Greek/Roman cavalry

[orangat]

Well other elite units could deffinetly cover flanks as well as cavalry for one thing. For an other I don't know that what you are saying is true. The Greeks and Macedonians fielded very strong Thessilian cavalry. They were the first to come up with the "shock troop" cavalry idea, and it worked brilliantly.
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No elite infantry can be as mobile as cavalry. Apart from the Thessalian's, the Greek armies were basically hoplites. The major battles of Platea and Marathon (which had Greek soldiers and reinforcements from many cities) had no Greek cavalry worth mentioning! And Macedonians didn't invent the concept of shock, what Philip pioneered in Greece was the concept of combined arms warfare.

The Romans had decent cavalry, provided by their allies. But they didn't need top notch cavalry, because of their tactical approach (massed heavy infantry worked wonders against anything their enemies could throw at them... they even defeated all horse oponenents like the Parthian).

No, an infantry only army(or infantry-heavy) is intrinsically handicapped. The Parthian's were equally disadvantaged by being cavalry-heavy but the Romans were annihilated in the major battles of Carrhae and Mark Anthony clearly failed in his Parthian campaign.

Cuncator, great info. The Roman's weren't infantry-heavy by late 1AD after all. Why were the equites limited primarily to oligarchs? Was horse grazing land a limiting factor?

My point was never whether the Roman model(esp pre-Marian) was 'good enough' but why the typical Greek armies before Philip were so deficient and why the Romans never learnt from Alexander. The Roman's must be fortunate not to have met an enemy similar to Alexander more often, not necessarily as gifted but just a moderately efficient general with a mixed well balanced army.