Why was Roman Cavalry So Poor? | 60 Seconds History

Unlike the famous Roman infantry, the Roman cavalry has a rather bad reputation. But why is that?

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[David_Amptmeijer]

I heard that an additional point was that horses where expensive and cavalryman where supposed to have their own. But the most important roles for cavalry are scouting and manoeuvring which involves being far away from camp and sleeping in makeshifts location while hiding, which the rich romans thought was beneath them. So they where able to field some heavy shock cavalry (the equites) but had no native cavalry for scouting or harrasment.

[davidelabarilemobile]

Until the late period when After being defeated by parthian heavy cavalry the romans finally made their own version of It : "the clibanarii"

[robw]

But isn't Greek/Macedonian geography even less conducive to developing cavalry?

[SISWN]

No stirrups? (Okay, true, but not what the video is referencing.)

[Warmaker]

The same hilly, mountainous terrain of Italy making it not ideal for raising a lot of cavalrymen was also the same reason why the Romans ditched the Hoplite fighting style. Their Samnite rivals fought in a more flexible style in their wars against them and the Romans took their idea and went with it.

Also during the Principate, the Romans had seen enough of the Parthian Cataphracts that they did slowly start to add them into the army. They weren't abundant at first but by the later periods of the Western Empire they showed up more. The Eastern Roman Empire continued that trend and had plenty of their own Cataphracts.

The Roman mail armor, helmet designs had heavy inspiration from the Gauls. The Gladius' origins are from Spain. The Manipular fighting style of the Legions came from the Samnites. The Cataphracts from Parthia. Before that they were fond of recruiting Gallic and Germanic cavalrymen during the Republic. The Romans weren't shy about copying, incorporating something foreign if it was good.

[EdwardBernardson]

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