Cataphracts: Knights of the Ancient Eastern Empires

INTRODUCTION

Over 2,000 years ago in the spring of 53 BC, Roman general Marcus Licinius Crassus led an enormous army across the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia. Crassus was the third member of the Triumvirate, the alliance of the three most powerful senators who ruled the Roman Republic, which included Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar. Even though he had acquired more wealth than any other plutocrat in the capital and achieved great renown for crushing the slave revolt of Spartacus, Crassus craved further glory in order to ultimately surpass his two rivals. In emulation of Alexander the Great, Crassus planned to accomplish his goal through the conquest of the East; primarily, against the warriors of the Parthian Empire, Rome’s most powerful adversary along its vast borders. Therefore, he raised a considerable force of seven legions, 4,000 auxiliary light infantry, and 3,000 cavalry; altogether, a huge host that numbered between 42,000 and 44,000 men.¹

Given the past encounters between the Romans and the armies of the east, Crassus and his numerous soldiers traversed the enemy territory with confidence; first from the successful campaign of Lucius Lucullus, along with those led by Pompeius Magnus, the two generals had practically turned the entire region into client kingdoms under Roman hegemony. And yet, regardless of their overwhelming belief in their own martial superiority, fear lingered amongst many of the Roman legionaries due to reports proclaiming the extreme lethality of the Parthians’ soldiers and their tactics. According to Plutarch, an eyewitness account stated:

‘When [the Parthians] pursued’, they declared, ‘there was no escaping them, and when they fled, there was no taking them; and strange missiles are the precursors of their appearance, which pierce through every obstacle before one sees who sent them; and their cataphracts were so provided that their weapons would cut through anything, and their armour give way to nothing’.²

The legionaries knew how deadly the Parthian horse-archers were with their deadly missiles, but it was the latter warriors mentioned in the report that caused far more terror within the Roman ranks; the mounted warriors called cataphracts. The Romans had known about such heavily armoured cavalrymen for over a century, ever since they first overcame the formidable warriors at the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BC. More recently, in 69 BC, Lucullus and his men had slain many of them at the Battle of Tigranocerta. However, the terrible thought of thousands of mounted warriors, in which both the riders and their steeds were fully encased in armour, rushing down upon them, wielding gigantic lances that could easily pierce straight through the most heavily armoured infantryman, was enough to cause dread in even some of the bravest legionaries.

Crassus and his legions pursued the Parthian army until the two forces finally confronted each other in the open desert near the town of Carrhae on 6 May. After the fear was allowed to swell within them for weeks over their inevitable clash with the cataphracts, the Roman legionaries were incredibly relieved to see that their enemy only numbered a paltry 1,000 cavalrymen, all of which appeared to be clothed merely in hides. The cataphracts in their bright armour were nowhere to be seen, a cause for hope to spread throughout the Roman ranks. However, the optimism was quickly dashed, as according to Plutarch:

But when [the Parthians] were near the Romans and the signal was raised by their commander, first of all they filled the plain with the sound of a deep and terrifying roar. For the Parthians do not incite themselves to battle with horns or trumpets, but they have hollow drums of distended hide, covered with bronze bells, and on these they beat all at once in many quarters, and the instruments give forth a low and dismal tone, a blend of wild beast’s roar and harsh thunder peal. They had rightly judged that, of all the senses, hearing is the one most apt to confound the soul, soonest rouses its emotions, and most effectively unseats the judgment.³

Then the terror within the hearts of the Roman soldiers increased considerably, for their worst nightmare was realized; the Parthian commander, Surena, had cunningly ordered the front ranks of his cavalry to cover themselves with animal skins and robes; his clever deception was soon revealed:

When [the Parthians] had sufficiently terrified the Romans with their noise, they threw off the covering of their armour, and shone like lightning in their breastplates and helmets of polished Margianian steel, and with their horses covered with brass and steel trappings.⁴

The cataphracts were revealed in all of their magnificent, yet dreadful, glory, clad from head to toe in metal armour, upon steeds covered with metal as well. Yet the trickery of Surena was not over, for the Romans next witnessed in horror that another 9,000 horse-archers were concealed behind the recently unveiled cataphracts. The superb generalship of the Parthian commander became only more apparent as the battle raged on, since he showed the Romans how deadly and effective the heavily armoured lancers can be when used in conjunction with the highly mobile missile launchers. At the Battle of Carrhae, Surena, with his Parthian cataphracts and horse-archers, caused one of the most disastrous defeats the Romans ever endured (Described in detail in Chapter 3: The Parthian Cataphracts).

