The Horse That Ate the Legion: Rome’s Cavalry's Triumph Over the Infantry

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The cavalry 'wings' that probed ahead of the Roman Army played a key role in its campaigns of conquest, masking its marching flanks and seeking to encircle enemies in battle. However, at the very beginning of Rome’s history, it didn’t even have a cavalry, and relied on Greek-style phalanx formations instead. It began as a small cavalry arm provided by the citizen nobility, but this had proved inadequate before the end of the Republic, and Julius Caesar's cavalry was largely made up of hired allies. During the Early Principate, the armies under Augustus continued in this vein, incorporating large numbers of non-citizen auxiliary cavalry units. The provinces came under increasing attack throughout and following the chaotic mid-3rd century, and Rome took lessons from its 'barbarian' enemies in how to improve its military mobility, adopting both new, heavily armored shock cavalry and horse-archers, and vitally shaping the tactics employed during the Dominate.

Today’s guest is Mike Bishop, author of “Roman Cavalry Tactics.” We discuss how the cavalry grew to become the dominant force in Roman field armies by the twilight of the Western Empire. Eight newly commissioned artwork plates and a rich selection of artefact photographs and archaeological sources provide vivid detail and insight, helping to bring to the life the evolving tactics, clothing and weaponry of Rome's cavalry from the 2nd century BC through to the 5th century AD.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Scott here with another episode of the History on Plug podcast. When you think of a Roman soldier,
0:08.7	you probably think of an infantryman, a man dressed in his segment and metal breastplate over a red tunic
0:13.2	and metal helmet, holding his gladius and his rowing spear and a shield. If you jump forward
0:16.8	a thousand years and ask you to imagine a medieval knight, you probably imagine somebody
0:21.0	on horseback. He has a couch lance. He has a much longer sword so he can strike his enemy from his
0:25.6	horse, or a mace, or a club, or another rage weapon. This difference in mental images
0:30.0	speaks to the fact that a horse was pretty unimportant for early Roman warfare, but by the end of
0:34.9	the empire in early Middle Ages, the horse was absolutely central
0:37.9	to how Roman fought battles. That's because the earliest Roman cavalrys only consisted of wealthy
0:42.7	citizens who could pay for a horse and to buy the equipment, and this was probably a wealthy
0:46.6	landowner or politician who didn't spend most of this time on horseback, but by the end of the
0:50.5	empire, a Roman cavalryman can be descended from a Germanic tribesman or step nomad who had been riding horses since birth,
0:57.0	and the army needed much more mobility to try to maintain order on its collapsing frontier and ride out quickly to different flashpoints.
1:03.4	The cavalry became more important, also because Rome was a genius at absorbing its enemies' military technology and tactics.
1:08.9	It copied the heavily armored shot cavalry and horse archers from the Parthians,
1:12.8	made their army faster, more mobile, and more deadly.
1:15.2	Today's episode I'm speaking to Mike Bishop, author of Roman cavalry tactics.
1:18.7	We discuss how the cavalry grew to become the dominant force in Roman field armies
1:22.2	by the twilight of the Western Empire,
1:23.9	and why the idea of knights and jousting competitions owes its beginning to the Romans.
1:28.1	Hope you enjoy this discussion with Mike Bishop.
1:32.4	And one more thing before we get started with this episode, a quick break for a word from our sponsors.
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