse each).

An important question is whether the royal cavalry was drawn exclusively from the ranks of the Patricians (patricii), the aristocracy of early Rome, which was purely hereditary. This is certainly the mainstream view among historians, starting with Mommsen

Mommsen

Mommsen is a surname, and may refer to one of a family of German historians, see Mommsen family:* Theodor Mommsen , great classical scholar, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature* Tycho Mommsen...

. (However, Cornell considers the supporting evidence tenuous). Since the cavalry was probably a patrician preserve, it follows that it probably played a critical part in the coup against the monarchy. Indeed, Alfoldi suggests that the coup was carried out by the Celeres themselves. However, the patrician monopoly on the cavalry seems to have ended by around 400 BC, when the 12 centuriae of equites additional to the original 6 of regal origin were probably formed. Most likely patrician numbers were no longer sufficient to supply the ever-growing needs of the cavalry. It is widely agreed that the new centuriae were open to non-patricians, on the basis of a property rating.

According to the ancient Greek historian Polybius

Polybius

Polybius , Greek ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his work, The Histories, which covered the period of 220–146 BC in detail. The work describes in part the rise of the Roman Republic and its gradual domination over Greece...

, whose Histories (written ca. 140s BC) are the earliest substantial extant account of the Republic, Roman cavalry was originally unarmoured, wearing only a tunic and armed with a light spear and ox-hide shield which were of low quality and quickly deteriorated in action.

Recruitment

As their name implies, the equites were liable to cavalry service in the Polybian legion. Equites originally provided a legion's entire cavalry contingent, although from an early stage, when equites numbers had become insufficient, large numbers of young men from the First Class of commoners were regularly volunteering for the service, which was considered more glamorous than the infantry. By the time of the Second Punic War, it is likely that all members of the First Class served in the cavalry, since Livy states that members of Class I were required to equip themselves with a round shield (clipeus), rather than the oblong shield (scutum) required of the other classes - and all images of cavalrymen of this period show round shields. It appears that equites equo privato (i.e. First Class members) were required to pay for their own equipment and horse, but that the latter would be refunded by the state if it was killed in action. Cavalrymen in service were paid 1 drachma per day, triple the infantry rate, and were liable to a maximum of 10 campaigning seasons' military service, compared to 16 for the infantry.

Unit size and structure

Each Polybian legion contained a cavalry contingent of 300 horse, which does not appear to have been officered by an overall commander. The cavalry contingent was divided into 10 turma

Turma

A turma was a cavalry squadron in the Roman army of the Republic and Empire. In the Byzantine Empire, it became applied to the larger, regiment-sized military-cum-administrative divisions of a thema....

e (squadrons) of 30 men each. The squadron members would elect as their officers 3 decurio

Decurio

Decurio was an official title in Ancient Rome, used in various connections:# A member of the senatorial order in the Italian towns under the administration of Rome, and later in provincial towns organized on the Italian model . The number of decuriones varied in different towns, but was usually 100...

nes ("leaders of 10 men"), of whom the first to be chosen would act as the squadron's commander and the other two as his deputies. From the available evidence, the cavalry of a Polybian legion (and presumably confederate cavalry also) was armoured and specialised in the shock charge.

Equipment

Pictorial evidence for the equipment of Republican cavalry is scant and leaves several uncertainties. The earliest extant representations of Roman cavalrymen are found on a few coins dated to the era of the Second Punic War

Second Punic War

The Second Punic War, also referred to as The Hannibalic War and The War Against Hannibal, lasted from 218 to 201 BC and involved combatants in the western and eastern Mediterranean. This was the second major war between Carthage and the Roman Republic, with the participation of the Berbers on...

 (218-201 BC). In one, the rider wears a variant of a Corinthian helmet

Corinthian helmet

The Corinthian helmet originated in ancient Greece and took its name from the city-state of Corinth. It was a helmet made of bronze which in its later styles covered the entire head and neck, with slits for the eyes and mouth. A large curved projection protected the nape of the neck...

 and appears to wear greaves on the legs. His body armour is obscured by his small round shield (parma equestris). It was probably a bronze breastplate, as a coin of 197 BC shows a Roman cavalryman in Hellenistic composite cuirass and helmet. But the Roman cavalry may already have adopted chain mail

Chain Mail

"Chain Mail" is a single by Mancunian band James, released in March 1986 by Sire Records, the first after the band defected from Factory Records. The record was released in two different versions, as 7" single and 12" EP, with different artworks by John Carroll and, confusingly, under different...

 armour (lorica hamata) from the Celts, who are known to have been using it as early as ca. 300 BC. Mail had certainly been adopted by ca. 150 BC, as Polybius states that the First Class were expected to provide themselves with chain mail cuirasses, and the monument erected at Delphi

Delphi

Delphi is both an archaeological site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis.In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god...

 by L. Aemilius Paullus to commemorate his victory at the battle of Pydna

Battle of Pydna

The Battle of Pydna in 168 BC between Rome and the Macedonian Antigonid dynasty saw the further ascendancy of Rome in the Hellenic/Hellenistic world and the end of the Antigonid line of kings, whose power traced back to Alexander the Great.Paul K...