Who were these ancient cavalrymen that so closely resembled knights, yet existed centuries before the medieval warrior came to be? And where did the cataphracts come from? This book is the author’s attempt to answer these questions using the numerous ancient accounts of these warriors, along with several extraordinary archaeological discoveries that have been made which support the existence of such a heavily armoured warrior who lived in the ancient world. Fortunately, there is also an extensive amount of research that has been done on the subject of ancient heavy cavalry and the cataphracts by many prominent experts, from early scholars such as William Woodthorpe Tarn, R.M. Rattenbury, M.I. Rostovtzeff and John W. Eadie, to more recent work by A.D.H. Bivar, Valerii P. Nikonorov and Mariusz Mielczarek. However, whereas the focus of most of their work has been the scholarly pursuit to discover the exact distinctions between the cataphracts and their variant types (mainly the difference between the terms cataphracti, cataphractarii and clibanarii), the goal of this book is to be more of a general history of all of the different types of cataphracts from their origins in the Ancient era to the Middle Ages. The elite infantrymen of Antiquity, specifically the Hellenistic hoplite and the Roman legionary, have received a considerable amount of attention from scholars throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with a large amount of books written specifically about them. Likewise, few can dispute the popularity of armour-clad medieval knights, with more than their fair share of media devoted to them, from history books to historical fiction, fantasy novels and even in a considerable amount of cinematic films as well. On the other hand, the story of the cataphracts has rarely been told. Therefore, hopefully, this book will serve as an introduction to the cataphracts for general readers of the public who are fascinated with ancient military history, but who were unaware of, or knew little about, the existence of the extraordinary armoured horsemen.

Long before the knight dominated the European battlefields of the Middle Ages, the cataphracts struck both awe and terror across the ancient world. The word ‘cataphract’ is originally derived from the Greek term kataphraktos (pl. kataphraktoi), which literally means ‘ covered with armour’. However, the modern English name for the heavy cavalrymen is more similar to the Roman Latin variant of the term, which is cataphractus (pl. cataphracti). The most basic arms and armour of the earliest cataphracts included a metal helmet made of either bronze or iron, and a lamellar, mail or scale cuirass to protect the torso, along with further armour that nearly covered all of the limbs of the rider. The horses were provided with a metal facemask, chest armour and, for the mounts of the most important troops, a full body trapper of overlapping metal scales. To wear such extensive armour, as well as carry a heavily armoured rider, cataphracts required a heavy warhorse that was ideally 16 hands high or larger. The favoured weapon of the cataphracts was an enormous lance, predominately known as the kontos (pl. kontoi), which was typically 3.6 metres (12 feet) in length. A large spear-tip was secured at the killing end of the kontos, and a butt spike was attached to the back end of the pole in order to improve the overall balance of the long lance. One of the most impressive features of the cataphract was the lack of one specific, very important piece of equipment that many modern scholars considered to be a necessity for the medieval knight: the stirrup.⁵ Until quite recently, many scholars who wrote about the cataphracts believed that ancient armoured horsemen without stirrups were not effective as heavy cavalry, which is entirely false. Even though cataphracts quickly adopted stirrups once they were introduced to them, and the revolutionary equestrian equipment did improve their overall performance in battle, the fact that the heavy cavalrymen primarily used lances in combat for centuries before the existence of stirrups, proves that the equipment was certainly a bonus but not entirely necessary.⁶

Without the added balance afforded by the use of stirrups, the ancient cataphracts could not fight with lances in the manner of the knights of the Middle Ages; i.e. with the lance held in the couched position, that is with the lance secured underneath the armpit. Therefore, cataphracts attacked with the kontos in one of three ways. The first method cataphracts used to wield their lances was overarm in order to stab downward onto their opponents. The most effective way to combat infantry was to hold the kontos in one hand along the horse’s flank and keeping it parallel to the ground, while the other hand controlled the reins. With the lance held in this manner, the cataphracts often fought in a column order formation with a slightly broad front than usual (especially when compared to the narrow wedge formation) in order to gain a slight advantage over an infantry phalanx armed with sarissae, or long pikes. The last technique utilized by the cataphracts with their kontoi was primarily for melee with other cavalry units; the lance was held in both hands with the pole across the horse’s neck and the spear point to the left of the beast’s head. In this way, the kontos was levelled directly at an opposing mounted soldier. Furthermore, the rider could more fully utilize the momentum of the horse to maximize the impact of the blow as much as possible. When fighting against enemy cavalry, cataphract troops also changed their formation to one shaped as a wedge with a narrow front that increased with each successive rank behind it. The variant type of cataphract known as the clibanarius often fought with these techniques against other mounted warriors.⁷

Although the differences between the cataphracti, cataphractarii (sing. cataphractarius) and clibanarii (sing. clibanarius) are discussed in much greater detail in later chapters, it is important to know that all three terms were used to describe the heavily armoured horsemen of the Ancient era. In this book, I have tried as much as possible to use the same specific terms that the ancient writers used to label the cataphracts at the time that their accounts were written. However, in order to simplify the overall story of the ancient heavy cavalrymen, the modern English words ‘cataphract’ or ‘cataphracts’ are also used frequently throughout the manuscript as general terms for all of the different variations of armoured horsemen.

