AWA376 - Are there any sources for the chariot driver actually exiting the chariot before contact?
Ancient Warfare Podcast
The History Network
4.3 • 645 Ratings
🗓️ 26 September 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
In this episode, Murray Dahm revisits Alexander's encounter with scythed chariots and unpacks some of the practical and tactical issues surrounding their historical use. From wargaming figure ratios to the use of caltrops, shield-banging, and even Roman caligae, we explore how ancient armies may have neutralised these fearsome weapons.
Were chariots best used against cavalry or lighter infantry? Did ancient troops rely on noise and tight formations—or did they use more direct countermeasures? And finally, a listener asks: is there any evidence that chariot drivers dismounted before impact—or is that a modern myth?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers with me, Murray, your weekly fix of 10 minutes of ancient warfare related material. |
| 0:14.4 | What I do here is I attempt to answer a question from a reader, viewer or listener. |
| 0:19.4 | You can ask a question however you would like. |
| 0:21.6 | You can send me an email, AWA at Carvansaraypublishers.com.com or AWA at ancient warfare.com. You can, or Murray at Carvansaray Publishers.com, that'll get to me as well. You can send me a postcard. PO Box 222, Bellfield, B-E-L-F-I-E-L-D, NSW-1-N-N-S-W-1-N-S-W-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-W-E-E-L-E-W-E-E-R-E-E-L-E-E-R-E-E-R-E-E-R-E-E-R-E- to a previous answer. This is from Ralph, and this was when I was talking about chariots. |
| 0:54.8 | Ralph says, hi, great analysis of Alexander's chariot problem. Thank you. The problem was, |
| 0:59.9 | as a war game, is that 150 chariots are only eight figures using the normal 1 to 20 ratio, |
| 1:05.7 | although to increase their effectiveness, this is often changed to 1 to 8 because of the size |
| 1:10.0 | of the units. |
| 1:14.6 | Regarding using the chariots against the lighter troops, these would possibly bring down the horses with arrows and bows whilst skipping out of the path of the horses and |
| 1:18.8 | the scyth chariot. A better target would be cavalry, particularly the heavy cavalry, but this is |
| 1:24.5 | not described anywhere I know of, nor I. Rather than counter-marching |
| 1:28.5 | or locked shield, caltrops are the answer, as used by the Romans later. However, make sure your |
| 1:34.0 | infantry have Caligai. Nonetheless, a good bang on your shield will certainly help. A charging |
| 1:38.7 | horse will ride into a noisy formed infantry. I have done it into three ranks of ordered |
| 1:43.1 | musket infantry who fired |
| 1:44.8 | blanks at about five meters out. Interesting. My horse would never do it again, however, even though |
| 1:49.9 | I could still fire from horseback afterwards. So not noise shy. I don't know whether that requires |
| 1:55.1 | the horses to be trained for noise, for combat noise. I remember watching something about Napoleonic horses being trained to deal with noise. |
| 2:06.1 | And I actually have an anecdote from opera. |
| 2:08.8 | We were doing an outdoor calm in New Zealand in the 90s, |
| 2:11.7 | and the star of the show was the procession before the bullfight at the end of the opera. |
| 2:18.4 | And we had the very famous New Zealand rider who had won Olympic golds at multiple Olympics. |
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