Athos1660 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 22, 2025 8:03 am
Everyone is of course entitled to his opinions. A couple of things bother me in your reasoning though :
1) your only source is
Armies of the Greek and Persian wars (1978) by Richard Bruce Nelson,
That was not the point I was trying to make. My overall impression of the Greek cavalry's low performance is based on the lack of decisive role and overall low importance of Greek cavalry in every book, source and documentary on the subject of pre-Hellenic Greek battles that I have ever seen.
It is the idea that Thessalians, Thebans and Syracusans placed more importance on and put more effort into their cavalry that I mainly base on wargames and (IIRC) Nelson's book (which, I suspect, many of the wargames can trace their lineage to). To support this perception of higher quality, I haven't seen any direct battlefield evidence, ergo, my belief of those exceptions to the Greek cavalry quality is mostly based on what indirect evidence was presented in Nelson's book (differences in ratio of cavalry to foot, regional habits in hiring mercenaries, anecdotes of some states having trouble gettomg their nobles to train or fight mounted, etc).
2) you don't take into account the differences between Regular Hippeis, Hippotoxotai, Prodromoi and Tarantinoi in the Athenian cavalry army during the classical and hellenistic times, while they appear in the Archaeological sources,
I strictly refer to the performance and role of Greek cavalry in the pre-Hellenistic period. The efficiency and prominence of cavalry is clear and undeniable in the Hellenistic era. As for the 4th century BCE and earlier Greek cavalry types, I have not seen anything pointing to significant differences in their overall (small) impact during battles so I'm reluctant to draw botton up conclusions from their alleged equipment and status. In FoG2 terms, mediocre non-light cavalry seems like the most appropriate depiction to me.
Ultimately the influence of the exact equipment of troops isn't as clear set or cut in real life as we are prone to think as wargamers with our clear and neat lists and rule books. This is also my short response to your second-second point regarding my sources supporting the "light cavalry" role of the Thessalian/Theban/Syracusan cavalry, which I have not meant to allege in the sense that you seem to think. More on this later.
3) you don't take into acoount Greek terrain,
I have already commented on it and certainly do not deny its influence. To counter, I maintain that you place far too great emphasis on it.
If I have understood you correctly, you suggest that the Greek cavalry was potent and highly tactically mobile strike force that never, over the hundreds of years, had a real chance to shine on the battlefield due to the Greek terrain.
Is it possible that every Greek commander in every significant Greek battle managed to negate a critical heavy cavalry flank threat just by the clever use of terrain? Yes it is. Is it possible to throw 20 dice with every one rolling a six? Yes it is. Do I think either of these possibilities are likely enough to bet on? I do not.
I'll break down the reasons for my extreme scepticism* of Greek terrain being the main limiting factor of the Greek cavalry's performance in pre-Macedonian era.
Firstly, The Greek went through the effort of maintaining cavalry, and cavalry participates in some degree in many or most Greek battles. This clearly shows that the Greek terrain does not prevent the use of cavalry in combat. Furthermore, Hoplite Phalanxes aren't exactly terrain agnostic formations either and would generally fight in fairly open terrain.
Secondly, (please excuse the hyperbole,) Greece isn't the only hilly and rockly place in the Old World and neither is everything outside of Greece an open steppe. We know that cavalry has made decisive flank and rear, even frontal attacks against infantry body before, after, and likely contemporary to the Greek warfare. The Greeks also faced off outside Greece.
Thirdly, it is unlikely that the Greeks would have put a ton of effort into their cavalry force when their terrain and dominant military system (i.e. large numbers of well organized and shock resistant heavy foot) so clearly didn't lend itself to decisive elite cavalry arm operations. This is no doubt something of a feedback loop with the suboptimal terrain making the cavalry less prevalent, pushing the elites to the phalanxes, further diminishing the effiency and importance of cavalry that would have to face that favored heavy foot.
*(I'm generally sceptical of any single factor ever explaining a wider phenomena, e.g. stirrups leading to rise to the knight, tin shortage causing the bronze age collapse, etc)
4) you write "None of (my example) seem to be flanking shock cavalry attacks but rather the approaching cavalry being the last psychological straw that breaks the wavering men". Imho you make an hypothetical interpretation of the wording of an author, Thucydides, that goes way beyond what his text actually says and most likely beyond what the author actually knew of the battles for sure. Ten witnesses to an accident = ten versions of what happened
The only thing I for one can deduce from these texts is that cav successfully charged hoplites from the rear/flank. Why, how, what kind of cav was it ? I don't know.
At Delium, the cavalry switched flank around a hill behind their friendly line and the apparent sight of fresh reinforcements caused the enemy to break. The cavalry used during the Sicilian Expedition was largely some of the better regarded(?) and from what I have understood, they achieved their greatest successes in screening, defense, harrasment, and in direct cooperation with light infantry. As far as I can tell, there's no sign of them operating as a maneuvering flanking force.
