Re: 1st century Auxiliary cavalry

[jvrjenivs]

Well, once upon a time Roman saddles where rare. Now there are lots of them.

I've to admit that there are now a lot of Roman saddles around. Unfortunately, still most of them are rubbish. We've two of the saddles made by Chris Taylor (available through Comitatus) and both frames did break withing 15 hours of modest use. Although a free repair was done of the first to be broken, this didn't improve much. Now, after it came back from repair, the saddle isn't symmetrically any longer and my beloved horse doesn't walk nicely under it anymore. These saddles are fine for real short use and can made fit most ponys for short time periods, but for more intensive use, I certainly wouldn't suggest any saddles now available on the market. Secondly the girth straps are already coming loose... I would say a rather bad construction is the right term.

We're now setting up our own saddle production, all made to size for our ponys and hope to have replaced these two (almost new) saddles before the end of the year, as well having made a couple more for new riders.