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Cavalry in Late Roman Warfare

. and Jones H.S. 1996 A Greekford.

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Hugh Elton Ancient History and Classics Department, Trent University

This article attempts to use a problem in tactical history to pose questions about late Roman warfare. The tactical problem is how cavalry came into contact with enemy, i.e. the charge. Although this article focuses on cavalry in the Late Roman East, much of it should have greater applicability. Before 1976, most discussions of ancient battles by modern writers were simple narratives, based on the perspective of the general. Then in 1976, John Keegan's Face of Battle was published. This has been very influential; indeed, it often seems to be the only book on non-ancient military history read by ancient historians. The predominant method of discussing battle then switched to the experience of battle, how it felt to be a soldier. Perhaps the best exponent of this has been Hanson, whose The Western Way of War is concerned with hoplite warfare in Classical Greece. 1 This focussed on assembling anecdotes from many different engagements to tell a story, hoping in this way to fill the gaps in our evidence. Keegan, however, did not attempt to characterise particular eras of warfare, but only to capture the experience of three specif'ic days in 1415, 1815, and 1916. This is very different from the approach of ancient historians creating a 'typical' battle. In recent years, a large amount of work has been done on the Roman battle, though little of this has concentrated on the late Roman period. Two approaches can be distinguished. One is the 'experience' approach, concentrating on what it felt like to be in battle, e.g. 2 Mattbevvs, Lee, Lendon, and Lenski. The other is the 'mechanics' approach, e.g. Zhmodikov, Sabin. and McGeer. 3 And some works are able to combine the two, e.g. Goldsworthy and Daly. 4 Tl1ere have also been a number of books on various aspects of ancient cavalry; in particular, advances have been made in our understanding 5 of Roman horses and saddles.

Anatolia, tbe plains and river valleys of Mesopota and the deserts (of various sorts) of South Syria Arabia. The Romans fought tbe Sassanid Persian~ in 1 areas at one time or another, though most of the efforts against the Persians took place in Mesopotamia. But they also faced Lazi, Albani, and Huns in the north and Arabs and Saracens in the south. Mauricius' Strategikon made clear the difference between fighting Sassanids \vho would engage in hand to hand combat, and fighting Turks, Huns, or A vars \;vho preferred to keep at a distance. In both cases, the Romans \Vere advised to defeat the enemy hand-to-hand, but for different reasons. The Sassanids generated an arrow storm before contact, and it was important to minimise the time of exposure lo this, whereas the Turks, etc. preferred to wear the enemy dmvn gradually and thus avoiding contact was playing into their hands. 6 This complexity suggests that a single view of Late Roman battle can only be a high-level perception. The cavalry charge is often seen as the definitive moment in combat for horsemen and as such, provides a good \vay to examine the problems in describing ancient battle. First, literary examples 11-om the sixtl1 century are discussed. These are compared to a more theoretical example, from the late sixth century, from Mauricius' Strateg,ikon. Lastly. this can be compared to an early modern manual from the American Civil War. Fev,r Roman historians provide significant details about cavalry combat in the sixth century, while earlier Ammianus Marcellinus, for example. says nothing about the mechanics of combat in the east. Theophylaci might be considered typical, \vhen he described an action at the river Nymphius m 582: 'the Persians made a counterattack when they saw that the Roman cavalry was 7 exhausted by the exertion of the chase' Or Procopius about Satala in 530: Thereupon Florentius. a Thracian. commanding regiment of cavalry, rushing (opflllCJcxc;) into the ene centre and seizing the [Persian] general's standard, fr it to the ground.

Many of these approaches, however, by focussing on generalities, minimise the differences bet\veen various military actions. To some extent. generalising is necessary, allowing complex situations to be simply understood. But this complexity is also \vhat made late Roman \Varfare different from vvarfare elsewhere in time or space. There were three major theatres of operations in the late Roman East the mountains and valleys of 1

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This suggests that contemporaries we:·e unable to g clear description of how cavalry fought. It is also ob that cavalry did not gallop directly into the oppo