 (168 BC) depicts Roman cavalrymen in mail. However, a coin of 136 BC and the Lacus Curtius bas-relief of the same period show knights in composite bronze cuirasses.

There is similar uncertainty as to whether cavalryman carried shields (not generally used by Greek cavalry until after ca. 250 BC) and the related question of whether they carried long lances (which normally precluded shields, as they would often be held double-handed) or shorter spears, the doru mentioned by Polybius. Most representations show cavalrymen with the small parma equestris type of shield, but the Ahenobarbus monument of 122 BC and the coin of 136 BC shows cavalrymen without shields. Sidnell suggests that, since equites were expected to provide their own equipment, they may have chosen their own type and combination of armour and weapons e.g. long lance with no shield or short spear with shield. But the evidence is too scant to draw any firm conclusions.

Although there is no pictorial evidence, it is certain from literary accounts that equites carried swords, most likely the same gladii hispanienses

Gladius

Gladius was the Latin word for sword, and is used to represent the primary sword of Ancient Roman soldiers. Early ancient Roman swords were similar to those used by the Greeks. From the 3rd century BC, the Romans adopted swords similar to those used by the Celtiberians and others during the early...

(Spanish swords) used by the infantry or the longer spatha

Spatha

The spatha was a type of straight sword, measuring between , in use throughout first millennium AD Europe, and in the territory of the Roman Empire until about 600 AD. Later swords from 600 AD to 1000 AD are recognizable derivatives, though they are not spathae.The spatha was used in gladiatorial...

. The Ahenobarbus monument also shows a cavalryman with a dagger (pugio

Pugio

The pugio was a dagger used by Roman soldiers as a sidearm. It seems likely that the pugio was intended as an auxiliary weapon, but its exact purpose to the soldier remains unknown for sure...

). There is no evidence that equites carried bows and arrows and the Romans probably had no mounted archers before they came into contact with Parthian

Parthian Empire

The Parthian Empire , also known as the Arsacid Empire , was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Persia...

 forces after 100 BC.

Campaign record

There is a misconception that Roman Republican cavalry was inferior to other cavalry and that they were just to support their far superior infantry. However, Philip Sidnell, argues that this view is misguided and that the cavalry was a powerful and crucial asset to the Republican army.

Sidnell argues that the record shows that Roman cavalry in Republican times were a strong force in which they bested higher reputed cavalry of the time. Examples include the Heraclea (280 BC)

Battle of Heraclea

The Battle of Heraclea took place in 280 BC between the Romans under the command of Consul Publius Valerius Laevinus and the combined forces of Greeks from Epirus, Tarentum, Thurii, Metapontum, and Heraclea under the command of King Pyrrhus of Epirus....

, in where the Roman cavalry dismayed the enemy leader Pyrrhus

Pyrrhus of Epirus

Pyrrhus or Pyrrhos was a Greek general and statesman of the Hellenistic era. He was king of the Greek tribe of Molossians, of the royal Aeacid house , and later he became king of Epirus and Macedon . He was one of the strongest opponents of early Rome...

 by gaining the advantage in a bitterly contested melee against his Thessalian

Thessaly

Thessaly is a traditional geographical region and an administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey....

 cavalry, then regarded as the finest in the world, and were only driven back when Pyrrhus deployed his elephants, which panicked the Roman horses.

A key reason for some historians' disparagement of the Roman cavalry were the crushing defeats, at the Trebia

Battle of the Trebia

The Battle of the Trebia was the first major battle of the Second Punic War, fought between the Carthaginian forces of Hannibal and the Roman Republic in December of 218 BC, on or around the winter solstice...

 and at Cannae

Battle of Cannae

The Battle of Cannae was a major battle of the Second Punic War, which took place on August 2, 216 BC near the town of Cannae in Apulia in southeast Italy. The army of Carthage under Hannibal decisively defeated a numerically superior army of the Roman Republic under command of the consuls Lucius...

