yes they where destryed in sicily during the wars on 500 and something bc beteween the greeks and the poeni in their everlasting war over the control of the western mediterranean trade resources

as for semitic cavalary sucking may i remind you that until ww1 the arabs had the best "light" cavalary in the world (lawrence of arabia rings a few bells)

these same weak cavalary destroyed the heavily armoured persian catraphacts of the sassanid empire when they took over persia in their islamic expansion

note that in both ocasions their moral and willingness to fight might have been at it´s highest and in both situations they probably used camels (wich must be considered cavalary)

as for eb time frame the carthaginian generals use one excellent cavarly forçe and poeni are semits so if the levant semits didn´t had the wealth for horses or nobility willing to fight doesn´t make them "sucky" it only means they didn´t had the resources since a far smaller population (also semitis) several hundread miles away with the nobles the horses and the time to practice made one hell of a fighting forçe that kicked out the romans out of africa in the 1st punic war (not sure about this but 15-17 thousand romans where forçed to depart africa)

furthermore this same cavalary was not present at zama or most schollars agree that if they had they would have routed the numidians suporting scipio and turned the tide of batle (hanno was so confident in hannibal´s hability and the 80 elephants he had that he didn´t allowed the 1000 sacred band cavalary to join the batle against the romans)

so please be carefull when making such statements because the semitic people didn´t had the wealth to field such forçes doesn´t mean they didn´t had the hability to do so if circumstances where diferent

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