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Roman cavalry (Latin: equites Romani) refers to the horse-mounted forces of the Roman army throughout the regal, republican, and imperial eras. In the regal era, the Roman cavalry was a group of 300 soldiers called celeres , tasked with guarding the Kings of Rome .
Roman tradition relates that the Order of Knights was founded by Romulus, who supposedly established a cavalry regiment of 300 men called the Celeres ("Swift Squadron") to act as his personal escort, with each of the three Roman "tribes" (actually voting constituencies) supplying 100 horses.
117–138 AD) that the first regular formations of Roman cataphractarii appear in the record. [8] However, the description by Josephus of heavily armoured, contus-armed Roman cavalry in 67 AD at the siege of Jotapata, during the reign of Vespasian, suggests that cataphracts may have been adopted by the Romans at an considerably earlier date. [9]
Stratelates – A Greek translation for the rank of magister militum that was used in the late Roman and Byzantine armies. Stratopedarches – A term originally used to refer to a Roman camp prefect, it was later used for a Roman or Byzantine general or a Byzantine commander-in-chief. Tablifer – A standard-bearer for the guard cavalry.
From the time of the first Roman emperor, Augustus (ruled 27 BC – AD 14), the term ala was used in the professional imperial army to denote a much smaller (c. 500), purely cavalry unit of the non-citizen auxilia corps: see ala (Roman cavalry unit).
The vast majority of the imperial cavalry was in the regiments of the auxilia, the non-citizen corps of the regular imperial army (whose recruits were mainly imperial subjects who did not hold Roman citizenship (known as peregrini). An ala (lit. ' wing '), which was an elite all-cavalry regiment, contained 480 horse (16 turmae, thus
The decisive Roman victory at Zama in 202 BC, which ended the war, owed much to the Numidian cavalry provided by king Massinissa, which outnumbered the Roman/Latin cavalry fielded by two to one. [8] From then, Roman armies were always accompanied by large numbers of non-Italian cavalry: Numidian light cavalry and, later, Gallic heavy cavalry.
The Roman cavalry was posted on the right wing, the allied Italian cavalry held the left. The left wing thus outnumbered the right by three to one, a practice exploited by Hannibal at Cannae, who drew up his best cavalry to face the much smaller Roman cavalry and quickly routed it. The order of battle of a normal consular army could be ...