03-06-2013, 02:16 AM
I did not ignore Plutarch - I just interpreted what he writes in my way.
And even if I am to believe in Plutarch's interpretation, then I still say that the main reason why the cataphracts stopped that charge, was because they saw how deep the Roman formation was - rather than seing some abstract "firmness", which is a state of mind not some physical parameter.
Anyway - Plutarch's account of the battle and that of Dio don't contradict each other.
There could be some "feigned" charges and some other "real" charges.
Both types of charges were beneficial for the Parthian army.
"Feigned" charges were causing the Romans altering their formation and thus becoming more vulnerable to arrows of Parthian horse archers (and inversely - being forced by rains of Parthian arrows to adopt proper defensive formations against them, was making the Roman troops more vulnerable to devastating charges of cataphracts, because they could not use their weapons as efficiently as normally, while being deployed in a dense enough formation to protect themselves from arrows).
"Real" charges were causing exactly all the same effects as "feigned" ones, plus were also actually inflicting heavy casualties upon Roman troops (while "feigned" charges were not).
So there were both advantages and disadvantages of both kinds of charges.
"Real" charges could be devastating and smash Roman infantry lines. But - on the other hand - cataphracts could also suffer some casualties while carrying out such charges.
"Feigned" charges were not - in itself - causing losses to either side, but were preparing better ground for horse archers to inflict losses, as they were forcing the Romans to alter their formation - since one formation was good to fight vs heavy cavalry and a different one to protect from arrows.
There was also an approach to Roman squares, followed by a feigned retreat - described by Plutarch. That subsequent feigned retreat (after approaching the Roman square) could - and in fact did - encourage the Romans to carry out a counterattack, which lured them into a rain of arrows and made them more vulnerable to all kinds of attacks than they were while deployed in a defensive position.
================================================
BTW - proportion of cataphracts to horse archers at Carrhae (10/90), if true, was not typical.
In most battles that proportion was 50/50 or anything between 50/50 and 10/90.
================================================
Horse archers were also good for "softening" enemy units before cataphracts charged them. And by "softening" I do not mean "causing them to disperse or to loose cohesion". By "softening", I mean inflicting wounds upon many Roman soldiers. Because this is what arrows do - the very nature of arrows is that they are more efficient in causing wounds than in killing. In other words - a much bigger proportion of all soldiers hit by enemy arrows, were soldiers who were wounded, rather than killed. Arrows were not good in inflicting mortal wounds - vast majority of wounds and injuries inflicted by arrows, were not instantly mortal.* Dio confirms this regarding Carrhae. He writes:
"(...) [Arrows] flew into their eyes and pierced their hands and all the other parts of their body and, penetrating their armour, deprived them of their protection and compelled them to expose themselves to each new missile. Thus, while a man was guarding against arrows or pulling out one that had stuck fast he received more wounds, one after another. Consequently it was impracticable for them to move, and impracticable to remain at rest. Neither course afforded them safety.** (...)"
** Also the constant threat of getting charged by cataphracts contributed to that impracticability.
Source: Dio, 40.22.
"(...) they were continually turning this way and that and were forced to face the enemy that was wounding them at the time (...)"
Source: Dio, 40.23.
As you can see these excerpts from Dio clearly suggest, that many Romans suffered multiple wounds from Parthian arrows - but still continued to live and to stand firm and fight.
However, it is obvious that an injured man is not as efficient in combat as a fresh man. When some cohort of 500 includes 200 injured soldiers, they are less efficient than a cohort of 500 fresh soldiers. This means they are "softened" - thus an easier target for the cataphracts to charge and smash.
* (but of course in the age when antibiotic drugs were unknown, many of wounded soldiers were later dying of their wounds due to infection - days or weeks after the battle).
============================================
The fact that charges of Parthian and Sassanid cataphracts were very efficient against Roman infantry is also confirmed by all of the changes in Roman military organization, equipment and tactics introduced as the result of very unpleasant experiences from wars against Parthian & Sassanid Persia.
The peak of Persian military superiority over Rome was perhaps the reign of Shapur I the Great.
After Shapur, Rome got the upper hand again, but only thanks to a number of military reforms.
