The roman military always prized itself for being extremely versatile and elastic, able to adopt new tech and warfare philosophies on the fly. Then why did it take them like 2 centuries to develop heavy cavalry and a century and a half to develop horse cavalry?
>>64554001>why didn't they breed bigger and stronger horses overnight?
>>64554014Two centuries are hardly needed to provide both horses and training. It was the romans who got complacent with their stationary style of warfare and got rekt by sassanids and parthians as a result.
>>64554038>you can just breed bigger animals in a single generation
>>64554046You could simply buy them, rome wasnt an island, the vast majority of barbaric tribes and nations bordering them was basically tributary vassals. Besides, i doubt they didn't have robust horses in the first place, rome used cavalry for almost a millennia before trajan tried his luck in the east
>>64554001Romans were a biy over reliant on mercenary/auxiliarys for horse troops along with Equites being few in number and acted more like a medium cavalry. I believe it comes down to the Romans mainly facing light armored opponents who valued speed and maneuverability over armor. Then there's the matter that heavy cavalry is really expensive to equip and maintain so not many people or factions at the time had the capabilities or capacity for it.
>>64554001Because the stirrup wasn't invented until the end of the empire.
>>64554148>muh stirrupsNoobs skill issue/https://www.academia.edu/33789994/AN_EXPERIMENTAL_INVESTIGATION_OF_LATE_MEDIEVAL_COMBAT_WITH_THE_COUCHED_LANCE
>>64554001Considering that Ctesiphon was sacked twice by roman forces and Parthia only managed to occupy Syria for two years before Rome returned and kicked them back it seemed to work fine for Rome.
>>64554153It's not about energy, it's about ease of learning how to ride a horse.>muh nomadic horse tribesYes, they were good at riding horses, because they were doing it since birth as part of their culture and society. Most people in real civilizations had other shit to do than just ride on horses and hunt all day, even the nobles, and stirrups enabled people in those civilizations to learn to ride more proficiently in less time and in an environment with fewer horses available to practice with.
>>64554178>It's not about energy, it's about ease of learning how to ride a horse.>Romans couldn't learn how to ride horses
>>64554148Catafractarii, clibanarii and contarii didn't use stirs. Which makes it .ore impressive when you think that they used long spears with both hands while charging. I guess they held on to the saddle by virtue of their massive balls of steel
>>64554001>Uh, legate, why are we spending time learning to ride horses? We can just hire people who can do it better than we ever will.
>>64554001something people forget about is the ridiculous amounts of land it takes to raise a large number of horses for war. or how expensive it is.you need stud farms to breed the horses you want. then you need to raise and train the foals into war horses. select out your future brood mares and studs. send of the ones you are going to use to their units. they can serve for a couple of years before they become to old and need replacing.while at their unit they also need pasture, feed and stables.in the Imperial roman system that meant all those things where owned or paid for by the emperor.so the emperor has to give up productive farm land for the stud farms, pay all the people involved, pay for the feed of the horses in their units and the extra equipment.oh he could just keep what works, hire some auxiliaries when needed or just get more footmen. plus you need to change the military culture to accept cavalry as a roman and not just an auxiliary thing. then develop the traditions and knowledge to raise competitive cavalry units and how to properly employ them.it's the same as saying "some chinky guy invented gunpowder why are you still holding a pike and not a brown bess?"
>>64554278>sounds like a good idea quaestor...oh shit, they just rebelled, sacked our capital, murdered our emperor and half of our generals are actually barbarian nobles, who could've seen this coming!
>>64554306There is half a millenia time difference between your post and the post you replied to.
>>64554001First off, up until the invention of the Stirrup the Infantry was clearly superior to cavalry. Yes, a good horned saddle helped but stirrups were far superior. Second, by the time the the iron stirrup reach Europe, the Romans had lost a good deal of that flexibility and adaptability that made it so dangerous. Rome believed it's own hype and when it came time to change the Romans resisted. The Byzantines were able to make that change under Emperor Leo VI but it seems the Western Romans couldn't.
>>64554001>completery ahistorical fantasy drawingsJanes and its consequences have been an unmitigated disaster for historical discourse worldwide.
>>64554794Can you provide better pics?
>>64554827I can shit on your fantasy LARP fest and tell you to kill yourself.
>>64554038Outside of Crassus and his -IQ the Parthians proved to be paper horses stuck strutting around Greater Persia until getting Usurped by the True Heirs Of The Achademians(TM). By the Truth only the Sassanids were Peers to the Romans and nearly took out them out in the final great 30 year hyperwar of Antiquity (and then promptly collasped during wars in its aftermath) that surpassed a certain Phoenician in danger to Rome. Also the Romans encountered super heavy cavalry when dicing up the Successors and developed their own super heavy force in situ when the need arrived in late antiquity. >>64554366>StirrupFagThe Maceadonians and Hellenistic powers demolish your path with their primary strike arm.
>>64554855So all you can do is complain and never offer alternatives? Why should anybody listen to you?>>64554915If anything, Alexander the Great proves the dominance of infantry. His forces were mostly infantry phalanxes with the cavalry only being valuable once the enemy was already stuck in melee. Hellenistic powers, too, were largely infantry based with their forces being Phalanx centric. We see a lot of hammer and anvil attacks but you still needed infantry for an anvil.
>>64554974Because nothing is worse than posting blatantly retarded fiction posing as an educated reconstruction. You're a piece of shit for distributing this garbage.
>>64555066Could you please provide points how the image in question is wrong?
>>64555172Sure, plenty.>plated mail armor 14 centuries too early>laminar armor among non-roman troops>full face helmets outside of gladiatorial combat prior to the 12th century>especially used by fucking archers>mail aventails on helmets prior to the 6th century>overabundance of armor and the specific armor composition totally unfounded by pictoral or archaeological research in generalIt's just horrible.
>>64555194This relief from Taq-e Bostan (4th century BC) does show something that looks like an aventail.
>>64555247This is hardly conclusive, given it can be anything from a face cloth to just an unfinished face relief, rather than an aventail. Given absolutely zero other evidence for it for almost 1000 years about it it's quite a stretch to consider them to have seen any but exceedingly rare one-off use, if at all since it's obviously nigh impossible to desicively prove they were absolutely never used.
>>64555290>Backpedalling beginsI shall watch this thread with great interest.
>>64555420Please point me to a single pre 580 CE aventail depiction that isn't a nondescript flattened piece of stone, then. Surely you can do this to justify your cock garbling addiction to spreading ahistorical garbage across the internet.
