|
PittTheElder posted:Horse archers really weren't everything they are cracked up to be now due to video games, especially since they usually have a finite supply of arrows anyway. Roman armies beat them plenty of times. Finite supply of arrows? How'd that work out for Crassus  . It's not like they were some unbeatable super weapon, but they were a step ahead of other armies of the time, and under a good leader they were fairly unbeatable. Most of the times the Romans were curbstomping the Parthians were during succession disputes and so on when the Parthians were significantly weaker anyway, I thought.
|
#
?
May 27, 2013 22:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 01:31 |
|
|
Koramei posted:Finite supply of arrows? How'd that work out for Crassus Finite supply of legionaries.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2013 22:44
|
|
|
Koramei posted:Finite supply of arrows? How'd that work out for Crassus? Uncommonly immense logistical effort for that exact purpose actually. And what would appear to this armchair general as pretty gross negligence on Crassus' part for not camping at water before the battle. Really he should have had enough cavalry to run off the Parthians, I'm not sure where they wound up.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2013 23:08
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
The Parthians also acted like the Romans did when it came to warfare. Most ancient states would be defeated and give up, it was kind of expected that if you got your rear end kicked solidly in the field you now had to negotiate terms and admit defeat. The Romans never did it, no matter how hard they got annihilated. Look at the war with Hannibal. Any other state would've negotiated after Cannae, the Romans just raised another army. The Parthians were the same way--the Romans kicked their asses badly many times, but they always raised a new army and came right back. So they couldn't be eliminated the way other states were. That and they were pretty badass and able to hold their own or defeat Rome regularly as well. Horse archers were not the be all end all of wars, but against a heavy infantry army in a wide open area they're pretty devastating.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 02:43
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:Uncommonly immense logistical effort for that exact purpose actually. And what would appear to this armchair general as pretty gross negligence on Crassus' part for not camping at water before the battle. Really he should have had enough cavalry to run off the Parthians, I'm not sure where they wound up. Yeah uh  ..not sure why you modified what I wrote. I just thought it was ironic for you to say that. And there were quite a lot of Roman cavalry, actually, they notably got wiped out by the Parthian cataphracts.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 02:48
|
|
|
People like to give Crassus poo poo for getting killed in Parthia, but his was hardly the only Roman army that came to a bad end invading them. At least he didn't end up as a footstool.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 03:16
|
|
|
To add to the Parthian/Sassanid discussion. Certainly horse archers are effective, but I do not think that the technique would have been truly insurmountable to the Romans. One of the big problems for Rome was that the Caucuses have always been a pretty rural area. The people who lived there were quite pastoral, hence their large cavalry armies. But agricultural empires like Rome or China have traditionally had issues conquering pastoral communities, because of the lack of centralization. They'd defeat an army in the field, only to find that they had won nothing but miles of grassland that was worthless to them. There were few cities or crops to support an army in the field. They'd have to build forts and roads and essentially import civilization in order to secure the territory. It was a real pain in the rear end for little reward, and it was more than 2,000 miles from Rome, so it shouldn't be surprising that the empire eventually resolved to stay on its own side of the Tigris river.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 03:19
|
|
|
I found this thread the day I registered and have been glued to it since, by far my favourite in all of SA.  Q: Does anyone have any classical/antiquity style music that's (mainly) instrumental? I am going on a trip soon and would like something to listen to while reading Carthage Must Be Destroyed. I have the Rome: Total War soundtrack for starters but i'm having trouble finding much else.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 04:31
|
|
|
Tomorrow, the 29th, is the 560th anniversary of the end of the Roman Empire. Pour out some garum for your homies.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 04:36
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:Tomorrow, the 29th, is the 560th anniversary of the end of the Roman Empire. Pour out some garum for your homies. I believe you mean June 7th, since we ain't using the Julian calendar! And if we were, the 29th of May doesn't come til June 11, 2013 Gregorian.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 04:43
|
|
|
Install Gentoo posted:I believe you mean June 7th, since we ain't using the Julian calendar! And if we were, the 29th of May doesn't come til June 11, 2013 Gregorian. Pope Gregory. I am undone. 
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 04:49
|
|
|
If you view Constantinople as the Second Rome and Moscow as the Third Rome, then Rome survived long enough to threaten the United States with nuclear weapons.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 05:05
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:Pope Gregory. I am undone. That dastardly pope and his stolen days! 
