Chariots as equid battering rams

[Erpingham]

As somebody who has what, in a less cruel world, would be a professional interest in fiction I'd like to chip in on this.
It is my experience that when discussing 'realistic' what we're really saying is 'plays to our preconceptions' 

The issue actually goes back a stage - what shapes our preconceptions?   Surely, it relates to our accumulated  knowledge about the subject or context?  The risk is that lack of a reflective approach to our preconceptions leads to an abandonment of evidence-based analysis in favour of a dogmatic approach.   

To go back to the case in question, as Xenophon had seen scythed chariots up close in his own army and fought against them, his description of their operation is probably "realistic", if not absolutely accurate, even if the context is made up.
 

[Erpingham]

I was hunting around for something about the historicity of the Cyropaedia

For those who haven't already read it, this article in Encyclopaedia Iranica is a good place to start.

[Patrick Waterson]

I have read this paragraph 4 times now.
It seems to boil down to, "because the fiction is realistic, we can consider his fiction to be reliable (history)."
Do you really mean that?

Um ... not quite.  I mean that the passage about chariotry at Thymbra is not 'fiction' but an accurate portrayal of chariot warfare.  Whatever his inspiration when he wrote, he achieved accuracy, and that is what essentially concerns (or should concern) us.  I am not bothered about the rest of the work; it is this particular bit which is relevant for chariotry, and it is validated courtesy of the Senones at Sentinum.

As somebody who has what, in a less cruel world, would be a professional interest in fiction I'd like to chip in on this.
It is my experience that when discussing 'realistic' what we're really saying is 'plays to our preconceptions' 

Astute observation, Jim.  However in this case (Xenophon's description of chariot activities at Thymbra) we have a different criterion, namely that it essentially matches the attested behaviour of Gallic chariots at Sentinum.

To go back to the case in question, as Xenophon had seen scythed chariots up close in his own army and fought against them, his description of their operation is probably "realistic", if not absolutely accurate, even if the context is made up.

Indeed, although he does not seem to draw from experience with regard to this passage.   It is noteworthy that some of the scythed chariot drivers at Thymbra did not fancy their chances and so flinched away from impact - this detail alone is an indication that Xenophon did not extrapolate from his own time; his Anabasis and Hellenica have no references to scythed chariots chickening out of a charge against infantry, or at least none that I have been able to find.

I was hunting around for something about the historicity of the Cyropaedia

For those who haven't already read it, this article in Encyclopaedia Iranica is a good place to start.

It is worth noting the point made there about Xenophon showing his Persian tradition roots.  Everything about the Cyropaedia points to his having acquired his information from Cyrus and his table companions, notably from the Šāh-nāma traditions, with possible supplemental details from Antisthenes.

However the fictionality or otherwise of the Cyropaedia is something of a red herring.  What is noteworthy is how the use of chariots by Cyrus at Thymbra effectively matches the use of chariotry by the Gauls at Sentinum.  This, as Mark pointed out, suggests a role for chariots as an anti-cavalry force, subsequently operating against enemy infantry once the enemy cavalry is out of the way.

We can probably backtrack from this to the days when chariotry's first task was to defeat opposing chariotry and then deal with, or help to deal with, enemy infantry.  Noteworthy is the manner in which this was done: by shock, or by the imminent threat of shock collapsing the opponent's morale.

[Edit: corrected spelling of 'sugests' to 'suggests']

[Patrick Waterson]

... his Anabasis and Hellenica have no references to scythed chariots chickening out of a charge against infantry, or at least none that I have been able to find.

Apart, of course, from the big one at Cunaxa:

"As for the enemy's chariots, some of them plunged through the lines of their own troops, others, however, through the Greek lines, but without charioteers. And whenever the Greeks saw them coming, they would open a gap for their passage; one fellow, to be sure, was caught, like a befuddled man on a race-course, yet it was said that even he was not hurt in the least, nor, for that matter, did any other single man among the Greeks get any hurt whatever in this battle, save that some one on the left wing was reported to have been hit by an arrow."  - Xenophon Anabasis I.8.20

This, interestingly, differs from the charge at Thymbra in some important respects, indicating that Xenophon was using a source other than his Cunaxa experience.  The Greeks, instead of standing in deep formation, are advancing in shallow formation and furthermore making noise to scare the horses (Diodorus has Alexander's infantry do this at Gaugamela; whether it actually worked is anybody's guess; Tissaphernes' cavalry were apparently not bothered at Cunaxa).  The scythed chariots which penetrate the Greek line at Cunaxa are those from which the crews have already departed, whereas at Thymbra they are those whose crews are best motivated.

The essential point that Xenophon is using a source for Thymbra other than his own experience remains; Cunaxa does however give us an instance of Persian scythed chariots declining combat with opposing infantry, the opposing infantry being Greeks they were encountering for the first time. 'Greek fright' was a major consideration at Cunaxa, and subsequent Achaemenid monarchs began using Greeks as the cutting edge of their armies.

[Jim Webster]

Astute observation, Jim.  However in this case (Xenophon's description of chariot activities at Thymbra) we have a different criterion, namely that it essentially matches the attested behaviour of Gallic chariots at Sentinum.

But is it anything like Sentinum?