In late 3rd century AD the Romans introduced a new, improved defensive battle array - designed specifically to defend against Sassanid cavalry attacks -, more tightened and combining the advantages of phalanx and testudo, called fulcum. Apart from introducing fulcum formation, the Romans started to equip their infantry with long anti-cavalry spears en masse. They also copied Persian-style equipment - that's how units of heavy cataphracts and clibanarii cavalry appeared in the Roman army.
Aurelian also introduced many new tactics to deal with Sassanid cataphracts - just to mention feigned retreat of his light cavalry in order to disperse the cataphracts during the chase and destroy the cohesion of their charging formation. Or the specially trained units of infantry macemen, equipped with heavy iron-covered maces capable of crushing armor used by cataphracts and their horses.
All of this tells us that the Romans took Persian cataphracts very seriously - unlike some users on this forum, who try to claim that it was enough to "show them firmness" to stop the charge...
Fortunately for the Roman commanders and soldiers whose lifes depended on them, they were not dismissing the power of cataphract charges at all - unlike some modern researchers.
Already Ancient Roman sources admitted, that the most difficult to deal with of all enemies of Rome in history, were not Samnites, not Carthaginians, not Spanish tribes - but Persians.
And while other enemies of Rome used archers or horse archers on massive scale as well (just to mention the Huns), Persians combined elite horse archers with elite heavy cavalry.
==================================================
The efficiency of armor-smashing maces or mauls against cavalry - if used in sufficient number and way (they had to be numerically superior in order to surround cavalry - and it was also required to engage that cavalry in close, prolonged, "stationary" melee combat) was confirmed in many cases.
In the battle of Vienna in 1683 a reconnaissance in force carried out by one squadron of Winged Hussars (in order to examine the terrain before the subsequent massive charge of 20,000 cavalry), was repulsed in melee by vastly numerically superior Turkish infantry equipped with maces.
The squadron of hussars which did it, had 149 horsemen. Even though it was so small, Turkish forces avoided head-on confrontation - Turkish cavalry stepped aside or ran away backwards before the charging banner. The Polish unit penetrated deeply into the Turkish lines - up to the camp of their commander. But there it was stopped. The Turks encircled the Polish squadron from all sides, hammering the riders and their horses with large battle mauls, maces and battle axes:
A Turkish account describes it as follows:
"The first [Polish] unit, clad in iron, attacked the tent of the illustrious Serdar master [Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha]. Faced them and engaged them in combat levands [personal guard units] of the Serdar master under command of a sercheshmesh, as well as his palace and court aghas. Giaours [Christian soldiers] however, were all clad in iron, so saber was not useful there, but heroes experienced in battles [Turkish soldiers] were not disconcerted by this at all. Each of them had a maul, a mace or an axe, so they started to hammer giaours in heads, faces and arms, while those who didn't have such weapons, tried to rip their horses with sabers. This way with grace of Allah they were forced to retreat, and most of them were killed or wounded."
The Polish squadron lost 12 killed NCOs (companions) and 23-24 killed enlisted men (in total 35-36 out of 149) in this charge, as king Sobieski reported. No other Polish cavalry unit suffered so heavy losses in the battle of Vienna as this squadron in its "suicidal" charge. It is easy for a numerically superior force to surround and maul-to-death in melee a tiny force of 149 men - but almost impossible to outflank and encircle a cavalry force of many thousands (at Vienna - 20,000), charging in a wide line.
===================================
BTW - archaeological finds from Dura Europos confirm that in combat against Persian armies, the Romans tried to rely mostly on auxiliary infantry units equipped with anti-cavalry spears and with good bows or slings, rather than on legionaries - who at that time had no any melee spears.
=================================
It should be noted, that also Seleucid cataphracts were victorious while frontally charging Roman infantry lines at Magnesia in 190 BC - I will quote a post written by a user on another forum:
And even if I am to believe in Plutarch's interpretation, then I still say that the main reason why the cataphracts stopped that charge, was because they saw how deep the Roman formation was - rather than seing some abstract "firmness", which is a state of mind not some physical parameter.
Anyway - Plutarch's account of the battle and that of Dio don't contradict each other.
There could be some "feigned" charges and some other "real" charges.
