Hello and welcome to another episode of Ancient Warfare Answers.

With me today is Murray Dom, the assistant editor of Ancient Orpher Magazine, and I am Jasper Orthaus.

I'm the editor of the magazine.

And today we are answering a question from Jay Soth.

And he wants to know, how is all the intense cavalry action possible in ancient history.

The Thassalian diamond formation charge, companion cavalry,

the minion light cavalry, and all of that without the use of the stirrup or more modern saddle technology.

If it's all with rope or cord and thigh gripping,

then they must have had some seriously chiseled legs.

Well, all the legs on all the sculptures chiseled,

but by definition, I suppose.

But Murray maybe has a better answer than that one.

I think chiseled is probably right,

but also our understanding of what the ancients could achieve

with the saddles that they had is, you know, our understanding of what the ancients could achieve with the saddles that they had is, you know, academics for a long time considered that they wouldn't be able to achieve a great deal with a saddle that wasn't stirruped or wasn't a modern saddle.

And we think now that, in fact, they were probably highly capable of all sorts of actions on such

saddles without stirrups, whether it be gripping with the thighs or, you know, when you look at

Native American horse riding or any culture that hasn't used the stirrup, they are, they evolve

into very, very capable cavalrymen.

The types of actions that cavalry required early on, of course, the Greek cavalry are a very

sort of small force. We aren't sure with the, where the hoplites originally rode to battle and then dismounted

to fight as cavalry, with the image that you get in the Iliad of, even with chariots,

...