The development of the cataphract was a long process of over 1,000 years that first began among the semi-nomadic tribes of the Eurasian Steppes in the seventh century BC. Eventually, the heavily armoured warriors of the Parthian nobility influenced the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire to adopt similar troops, which became the first cataphracts. The Parthian Empire that succeeded the Seleucids in the east maintained the use of a core of cataphracts in their forces, as well as the Sassanian Persian Empire that arose after them and which more commonly fielded the soldiers that were frequently referred to as clibanarii. In the Aethiopica of the third century AD, Heliodorus provided a description of these formidable Persian warriors:

Before him was only the troop of cataphracts; it was his great confidence in these that emboldened him to venture battle. This phalanx was always the Persians’ strongest force, and was posted in the van as an impenetrable wall. The fashion of their armament is the following. The men are selected for physical ruggedness. Each man wears a helmet cleverly fashioned in one piece to fit closely over his face like a mask. It is solid down to the neck except for eyeholes to see through. The right hand carries a spear of uncommon length; the left is unencumbered, to manage the reins. A scimitar hangs at his side. Not his breast alone but his whole body is sheathed in armour. The armour is fashioned of a number of separate plates of iron or bronze a span square fitting over each other at each of the four sides and hooked or sewn together beneath, the upper lapping over the lower, and the side of each over the edge of the plate next in order. The effect is a shirt of mail which fits easily over the whole body and each limb separately, without hindering or straining movement. The armour is fitted with sleeves and extends from the neck to the knees; only the inside of the thighs are uncovered, to facilitate riding. This mail coat deflects any stroke and prevents any wound. The greaves reach from the feet to the knee, where they are attached to the coat. The horse is as well protected as his rider. Greaves cover his legs, and a frontal fitted with a spike protects his whole head. From his back a sheet of iron mail hangs down either flank, loose enough not to impede his movements, but at the same time affording him full protection. When the horse is so accoutred and, as it were, molten in his armour, his rider mounts him; because of his weight the rider cannot leap up, but is lifted by others. When the time for battle comes, the rider loosens his reins, fixes his spurs, and charges his adversaries, looking like an iron man or a solidly wrought statue in motion. His spear extends directly forward much further than the ordinary spear. It is supported by a loop at the horse’s neck and its butt is fixed by a noose to its croup. So attached it yields to no shock, but assists the hand of the rider, who merely directs the stroke. Propelled with such great force, the spear penetrates deeply and pierces everything it encounters; frequently it transfixes two opponents at a single stroke.⁸

The Romans were slow to accept the effectiveness of the heavily armoured cavalrymen, but after facing the cataphracts of the Seleucids, Armenians, Parthians, and Sassanians, as well as the similarly protected heavy cavalry lancers of the Sarmatians, the empire started to utilize several different types of cataphracts beginning in the second century AD. By the end of the Western Roman Empire, cataphracti, cataphractarii and clibanarii units had become an integral part of the imperial army. The fierce competition between the two rival empires of Rome and Persia raised the pinnacle of both the armament and protection of their cataphract soldiers. Julian was so awed by the sight of the Roman cataphracts that in his fourth century AD work titled Panegyric in Honour of the Emperor Constantinus, he stated:

What emperor can one cite in the past who first planned and then reproduced so admirable a type of cavalry and such accoutrements? First you trained yourself to wear them, and then you taught others how to use such weapons so that none could withstand them. This is a subject on which many have ventured to speak, but they have failed to do it justice, so much so that those who heard their description, and later had the good fortune to see for themselves decided that their eyes must accept what their ears had refused to credit. Your cavalry was almost unlimited in numbers and they all sat their horses like statues, while their limbs were fitted with armour that followed closely the outline of the human form. It covers the arms from wrist to elbow and thence to the shoulder, while a coat of mail protects the shoulders, back and breast. The head and face are covered by a metal mask, which makes its wearer look like a glittering statue for not even the thighs and legs and the very ends of the feet lack this armour. It is attached to the cuirass by fine chain-armour like a web, so that no part of the body is visible and uncovered, for this woven covering protects the hands as well, and is so flexible that the wearers can bend even their fingers. All this I desire to represent in words as vividly as I can, but it is beyond my powers, and I can only ask those who wish to know more about this armour to see it with their own eyes, and not merely to listen to my description.⁹

