Cataphract - Related Cavalry

Related Cavalry

In addition to ordinary cataphract types, the Byzantine Empire sometimes fielded a very heavy type of cavalry known as a clibanarius, literally meaning "boiler boy" (pl. clibanarii), but more properly translating into "camp oven bearer", a humorous reference to that fact that men encased in metal armor would almost certainly feel incredibly hot and perspire rapidly, much like an oven. The clibinarii are vaguely attested in Eastern Roman sources, but there is dispute over their actual role and difference from cataphracts in warfare.

The 5th-century Notitia Dignitatum mentions a specialist unit of clibanarii known as the Equites Sagittarii Clibanarii - evidently a unit of heavily armored horse archers based on the heavy cavalry of contemporary Persian armies.

An anonymous 6th-century Roman military treatise also proposed one unusual, experimental unit of scythed chariots with cataphract lancers mounted on the chariot's horses, though there is no evidence that this unit ever materialised.

Nations in the East occasionally fielded cataphracts mounted on camels rather than on horses (the Romans also adopted this practice, calling camel mounted cavalrymen dromedarii), with obvious benefits for use in arid regions, as well as the fact that the stench of the camels, if upwind, was a guaranteed way of panicking enemy cavalry units that they came into contact with. Balanced against this, however, is the relatively greater vulnerability of camel-mounted units to caltrops, due to their softly padded soles on their feet, unlike the hardened hooves of horses.

Ancient war elephants, although not cavalry per se, fulfilled a role very similar to that of heavy cavalry such as cataphracts in their use in antiquity. War elephants correspondingly were also heavily armored much like cataphracts, particularly those fielded by the Seleucid Empire, Ancient Carthage and the Persian Empires (see Persian war elephants), who incorporated scale armor and large-crested howdahs (or large carriages mounted directly on the back) onto the elephants, which effectively turned them into mobile missile platforms that could also charge enemy positions. This is analogous to the Eastern cataphract horse archers mentioned previously, who carried both bows and lances, and alternated between missile and charge attacks as the terms of a battle dictated. The three to four men manning the howdah, including the driver, known as a mahout, were armed with sarissae, javelins, pikes or bows to harass enemy soldiers who attempted to close in and attack the elephants. The tough hide of elephants afforded them considerable protection, and the scale armor worn on top of this made them almost invulnerable to missiles such as arrows, bolts, stones and so forth. Cavalry were also easily frightened by the smell and presence of the elephants, particularly if they had never been exposed to them previously, which allowed them to be used as living, mobile fortifications to counter cavalry manoeuvres on the battlefield in addition to light artillery platforms.