, that it suffered at the hands of the Carthaginian general Hannibal during the latter's invasion of Italy (218-6 BC) which were only rendered possible because of a powerful cavalry force. But Sidnell argues that this is only because of a consistent numerical superiority in cavalry. Another disadvantage for the Romans in the Second Punic War was that their respective cavalry were heavily armoured shock cavalry, used to the rudimentary tactic of charging. This, however useful against an infantry that has been routed or is flanked, failed against Hannibal's nimble, Numidian light cavalry

Numidian cavalry

Numidian cavalry was a type of light cavalry developed by the Numidians, most notably used by Hannibal during the Second Punic War. They were described by the Roman historian Livy as "by far the best horsemen in Africa."...

 that used a skilful, elaborate series of movements that consistently defeated the Roman cavalry.

The Second Punic War placed unprecedented strains on Roman manpower, not least on the over 10,000+ drachmae First Class which provided the cavalry. During Hannibal's apocalyptic march through Italy (218-6 BC), thousands of Roman cavalrymen were killed on the battlefield. The losses were especially serious for the knights properly so-called (equo publico): Livy relates how, after Cannae, the gold rings of dead Roman knights formed a pile one modius (ca. 9 litres) large. In the succeeding years 214-203 BC, the Romans kept at least 21 legions in the field at all times, in Italy and overseas (and 25 legions in the peak year). This would have required the knights to provide 220 senior officers (120 tribuni militum, 60 decuriones and 60 praefecti sociorum). It was probably from this time that the 18 centuriae of knights became largely an officer class, while the 6,300 Roman cavalrymen required were raised from the rest of the First Class.

The cavalry of Roman armies before the Second Punic War had been exclusively Roman and confederate Italian, with each holding one wing of the battleline (the Romans usually holding the right wing). After that war, Roman/Italian cavalry was always complemented by allied native cavalry (especially Numidia

Numidia

Numidia was an ancient Berber kingdom in part of present-day Eastern Algeria and Western Tunisia in North Africa. It is known today as the Chawi-land, the land of the Chawi people , the direct descendants of the historical Numidians or the Massyles The kingdom began as a sovereign state and later...

), and was usually combined on just one wing. Indeed, the allied cavalry often outnumbered the combined Roman/Italian force e.g. at Zama, where the 4,000 Numidians

Numidians

The Numidians were Berber tribes who lived in Numidia, in Algeria east of Constantine and in part of Tunisia. The Numidians were one of the earliest natives to trade with the settlers of Carthage. As Carthage grew, the relationship with the Numidians blossomed. Carthage's military used the Numidian...

 held the right, with just 1,500 Romans/Italians on the left. One reason was the lessons learnt in the war, namely the need to complement heavy cavalry with plenty of light, faster horse, as well as increasing the cavalry share when engaging with enemies with more powerful mounted forces. It was also inevitable that, as the Roman Republic acquired an overseas empire and the Roman army now campaigned entirely outside Italy, the best of non-Italian cavalry would be enlisted in increasing numbers, including (in addition to Numidians) Gallic, Spanish and Thracian horse. Towards the end of the republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire, the Roman cavalry itself was rendered less and less of a powerful force, with Rome meeting its cavalry needs with auxiliary, allied cavalry instead.

Nevertheless, Roman and Italian confederate cavalry continued to form an essential part of a Roman army's line-up for over a century. They were again, less successful against elusive tribal cavalry such as the Lusitanians

Lusitanians

The Lusitanians were an Indo-European people living in the Western Iberian Peninsula long before it became the Roman province of Lusitania . They spoke the Lusitanian language which might have been Celtic. The modern Portuguese people see the Lusitanians as their ancestors...

 under Viriathus

Viriathus

Viriathus was the most important leader of the Lusitanian people that resisted Roman expansion into the regions of Western Hispania , where the Roman province of Lusitania would be established...

 in their bitter resistance to Roman rule (151-140 BC) and the Numidians themselves under king Jugurtha

Jugurtha

Jugurtha or Jugurthen was a King of Numidia, , born in Cirta .-Background:Until the reign of Jugurtha's grandfather Masinissa, the people of Numidia were semi-nomadic and indistinguishable from the other Libyans in North Africa...

 during the latter's rebellion (112-105 BC), when they were obliged to rely heavily on their own Numidian allied horse and the Romans were deprived of their strongest cavalry.

End of the citizen cavalry

The Jugurthine War

Jugurthine War

The Jugurthine War takes its name from the Berber king Jugurtha , nephew and later adopted son of Micipsa, King of Numidia.-Jugurtha and Numidia:...

 is the last war in which Roman/Italian confederate cavalry is attested as having played a significant part. After that references to the citizen cavalry become rare and the Roman army seems to have become largely dependent on non-citizen cavalry, either recruited in the subject provinces or supplied by allied kings. The conventional explanation is that legionary cavalry was abolished as part of the so-called army reforms of Gaius Marius

Gaius Marius

Gaius Marius was a Roman general and statesman. He was elected consul an unprecedented seven times during his career. He was also noted for his dramatic reforms of Roman armies, authorizing recruitment of landless citizens, eliminating the manipular military formations, and reorganizing the...

 of the army around 107 BC and entirely replaced by native allied cavalry. But the "Marian reforms

Marian reforms

The Marian reforms of 107 BC were a group of military reforms initiated by Gaius Marius, a statesman and general of the Roman republic.- Roman army before the Marian reforms :...

