Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers, the 14th.

And this one is going to be on the Roman Cavalry Tactics.

Or sorry, Roman tactics to counter enemy cavalry, which is a question from Carlos.

I'm Murray Dam. I'm the assistant editor of Ancient Warfare Magazine.

And joining me is Jasper Ortage, the editor of ancient warfare magazine.

Jasper, what did the Romans do to adapt their tactics to cavalry enemies?

Presumably we're talking about the Parthians and assassinids.

The thing is with the wars against the Parthians and the Sassanids, that it seems like it's

that it's a completely different way of fighting.

The Romans want to have a decisive infantry battle and then perhaps besiege enemy cities.

And the Parthians don't really seem to fight that way. They prefer to sort

of wear the enemy down over time until the light cavalry can come in and just basically

shoot them to death. And when they attack the Romans, they seem to have issues going after

Roman cities, which is a

well-known problem for, you know, isometric warfare, is a well-known problem, is a well-known

how-to problem even nowadays. I think what you see with the Romans is a combination of things that they try to do to deal with such armies.

The first thing is to pick the terrain. Clearly, you know, crosses gets himself caught out in fairly open terrain where the Parthian army can just surround him

and shoot him to death on all sides.

So, you know, later you see later Roman armies.

They either try to lure the Parthians to come to them in a position they've chosen,

maybe on higher ground, maybe ground that is closed in, you know, their flanks are protected by

hills, mountains, rivers, things like that, or they could even prepare the train, you know, dig ditches,

...