After the fall of the western half of the empire in 476 AD, the Eastern Romans, also known as the Byzantine Empire, and the Neo-Persians, called the Sassanians, continued to face each other with cataphracts and clibanarii until the latter empire was conquered in the Islamic expansion of the seventh century AD. After a brief decline in importance for a couple of centuries during the Arab ascendancy throughout the region, the Byzantine cataphracts underwent a rapid resurgence in the imperial forces during the tenth century AD. The emperor primarily responsible for the rebirth of the cataphract in the Byzantine army was Leo VI (r. 886–912 AD). The martial emperor provided a description of the properly armed and armoured cavalry troops in his work, the Taktika:

Each man should have the following armament. Full coats of mail reaching to their ankles, fastened with thongs and rings, along with their carrying cases. They should also have iron helmets, polished and always with small plumes on their crests. Each man should have a bow suited to his own strength and not above it, more indeed on the weaker side, and cases broad enough so that, when necessary, the strung bows can fit in them. They should also have spare bowstrings in their saddlebags, suitable quivers, too, with their covers, holding about thirty-to-forty arrows. Small files and awls in their baldrics. They should also have short cavalry lances with small thongs in the middle of the shaft and with pennons. In addition, they should have swords hanging from their shoulders, in the Roman manner, as well as daggers or large knives on their belts. All recruits who do not know how to shoot should have lances and full shields. It will be very useful if some can afford iron gauntlets, called cheiropsella. They should have small tassels on the hindquarters of the horses as well as small pennons over the armour around their shoulders. For the more handsome the soldier is in his armament, the more confidence he gains in himself and the more fear he inspires in the foe. If possible, they should wear breastplates, polished and shiny, that are now called klibania. Also greaves, now called podopsella, and sometimes spurs. Also surcoats to put on when needed. All the Roman recruits, up to the age of forty, must definitely be required to carry bow and quiver, whether they be expert archers or just average. The fact that archery has been completely neglected and fallen into disuse among the Romans has caused a great deal of harm nowadays. They should possess two lances as to have a spare one at hand in case the first one misses. Inexperienced men should employ lighter bows. With enough time, even men who do not know how to shoot will manage to learn, for it is an essential skill. If possible, they should also have at least two javelins or throwing weapons so that, at the proper moment, they may readily hurl them against the enemy. That is how you shall arm the cavalryman.¹⁰

Along with the arms and armour of the Byzantine cataphracts, the Taktika also contains a detailed description of the armour worn by their mounts, and the saddle equipment as well:

The horses, especially those of the officers and the other special troops, should have protective armour of iron or of padding, such as cow hide, over their heads and breasts. Their breasts and necks and, if possible, their abdomens will be covered by small pieces of what is called quilting, hanging from the saddles. These have often preserved the horses as well as those riding on them from great dangers. In particular, the men stationed in the front line of battle should have these items. Let the saddles have large and thick cloths, and let there be strong bridles of good quality. Two iron stirrups should be attached to the saddles along with a lasso with thong, a hobble, a saddlebag large enough, when the situation so demands, to hold three or four days’ rations. There should be four tassels on the haunch strap; likewise, one on the horse’s brow and one under the chin. By all means, the cavalry soldier must have a double-sided axe, one side having the long form of a sword and the other the large and sharp form of the point of a spear. It should be hanging from the saddle in a leather case.¹¹

Finally, there is also information regarding the clothing of the cataphracts:

The clothing of the soldiers, whether linen, wool, or other material, should be loose fitting so they may not be impeded as they ride along; it should cover their knees and give a neat appearance. They should have a loose, padded mantle with very broad sleeves so that in arming themselves and wearing the body armour with the bow if, perchance, it should rain or the dew cause the air to become quite humid, then by wearing these over their body armour and bow, they may both protect their armament and not be impeded when they want to make use of the bow or the lance. These padded mantles may also be necessary in another way on patrol or reconnaissance. When the body armour is covered by them its brightness will not be seen far off by the enemy and they will also provide protection against being hit by arrows. We also order that each squad should carry sickles and axes to meet their unavoidable needs.¹²

This description of the medieval Byzantine cataphract mentions several changes to the equipment of the heavy cavalrymen, such as the addition of the bow, arrows, and stirrups, which provides a glimpse of how much the arms and armour of the cataphracts evolved over the centuries.

A little over two hundred years before the complete collapse of the Byzantine Empire, the sack of the imperial capital city of Constantinople in 1204 AD devastated the Eastern Romans to such an extent that they were never able to fully recover. With decreased imperial territories and native manpower in the army, as well as far less overall wealth, the formidable,