Illustrations of Sassanid Persian Clibanarii

[Renatus]

I'm having trouble following. In essence, laymen used both terms interchangeably to refer to heavy cavalry in general, but specific military texts used the two terms to distinguish between native heavy cavalry and foreign heavy cavalry. So cataphractus refers to foreign troops and clibanarius refers to Roman troops but they are both equipped with very similar gear.

I'm sorry if I am not making myself clear. What I am attempting to say is this. There was a type of very heavily armoured cavalry which was called, in general parlance, cataphracti or cataphracti equites. These terms could be applied to both Roman and non-Roman troops. Units of such cavalry in the Roman army acquired the official title of clibanarii. Three writers, as far as I am aware, used the latter term (loosely, I would say) in relation to non-Roman cataphracts. They should not, in my opinion, be our yardstick. Thus, my argument is that we may employ cataphracti or cataphracti equites when referring to any such cavalry but that we would be safer to confine the use of clibanarii to Roman troops only.