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 05:07
|
|
|
Koramei posted:Yeah uh Well, missed that entirely. My bad. quote:..not sure why you modified what I wrote. I just thought it was ironic for you to say that. I'm guessing you don't mean me in particular? Oh god my junior high social paranoia is kicking in again. quote:And there were quite a lot of Roman cavalry, actually, they notably got wiped out by the Parthian cataphracts. Yeah, it just stuck me as strange that the rather small force of cataphracts managed to defeat the much larger Roman auxilia cavalry. Although I guess they probably found themselves alone against both the cataphracts and the horse archers, which I suppose would do it. My head is stuck in medieval mode, with stories of knights coming back peppered with arrows but mostly unharmed, which doesn't really apply to some battle some thousand years earlier. Also, we English speakers should really switch to using the Greek 'kataphraktoi', just because that looks so much cooler to me as a word.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 05:23
|
|
|
Well, Cataphracts are as heavily armoured as Medieval knights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ancient_Sasanid_Cataphract_Uther_Oxford_2003_06_2(1).jpg and IIRC the Auxiliary Cavalry Crassus had with him were lightly-armoured Gallic cavalry, that probably wouldn't fare well against the heavily-armoured Cataphracts.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 05:42
|
|
|
There's something I just don't get about all these ancient specialized units. Why not copy what your enemy is doing? If you're getting your rear end kicked by cataphracts or horse archers, why are you not emulating them? I don't see how hard it could possibly be to shove armor and/or a bow onto a guy on a horse.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 06:19
|
|
|
karl fungus posted:There's something I just don't get about all these ancient specialized units. Why not copy what your enemy is doing? If you're getting your rear end kicked by cataphracts or horse archers, why are you not emulating them? I don't see how hard it could possibly be to shove armor and/or a bow onto a guy on a horse. Well, it's not hard to do that. It is hard to train someone to be as skilled with horse archery as nomadic or semi-nomadic cultures that practice it from a young age. I'll have to find the videos later, but there was a post, earlier in this thread, I think, that showed both some modern Hungarian horse archery that's basically been reinvented from scratch, and some crazy horseback... for lack of a better word, acrobatics - you'd have to train people to be at that level of skill to really match nomadic horse archers. The Eastern Roman Empire did adopt Cataphracts as a response to the Persians, but it takes a /lot/ of work to train people to the level where they can hit a moving target from a sizeable distance whilst on a moving platform.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 06:30
|
|
|
karl fungus posted:There's something I just don't get about all these ancient specialized units. Why not copy what your enemy is doing? If you're getting your rear end kicked by cataphracts or horse archers, why are you not emulating them? I don't see how hard it could possibly be to shove armor and/or a bow onto a guy on a horse. Heh. We're talking about drawweigths of +100# here. Todays masters like Lukas Novotny and Lajos Kassai recommend shooting 40-50# from horseback. Why? Try drawing such a +100# bow on foot. Hard? Impossible? Takes years and years of practice to not just pull it, but hit something with it. From horseback, it's much harder to draw....and hitting on the move. These guys were really good at hitting stuff. They weren't just artists, they were much like the top athletes of our day. Try imagining a guy doing onehanded pullups, just hanging from his thumb - and that 3 times within 1,5 seconds. Why? That was the time you could take at the fastshooting examination in the Mamluk and Turkish Army. You may put guys with bows and armor on horses, but that doesn't make them horsearchers or cataphracts.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 09:26
|
|
|
karl fungus posted:There's something I just don't get about all these ancient specialized units. Why not copy what your enemy is doing? If you're getting your rear end kicked by cataphracts or horse archers, why are you not emulating them? I don't see how hard it could possibly be to shove armor and/or a bow onto a guy on a horse. You don't want a guy sitting on a horse, firing arrows in a vague direction and making an rear end of himself? Archery and horsemanship are skills that need to be developed, and it's not a matter acquiring horses and bows and stacking them together. The average steppe nomad had a literal lifetime of training, since their culture was so dependent on the horse, whereas your average legionary at best was getting a late start. Do you think you could do it? The Romans just went and hired nomads as auxilia whenever they needed horse archers. This was pretty common for the Romans, especially for cavalry. Italy isn't great horse country, so there weren't a lot of skilled Roman horsemen. At least in the republic, they recruited cavalry almost exclusively from Gaul. Cataphracts are a bit different, since normal training can sort of cover the extra weight of all that armour. Unfortunately, you can't train a horse to not break its legs running with a few hundred pounds of extra weight. You need sturdy horses for cataphracts, which aren't in high supply in the classical era. You also need the facilities and money to pay for this gigantic set of armour, which is quite expensive. Finally, when you're in the field, you are going to be sweating like a motherfucker and getting tired just walking, because you'll be baking in a giant glittery case of metal. Basically, it is much harder than you think to stack more armour on a horse, and then shoot arrows from the same horse, while moving.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 09:49
