Cataphract - Etymology

Etymology

The genesis is undoubtedly Greek. Kataphraktos (or various transliterations such as: Cataphraktos, Cataphractos, Katafraktos, etc.) is composed of the Greek root words: κατά, "completely", plus φρακτός, "covered, protected", which is interpreted along the lines of "fully armored" or "closed from all sides". The term first appears substantively in Latin, in the writings of Sisennus: "… loricatos, quos cataphractos vocant …", meaning "… the armored, whom they call cataphract …".

There appears to be some confusion about the term in the late Roman period, as armored cavalry men of any sort that were traditionally referred to as Equites in the Republican period later became exclusively designated as "cataphracts". Vegetius, writing in the fourth century, described armor of any sort as "cataphracts" – which at the time of writing would have been either lorica segmentata or lorica hamata. Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman soldier and historian of the fourth century, mentions the: "cataphracti equites (quos clibanarios dictitant)" – the "cataphract cavalry which they regularly call Clibanarii" (implying that clibanarii is a foreign term, not used in Classical Latin).

Clibanarii is a Latin word for "mail-clad riders", itself a derivative of the Greek: κλιβανοφόροι Klibanophoroi, meaning "camp oven bearers" from the Greek word κλίβανος, meaning "camp oven" or "metallic furnace"; the word has also been tentatively linked to the Persian word for a warrior, "grivpan". However, it appears with more frequency in Latin sources than in Greek throughout antiquity. A twofold origin of the Greek term has been proposed: either that it was a humorous reference to the heavily armored cataphracts as men encased in armor who would heat up very quickly much like in an oven; or that it was further derived from the Old Persian word *griwbanar (or *Grivpanvar), itself composed of the Iranian roots griva-pana-bara, which translates into "neck-guard wearer".

Roman chroniclers and historians Arrian, Aelian and Asclepiodotus use the term cataphract in their military treatises to describe any type of cavalry with either partial or full horse and rider armor. The Byzantine historian Leo Diaconis calls them πανσιδήρους ἱππότας, which would translate as "fully iron-clad knights".

There is, therefore, some doubt as to what exactly cataphracts were in late antiquity, and whether or not they were distinct from clibanarii. Some historians theorise that cataphracts and clibanarii were one and the same type of cavalry, designated differently simply as a result of their divided geographical locations and local linguistic preferences. Cataphract-like cavalry under the command of the Western Roman Empire, where Latin was the official tongue, always bore the Latinized variant of the original Greek name, Cataphractarii. The cataphract-like cavalry stationed in the Eastern Roman Empire had no exclusive term ascribed to them, with both the Latin variant and the Greek innovation Clibanarii being used in historical sources, largely because of the Byzantine's heavy Greek influence (especially after the 7th century, when Latin ceased to be the official language). Contemporary sources, however, sometimes imply that clibanarii were in fact a heavier type of cavalryman, or formed special-purpose units (such as the late Equites Sagittarii Clibanarii, a Roman equivalent of horse archers, first mentioned in the Notitia Dignitatum). Therefore, either side can be argued, but given the fact that "cataphract" was used for more than a millennium by various cultures, it stands to reason that different types of fully armored cavalry in the armies of different nations were assigned this name by Greek and Roman scholars not familiar with the native terms for such cavalry.