" are a myth invented by modern historians. There is no evidence that Marius abolished the manipular structure of legions in favour of cohorts

Cohort (military unit)

A cohort was the basic tactical unit of a Roman legion following the reforms of Gaius Marius in 107 BC.-Legionary cohort:...

, or turned the army from a conscript into a professional force, or removed the property qualification for service in the legions (the latter had been progressively reduced, and anyway largely ignored, since the 2nd Punic War). Even less can it be said that he abolished the citizen cavalry, since it is attested under Marius at the Battle of Vercellae

Battle of Vercellae

The Battle of Vercellae, or Battle of the Raudine Plain, in 101 BC was the Roman victory of Consul Gaius Marius over the invading Germanic Cimbri tribe near the settlement of Vercellae in Cisalpine Gaul....

 (101 BC) and in 82 BC during the civil war between Sulla and Pompey

Pompey

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, also known as Pompey or Pompey the Great , was a military and political leader of the late Roman Republic...

. Far more significant for the army's structural development was the grant of Roman citizenship to all of Rome's Italian confederates after the Social War (91-88 BC). This led to the abolition of the old Italian confederate alae and the recruitment of all Italians into the legions. For the cavalry, the abolition of the alae had the radical result of reducing the Roman/Italian cavalry to just a quarter of its previous size, since legions contained only a third as many horse as confederate alae. Legionary cavalry was thus reduced to a fraction of a Roman army's overall cavalry complement: a consular army of 2 legions now contained about 20% cavalry (i.e. ca. 4,000 horse), of which, at most, only 600 were Romans. Indeed, the Roman element may now have numbered just 240, as it is possible that around this time, the legionary cavalry contingent was reduced to 120. It also appears that from this time onwards, Roman knights were no longer levied for cavalry service, which was now recruited from Italian commoners. By the time of Gaius Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....

's Gallic War (58-51 BC), it appears that legionary cavalry may have disappeared altogether, and that Caesar was entirely dependent on allied Gallic contingents for his cavalry operations. This is deduced from an incident in 58 BC when Caesar was invited to a parley with the German king Ariovistus

Ariovistus

Ariovistus was a leader of the Suebi and other allied Germanic peoples in the second quarter of the 1st century BC. He and his followers took part in a war in Gaul, assisting the Arverni and Sequani to defeat their rivals the Aedui, after which they settled in large numbers in conquered Gallic...

 and needed a cavalry escort. Since he didn't yet trust the allied Gallic cavalry under his command, he instructed them to lend their horses to some members of the Tenth Legion, which thereafter acquired the nickname equestris ("mounted legion"). (However, this incident leaves open the possibility that Roman cavalry still existed, but was not large enough to satisfy the needs of the moment).

The question arises as to why the Romans allowed their citizen cavalry to lapse in this way, given its record as a highly effective and useful force. The main reason is probably the limited pool of available equites and First Class members. The equites had long since become exclusively an officer class (a role they retained throughout the Principate), as the empire had become simply too large and complex for aristocrats to serve as ordinary troopers. At the same time, many of the First Class of commoners had developed major business interests and had little time for military service. Although Italian commoners of the lower classes could, of course, have been recruited and trained as cavalrymen in larger numbers, that must have seemed costly and unnecessary when subject countries such as Gaul, Spain, Thrace and Numidia contained large numbers of excellent native cavalry which could be employed at much lower pay than citizens.

See also

• Roman army
  Roman army
  The Roman army is the generic term for the terrestrial armed forces deployed by the kingdom of Rome , the Roman Republic , the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine empire...
  
  
• Roman military structure
• Equestrian order
• Ala (Roman military)
  Ala (Roman military)
  An Ala was the term used during the mid- Roman Republic to denote a military formation composed of conscripts from the socii, Rome's Italian military allies. A normal consular army during this period consisted of 2 legions, composed of Roman citizens only, and 2 allied alae...
  
  
• Byzantine army
  Byzantine army
  The Byzantine army was the primary military body of the Byzantine armed forces, serving alongside the Byzantine navy. A direct descendant of the Roman army, the Byzantine army maintained a similar level of discipline, strategic prowess and organization...