|
|
|
Odobenidae posted:I found this thread the day I registered and have been glued to it since, by far my favourite in all of SA. Something like this, maybe? He makes and sells many CDs of ancient lyre music, some of it (he claims) is ancient, while some is his own composition in ancient style.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 14:17
|
|
|
The Roman cataphracts were typically indigenous auxiliaries, like Armenian.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2013 19:02
|
|
|
karl fungus posted:There's something I just don't get about all these ancient specialized units. Why not copy what your enemy is doing? If you're getting your rear end kicked by cataphracts or horse archers, why are you not emulating them? I don't see how hard it could possibly be to shove armor and/or a bow onto a guy on a horse. Rome suffered from a lot of problems that made it difficult or impossible for them to field an effective cavalry force. The first one that springs to mind is because transporting horses across the sea was a nightmare so it's almost always more effective to just apply some leverage to the locals and get them to supply cavalry for you. There might also be some cultural reasons as well. Throughout most of its history, even before the empire started to expand out of Italy, the Romans preferred for their allies to supply most of the cavalry in their armies. That and as other before me have said, training horse archers and breeding the horses they ride is an incredibly involved multi-generational process. It turns out that shoving a guy in armor on a horse and giving him a bow is very difficult to do correctly.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2013 00:10
|
|
|
Isn't the Roman approach to cavalry also related to their doctrine? I read somewhere that while other/most cultures used cavalry as shock-force, most famously as the hammer to the phalanx's anvil, the Romans tended to use cavalry as more of a screen, just something to prevent their own lines from being flanked.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2013 00:18
|
|
|
The Romans had chariots, why not a ton of chariots archers? Not as efficient or flexible as horse archers, but it's still lets you scoot around and shoot things.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2013 00:21
|
|
|
The Romans always had cavalry and the late western empire armies were based on swift strike cavalry squads.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2013 01:26
|
|
|
euphronius posted:The Romans always had cavalry and the late western empire armies were based on swift strike cavalry squads. Yeah you gotta specify a timeframe here. The Roman army gets more and more cavalry-centric over time. By like 400 cavalry are arguably the primary force of the army, at least in the west. And the east has cataphracts as a central force throughout the medieval era.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2013 02:00
|
|
|
Phobophilia posted:The Romans had chariots, why not a ton of chariots archers? Not as efficient or flexible as horse archers, but it's still lets you scoot around and shoot things. Chariots are completely useless outside of very flat ground. Europe is pretty hilly and forested, whereas places like Egypt and Babylon had more suitable terrain. So I don't think the Romans ever fought with chariots, even in their early days. You should probably fact check wherever you got that info. Besides that, Chariots were only a thing because horses were tiny back in 2000 BC and you couldn't actually ride them. This wasn't a problem in the Roman era, and a single horse and rider was s much more efficient and maneuvrable that there wasn't any reason to go back to chariots. The only contemparary example in Roman times were scythed ones used by the Seleucids, adopted from the old Persian empire. But they were just gimmicky shock weapons that weren't very useful in the long-run. The chariot was pretty dead.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2013 02:24
|
|
|
The Britons disagree with you, but yes, chariots were for the most part obsolete past the Bronze Age.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2013 02:42
|
|
|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:Chariots are completely useless outside of very flat ground. Europe is pretty hilly and forested, whereas places like Egypt and Babylon had more suitable terrain. So I don't think the Romans ever fought with chariots, even in their early days. You should probably fact check wherever you got that info. I think that's less "They used them extensively" and more "They had the ability to make them".
