Quote Originally Posted by Watchman View Post
Well, that was around Alexander's time anyway. At which point the Thracians and Persians were apparently already starting to adopt the early frame-saddle from the Scythians. Given that it's a fairly helpful little item - what with increasing the comfort of both horse and rider and distributing the weight better across the mount's back, hence allowing heavier armour to be worn without wearing on the beast too much, and certainly doesn't hurt riding stability either - one would find it rather odd if the Successors hadn't picked it up in short order too.
Only the evidence doesn't really support this. I only know of one source that unambiguously shows a Hellenistic cavalryman with a saddle, a 2nd c. BC stele from Apollonia, and concurrent with this we find depictions of cavalrymen unambiguously riding with saddlecloth only. It's a difficult subject to investigate because much of the time artists either omitted the riding equipment altogether or it is covered by some object (usually a large shield).

I know the Germans refused to use saddles for really rather silly machoBS reasons,
What source(s) is this based on?

The four-horn saddle was more of a Celtic thing, wasn't it ? I recall seeing it mentioned that the way the things allowed you to "leverage" with your thighs and hips was useful for Crassus' Gallic horse at Carrhae in their rather doomed struggle with the Parthian cataphracts (who used less leaborate saddles) - since their weapon kit didn't make much of an impression, they apparently went for grappling...
I don't know when the Celts are supposed to have adopted the four-horned saddle, but Parthians probably had them by the 2nd-1st c. BC according to a fresco from Old Nisa.