Both types of charges were beneficial for the Parthian army.
"Feigned" charges were causing the Romans altering their formation and thus becoming more vulnerable to arrows of Parthian horse archers (and inversely - being forced by rains of Parthian arrows to adopt proper defensive formations against them, was making the Roman troops more vulnerable to devastating charges of cataphracts, because they could not use their weapons as efficiently as normally, while being deployed in a dense enough formation to protect themselves from arrows).
"Real" charges were causing exactly all the same effects as "feigned" ones, plus were also actually inflicting heavy casualties upon Roman troops (while "feigned" charges were not).
So there were both advantages and disadvantages of both kinds of charges.
"Real" charges could be devastating and smash Roman infantry lines. But - on the other hand - cataphracts could also suffer some casualties while carrying out such charges.
"Feigned" charges were not - in itself - causing losses to either side, but were preparing better ground for horse archers to inflict losses, as they were forcing the Romans to alter their formation - since one formation was good to fight vs heavy cavalry and a different one to protect from arrows.
There was also an approach to Roman squares, followed by a feigned retreat - described by Plutarch. That subsequent feigned retreat (after approaching the Roman square) could - and in fact did - encourage the Romans to carry out a counterattack, which lured them into a rain of arrows and made them more vulnerable to all kinds of attacks than they were while deployed in a defensive position.
================================================
BTW - proportion of cataphracts to horse archers at Carrhae (10/90), if true, was not typical.
In most battles that proportion was 50/50 or anything between 50/50 and 10/90.
================================================
Horse archers were also good for "softening" enemy units before cataphracts charged them. And by "softening" I do not mean "causing them to disperse or to loose cohesion". By "softening", I mean inflicting wounds upon many Roman soldiers. Because this is what arrows do - the very nature of arrows is that they are more efficient in causing wounds than in killing. In other words - a much bigger proportion of all soldiers hit by enemy arrows, were soldiers who were wounded, rather than killed. Arrows were not good in inflicting mortal wounds - vast majority of wounds and injuries inflicted by arrows, were not instantly mortal.* Dio confirms this regarding Carrhae. He writes:
"(...) [Arrows] flew into their eyes and pierced their hands and all the other parts of their body and, penetrating their armour, deprived them of their protection and compelled them to expose themselves to each new missile. Thus, while a man was guarding against arrows or pulling out one that had stuck fast he received more wounds, one after another. Consequently it was impracticable for them to move, and impracticable to remain at rest. Neither course afforded them safety.** (...)"
** Also the constant threat of getting charged by cataphracts contributed to that impracticability.
Source: Dio, 40.22.
"(...) they were continually turning this way and that and were forced to face the enemy that was wounding them at the time (...)"
Source: Dio, 40.23.
As you can see these excerpts from Dio clearly suggest, that many Romans suffered multiple wounds from Parthian arrows - but still continued to live and to stand firm and fight.
However, it is obvious that an injured man is not as efficient in combat as a fresh man. When some cohort of 500 includes 200 injured soldiers, they are less efficient than a cohort of 500 fresh soldiers. This means they are "softened" - thus an easier target for the cataphracts to charge and smash.
* (but of course in the age when antibiotic drugs were unknown, many of wounded soldiers were later dying of their wounds due to infection - days or weeks after the battle).
============================================
The fact that charges of Parthian and Sassanid cataphracts were very efficient against Roman infantry is also confirmed by all of the changes in Roman military organization, equipment and tactics introduced as the result of very unpleasant experiences from wars against Parthian & Sassanid Persia.
The peak of Persian military superiority over Rome was perhaps the reign of Shapur I the Great.
After Shapur, Rome got the upper hand again, but only thanks to a number of military reforms.
In late 3rd century AD the Romans introduced a new, improved defensive battle array - designed specifically to defend against Sassanid cavalry attacks -, more tightened and combining the advantages of phalanx and testudo, called fulcum. Apart from introducing fulcum formation, the Romans started to equip their infantry with long anti-cavalry spears en masse. They also copied Persian-style equipment - that's how units of heavy cataphracts and clibanarii cavalry appeared in the Roman army.