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2013 02:56
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:Isn't the Roman approach to cavalry also related to their doctrine? I read somewhere that while other/most cultures used cavalry as shock-force, most famously as the hammer to the phalanx's anvil, the Romans tended to use cavalry as more of a screen, just something to prevent their own lines from being flanked. That's certainly my impression of every Republican era battle I've read about on wiki. The infantry was the main event, and cavalry were employed mostly to avoid getting hosed over by the enemy cavalry. And they were perhaps right in doing so; in just about every big Republican Roman loss, it seems to have been that the enemy cavalry ruined the day for them.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2013 03:37
|
|
|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:The chariot was pretty dead. Militarily, anyway. The Romans were still using them for chariot racing, much as we still race horses despite not using them for transport. The bottom line with the Roman army (of the Republican and early imperial period, anyway) is that the infantry were the key component and, as other people have said, this probably comes down to the fact that the Romans weren't a nomadic people and most of the men who made up their army hadn't spent their lives riding horses. That would have remained true even when they expanded the empire and started recruiting from its subject peoples. Having large cavalry forces also complicates things logistically because you have to make sure on campaigns that you have enough hay to feed the horses, when it's usually enough of a problem making sure you have enough food for the men. It's not the sort of thing you would do unless you felt there was a positive need to do it.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2013 20:06
|
|
|
General Panic posted:Militarily, anyway. The Romans were still using them for chariot racing, much as we still race horses despite not using them for transport. Right. And engaging in cavalry battles sidestepped the traditional strengths of Roman society: a large and disciplined population coupled with engineering aptitude. Cavalry don't rely on roads and forts and masses of well-trained and well-fed soldiers. It makes a lot of sense for the Romans to emphasize their strengths, and encourage their enemies to engage them in infantry battles rather than cavalry skirmishing.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2013 23:06
|
|
|
With Republican Rome's army and doctrine being what it was, what could they have done better at Carrhae? Even if Crassus' son didn't ride out and even if they had taken a rest, how could they have forced an engagement with the Cataphracts+Horse Archers?
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2013 23:34
|
|
|
They should have marched through highland Armenia, where the local king had promised them support and reinforcements, including more cavalry. If they take the same route, it would have been wise to stop and make camp at the creek they crossed. That would give them easy access to water and a nights rest. This strongpoint would then give them the option of scouting around and giving battle at a time of their choosing.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2013 23:54
|
|
|
Koramei posted:The Britons disagree with you, but yes, chariots were for the most part obsolete past the Bronze Age. I thought most Britons who used chariots essentially used them to ride to the battle then hopped off to fight. A status symbol more than a weapon.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2013 00:29
|
|
|
Not agreeing to follow the dodgy local scout into the loving desert was really Crassus' last chance there.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2013 01:11
|
|
|
canuckanese posted:I thought most Britons who used chariots essentially used them to ride to the battle then hopped off to fight. A status symbol more than a weapon. Well wikipedia gives this quote from Caeser: quote:Their mode of fighting with their chariots is this: firstly, they drive about in all directions and throw their weapons and generally break the ranks of the enemy with the very dread of their horses and the noise of their wheels; and when they have worked themselves in between the troops of horse, leap from their chariots and engage on foot. The charioteers in the meantime withdraw some little distance from the battle, and so place themselves with the chariots that, if their masters are overpowered by the number of the enemy, they may have a ready retreat to their own troops. Thus they display in battle the speed of horse, [together with] the firmness of infantry; and by daily practice and exercise attain to such expertness that they are accustomed, even on a declining and steep place, to check their horses at full speed, and manage and turn them in an instant and run along the pole, and stand on the yoke, and thence betake themselves with the greatest celerity to their chariots again. Which is basically how they were used in the Ancient Near East too. I don't think chariots charging like cavalry were ever particularly common?
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2013 01:26
|
|
|
I think popular culture has made the scythe chariot the role that people think of for chariots in all warfare. Scythe chariots were a thing but archers or transport were the more common roles.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2013 01:33
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:With Republican Rome's army and doctrine being what it was, what could they have done better at Carrhae? Even if Crassus' son didn't ride out and even if they had taken a rest, how could they have forced an engagement with the Cataphracts+Horse Archers? Surena, the Parthian general, was a genius. His army was perfectly designed to defeat legions. Running out of arrows was the usual problem, so he arranged a camel train of supplies to keep his troops shooting. One report mentions that the legionaries' armour was useless against Parthian arrows, which could be exaggeration or could suggest they'd adapted their weapons to kill Romans. You get a sense of how big a deal Surena's leadership was when, after his victory, he's killed for being too clever and a threat to the king. Without him to lead it, the Parthian retaliation is an incompetent failure where they're denied battle until they get bored and leave, then walk into a pretty standard ambush on the way out. No doubt Crassus wasn't the best general, but I don't think he's as terrible as the Romans make out. You get stuff about him defying the tribunes and getting cursed as he leaves the city (not mentioned in contemporary accounts) which boils down to  well he didn't really have Rome behind him so it wasn't a Roman invasion so it wasn't really a defeat we didn't want that army anyway man Crassus sucks
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2013 14:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 01:31 |
|
|
The Roman legion was also crazy effective in Europe and seems to have lost effectiveness the farther from that terrain it got. Same with the Parthian force. So its not that one army was nec. better than the other, just that they were designed and evolved for their native terrain and struggled when they got too far outside of it. Just how I see it, not an official opinion.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2013 15:43
|
|
