Sub-Roman Britain (Cavalry etc)

[bachmat66]

Small native breeds were prefered by the Roman cavalry. They were more likely to be disease resistant. And they can carry great weight. This is a cob of just over 14 hands. And I'm a great weight.

Salve John,
I cannot agree more on the smaller size of military mounts then (Roman times) and until mid-19th century - we have evidence of usefulness of smaller horses from various discussions of military officers of the 19ty century cavalries - eg US Cavalry officers did held plenty many discussions on the very subject - size and built of military horse- in the 1890-1910s. According to their published correspondence they generally agreed then US cavalry horse had to be between 14,2hands to 15,2 hands, stocky built with plenty of bone. Like for the Romans it was the bone structure, muscle mass and ability to maintain performance while under much poorer nutrition during campaign that counted the most.

I got this question regarding your reenactment riding - could you describe the very experience of riding without stirrups with reins dropped, sitting the four-horned or cantle-pommel saddle, and using spear, sword or bow?

Perhaps also how is it different from 'English' saddle and ridding or US 'Western' ridding?

I find this subject fascinating, especially as one of my Polish friends, a good 'historic riding' horseman himself, who has been in many Napoleonic reenactment (eg last battle of Somosierra, Spain 2008 battle reenactment) has been experiencing with Sarmatian style of riding and, actually as I write, he is writing a great, in my humble opinion, replay to A.V. Simonenko's article on the Sarmatians, use of kontos, and their style of riding. http://www.xlegio.ru/pubs/simonenko/sarmati.htm or here http://loshadi.ru/doc2.php?link=encyclo ... rature:492 (Russian)

ps
interesting article on the Sarmatian weapons in the Bosporan Kingdom http://www.pontos.dk/publications/paper ... er-weapons
and here 2005 Russian archeologist Goroncharovskii's article about the military history of the Bosporan Kingdom 1stc BC-3rd c AD http://www.archeo.ru/rus/download/goroncharovskii.pdf