As for Cynoscephalae 364 BCE, Based on excerpt Fred Eugene Ray Jr.'s
Greek and Macedonian Land Battles of the 4th Century B.C, There was a cavalry vs cavalry duel fought in the plain that the Thessalians and Thebans won. The commander then dismounted(!), and joined the infantry in pushing the enemy holding a hilltop. After several hard clashes The Pheraean commander decided to retreat due to the possbility(!) of the Thessalian&Theban unengaged cavalry reserve threatening their rear and line of retreat.
In the finale of the battle the now leaderless Theban&Thessalian force was fighting the already once retreated Pheraean army downhill and the pressed Pheraeans broke after the cavalry "joined" the fight. I don't see anything pointing to this final act being a flanking action (or even that those men fought mounted or made it to contact), based on this narration.
The fact that the commander decided to leave the command of the (by then unopposed) cavalry contingent, rather than personally lead it to the exploit the weakness that even the enemy could see (and later acted on) perhaps tells something of the attitude this commander had for the use of cavalry in that kind of offensive tactical maneuver. In a more cavalry minded culture, this sizable contingent would have likely been thought of as the decisive element rather than a conclusion of a sideshow that was the cavalry duel. At the same time, this battle shows the unignorable threat that the cavalry forms merely by being present, even when it isn't the mainstay of an army.
So as far as I can tell, these examples (or any others that I know of) don't really have that element of cavalry winning the flank and wheeling about to assault the enemy's main body from the flank/rear, as you would so often see in battles through the next 20+ centuries.
1) What are the sources showing part of the Classical Thessalian/Theban/Syracusan cavalry acted as Light horse ? This is not a trick question. Just for my knowledge.
2) Still the "non-Thessalian (maybe non-Theban/Syracusan) Classical Greek cavalry" threw javelins. So they tried to act as light skirmishers, even if they were not as skilled in manoeuvrability as the LH units in FoG2.
Let's dig a bit more into the definitions. Imagine a group of horse archers charging at at a group of javelinmen who turn tail and run. The horse archers shoot some but increasingly draw their sabers to cut down the fleeing skirmishers. Are they now considered heavy cavalry?
Next a formation of armoured cavalrymen with javelins come to the reascue of the fleeing skirmishers and the horse archers turn tail to retreat from the pursuing cavalry, both sides loosing and casting at each other as they go. Are these groups now light cavalry, heavy cavalry?
Next the horse archers slip through a solid shieldwall that the pursuing armored cavalry is reluctant to approach. They instead cast some javelins at the sshieldwall in hope of producing or finding a weakness. They now definitely seems to fight like light cavalry but with the aim of getting to act like heavy cavalry.
That cavalry is then driven off by a charging bunch of armored lancers. One of the lancers has butterfingers and accidentally yeets his lance at a fleeing horsemen when he tries to thrust. Is that lancer now light cavalry?
The point I'm making here is that "light" and "heavy" cavalry are highly relative and mostly artificial neologisms that wouldn't have been recognised as such by the people at the time. When describing an ancient battle, they serve as a convenient alternative to dedicating a chapter to pondering the exact relative performance of the cavalry in that particular army or battle. In wargames they are a necessary compromise when trying to translate a battle, as in, the act of organized mass violence, into a battle, as in, the moving of tiny pewter figurines and throwing of dice for enterntainment.
So was the pre-Hellenic Greek cavalry (or any regional variant thereof) light or heavy? To me it seems that they certainly weren't what I would call heavy. The reason being the lack of decisive and aggressive maneuvers or anything resembling direct shock attacks against heavy foot. They mostly seems to have fought other cavalry and operated in screening, skirmishing, pursuit, communication and utility roles, as well as covering retreats. From top down perspective, the exact number and length of the pointy sticks they carried (and may or may not have thrown) is a matter of lesser importance.
In FoG2 terms, I don't feel particularly strongly about the Greeks having dedicated light horse javelinmen. That unit type in general is a bit goofy compromise since, if you are close enough to throw a javelin at someone, they are generally close enough to throw something back at you, which kinda turns the whole thing into a normal melee. Consider the video I linked earlier, that is not just how light infantry fights, it's also how "heavy" infantry would have fought for most of a battle's duration. Light cavalry would be mounted but the principle would likely be the same.
I certainly don't think the Greek cavalry would be worse depicted in the game if there were only a non-light cavalry (in the game sense). If all Greek cavalry was non-light, unmaneuverable, protected, average, light-spear, 50% swordsmen, I think it would be a pretty good match for what I know of Greek battles. Not that I would be able to make a quantitative argument against the current light spear cavalry interpretation either.
PS : Sorry for editing my texts too much. Writing/thinking in English remains for me a very hard task.
No problem at all. I have been guilty of repeat editings mid-conversations as well