Aurelian also introduced many new tactics to deal with Sassanid cataphracts - just to mention feigned retreat of his light cavalry in order to disperse the cataphracts during the chase and destroy the cohesion of their charging formation. Or the specially trained units of infantry macemen, equipped with heavy iron-covered maces capable of crushing armor used by cataphracts and their horses.
All of this tells us that the Romans took Persian cataphracts very seriously - unlike some users on this forum, who try to claim that it was enough to "show them firmness" to stop the charge...
Fortunately for the Roman commanders and soldiers whose lifes depended on them, they were not dismissing the power of cataphract charges at all - unlike some modern researchers.
Already Ancient Roman sources admitted, that the most difficult to deal with of all enemies of Rome in history, were not Samnites, not Carthaginians, not Spanish tribes - but Persians.
And while other enemies of Rome used archers or horse archers on massive scale as well (just to mention the Huns), Persians combined elite horse archers with elite heavy cavalry.
==================================================
The efficiency of armor-smashing maces or mauls against cavalry - if used in sufficient number and way (they had to be numerically superior in order to surround cavalry - and it was also required to engage that cavalry in close, prolonged, "stationary" melee combat) was confirmed in many cases.
In the battle of Vienna in 1683 a reconnaissance in force carried out by one squadron of Winged Hussars (in order to examine the terrain before the subsequent massive charge of 20,000 cavalry), was repulsed in melee by vastly numerically superior Turkish infantry equipped with maces.
The squadron of hussars which did it, had 149 horsemen. Even though it was so small, Turkish forces avoided head-on confrontation - Turkish cavalry stepped aside or ran away backwards before the charging banner. The Polish unit penetrated deeply into the Turkish lines - up to the camp of their commander. But there it was stopped. The Turks encircled the Polish squadron from all sides, hammering the riders and their horses with large battle mauls, maces and battle axes:
A Turkish account describes it as follows:
"The first [Polish] unit, clad in iron, attacked the tent of the illustrious Serdar master [Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha]. Faced them and engaged them in combat levands [personal guard units] of the Serdar master under command of a sercheshmesh, as well as his palace and court aghas. Giaours [Christian soldiers] however, were all clad in iron, so saber was not useful there, but heroes experienced in battles [Turkish soldiers] were not disconcerted by this at all. Each of them had a maul, a mace or an axe, so they started to hammer giaours in heads, faces and arms, while those who didn't have such weapons, tried to rip their horses with sabers. This way with grace of Allah they were forced to retreat, and most of them were killed or wounded."
The Polish squadron lost 12 killed NCOs (companions) and 23-24 killed enlisted men (in total 35-36 out of 149) in this charge, as king Sobieski reported. No other Polish cavalry unit suffered so heavy losses in the battle of Vienna as this squadron in its "suicidal" charge. It is easy for a numerically superior force to surround and maul-to-death in melee a tiny force of 149 men - but almost impossible to outflank and encircle a cavalry force of many thousands (at Vienna - 20,000), charging in a wide line.
===================================
BTW - archaeological finds from Dura Europos confirm that in combat against Persian armies, the Romans tried to rely mostly on auxiliary infantry units equipped with anti-cavalry spears and with good bows or slings, rather than on legionaries - who at that time had no any melee spears.
=================================
It should be noted, that also Seleucid cataphracts were victorious while frontally charging Roman infantry lines at Magnesia in 190 BC - I will quote a post written by a user on another forum:
Quote:Antiochos III led 3000 cataphracts and the cavalry Agema (1000) on his right wing in a charge that managed to break one of the four legions opposing him. In Livy's account of the battle it was actually the Latin Ala (not really a Roman legion) in the extreme left of the Roman battle line that Antiochos cavalry outflanked and routed. That would have required the Seleucid cavalry moving diagonally across the whole frontage of both the Roman legion and the Latin Ala (they were not posted in the extreme right as was typical) However, the battle's account in Justin says explicitly that it was the Roman legion right in front the Seleucid cavalry that was routed and that the event was considered a great disgrace, even if the Romans were the eventual victors of the battle. A third account by Appian speaks of the Seleucid king "breaking through the Roman phalanx" which is not very detailed, but seems to agree better with Justin than with Livy. And we know that Livy was not above masking anything that migh reflect poorly on anything Roman...
