Originally Posted by cunctator
The roman republican cavalry was surely no world beating force but I've never seen anything conviencing that should be extraordinary bad. The average roman upper class member certainly not thought that they were bad horsemen.
Republican citizen cavarly was mostly vastly outnumbered by their enemies. The equites of the republic were members of the leading classes, the sons of the senators and the equestrians, the richest and most influential man in the state. It's core were the 1800 equites equo publico, fighting on a state provided combat horse, the original equites of the early republic. At some time when the number of the cavarly had to be increased the ordo equester had to be enlarged it was only possible by allowing less priviledged members that fullfilled the requirements that had to fight with their own horse, the eques equo privato. Belonging to the ordo equester was quite prestigous thus it couldn't easily expanded by lowering the requirements to enlarge the available cavalry. Also the availability of sufficent numbers of efficent cavalry to fight for the roman cause on nearly all fronts, numidians, thracians, iberians, celts, etc., since the punic war made this not neccessary. From the late 2nd and early 1st century BC onwards the equestrian class become a purely ecomical and social elite with a comparible small group of officers on their top and the allied italian cavarly dissapeared after all almost all italians received citizenship and were recruited into the legions after the social war. The generals of the late republic had to rely only on foreign and allied cav. that was recruited if needed and their armies were still succesful so this system worked quite well for the romans.
After the wars in the second half of the 1st century the things changed and togehter with it's profesional standing army the empire developed it's own strong regular cavarly arm out of the republican celtic, thracian and iberian auxiliaries that had often served for nearly for decades on side of the legions during the civil war era. Besides the horse archers that appeared in regular roman alae since augustaean times after the experiences of the first parthians wars the imperial cavalry of the 1st century was mainly dominated by celtic and iberian traditions and tactics. The roman standard cav. during the principate was a moderatly armoured highly flexible force, armed with javelins, a rather short one handed lance and the new spatha swords. Discipline and training in the auxiliary units was on the same level as in the contemporary legions and especially the alae were among the most prestigous units in the army. Their equippment and tactics were largely standarized by imperial decrees. Originally their first soldiers were recruited from a single ethnicity in their home province but if the units were transfered to another province they mostly immedietaly begun to reccruit locals as replacement. In the late first and second century AD the numbers of citizens in axuilia units steadily increased as the provinces become more and more romanized and the now citizen sons of former auliary soldiers often prefered to join their father's unit.
After the danubian wars in the late 1st early 2nd century AD and the more intesive contacts with steppe nomads and again parthians the imperial army introduced true heavy cavalry and the first pure units of contarii and catphractarii apear, closing one of the last weaknesses in their roster. At this time the percentage of cavalry reached 20-25 % of the hole army, more than doubling the average value of the hellenistic and republican era of around 10%.