"Making a third charge, they were carried too far, and whilst they were now fighting desperately in the midst of the enemy's cavalry they were thrown into consternation by a new style of warfare. Armed men mounted on chariots and baggage wagons came on with a thunderous noise of horses and wheels, and the horses of the Roman cavalry, unaccustomed to that kind of uproar, became uncontrollable through fright; the cavalry after their victorious charges, were now scattered in frantic terror; horses and men alike were overthrown in their blind flight. Even the standards of the legionaries were thrown into confusion, and many of the front rank men were crushed by the weight of the horses and vehicles dashing through the lines. "

https://archive.org/stream/remainsofoldlati02warmuoft#page/552/mode/2up  doesn't mention the infantry confusion

we do get hints of a very different battle http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Florus/Epitome/1C*.html#XII

It's perfectly possible reading Livy that the Romans were disorganised by their own routing cavalry.
Also if vehicles are 'dashing through the lines' but only crush front rank men, then they're not going that far through the lines. It sounds more like runaway baggage wagons side-swiping them as panicked drivers bail out and the animals pulling the wagons try to turn to avoid the infantry but at the last minute. It's also possible that Livy, not being an eyewitness, not talking to eye witnesses and forced to rely on earlier sources since lost, got carried away with the purple prose. After all he wants things to look bad so that the general's dedication looks even more spectacular
Certainly it sounds like nothing described by Xenophon

[Patrick Waterson]

I did outline the essentials a few posts back, but there is no harm reiterating them here.

Stage 1
At Sentinum, the Gallic chariots are in reserve, and they stay out of the initial cavalry fight, which suggests they are intended to hook into the Roman infantry (perhaps its flank, as suggested by Richard) once the Gallic cavalry have chased off their Roman counterparts.  Except they do not manage to chase off their Roman counterparts, so the chariots are released into the fray and duly see off the mounted Romans.

At Thymbra, the Persian chariots are in reserve, and they stay out of the initial cavalry fight, but then are committed to see off the opposing cavalry and chariotry, which they duly perform.

Stage 2
At Sentinum, the Gallic chariots, with the Roman cavalry in full flight, plough into the Roman infantry.

At Thymbra, the Persian chariots, with the Lydian army in flight, plough into the Egyptian infantry.


In each case, the chariotry serves as a means of dispersing the opposing mounted and then goes on to attack the opposing foot - with not a trace of skirmishing in sight.  This is particularly interesting in the case of the Gallic chariotry, which, as at Telamon and the 'elephant victory', comes in two flavours.

The translator's 'front rank men' are, in Latin, as previously mentioned, actually 'antesignani', the 'men before the standards'.  The standards were with the triarii, so the Gallic chariots made holes in quite a bit of the Roman formation.  I did check the possibility of Roman cavalry doing the disruption, but in Livy's text the legionaries are definitely disorganised by the 'horses and vehicles' crashing through their formation, not by 'cavalry and vehicles' or just 'cavalry'.

I would not use porphyric prose as an excuse for dismissing a battle description; what matters are the events.  Nor would I oppose Accius' superficial Fabulae Praetextae to Livy's account.  While playwrights sometimes let drop snippets of useful information (Aristophanes is quite handy in this regard), this does not appear to be one of those occasions.

[Edit: Adjusted incorrect 'Cunaxa' to correct 'Thymbra' - got up too late this morning!]

[Jim Webster]

I did outline the essentials a few posts back, but there is no harm reiterating them here.

Stage 1
At Sentinum, the Gallic chariots are in reserve, and they stay out of the initial cavalry fight, which suggests they are intended to hook into the Roman infantry (perhaps its flank, as suggested by Richard) once the Gallic cavalry have chased off their Roman counterparts.  Except they do not manage to chase off their Roman counterparts, so the chariots are released into the fray and duly see off the mounted Romans.

if you are going to use the example, use all the example, remember the baggage wagons

[Patrick Waterson]

if you are going to use the example, use all the example, remember the baggage wagons

Except they are not 'baggage wagons' - they are essedis carrisque - and as previously explained the essedum is a war chariot (and often used by later Roman authors to signify a scythed chariot) while a carrus is usually considered to be a transport cart or carriage but at Sentinum they are occupied by armed men and keep pace with the essedi, which is unusual for a baggage wagon.

[Jim Webster]

if you are going to use the example, use all the example, remember the baggage wagons

Except they are not 'baggage wagons' - they are essedis carrisque - and as previously explained the essedum is a war chariot (and often used by later Roman authors to signify a scythed chariot) while a carrus is usually considered to be a transport cart or carriage but at Sentinum they are occupied by armed men and keep pace with the essedi, which is unusual for a baggage wagon.

no more unusual than mixing scythed and and unscythed chariots

After all the use or war wagons in combat is actually pretty common and the Hussites managed to use them offensively.
The problem with comparing the two battles is that both are disputed
One as to whether it actually happened at all, and one as to whether what was said to happen did happen as described by somebody who was born some centuries later
At least Xenophon had seen chariots in action and knew what they were like, Livy doesn't even have that. Technically he might have talked to somebody who had been at the Battle of Zela

[Erpingham]

I do get frustrated when we "forget" previous discussions and have to repeat them.

At Sentinum, the gauls charged the Roman cavalry and followed up into the disordered infantry.  In the Cyropaedia account, they attack infantry.  There is no mention of scythed chariots at Sentinum.  Essedum is a standard latin word for a light chariot (Celtic in origin) - there is no reason to assume it has scythes. 

As to where Xenophon got his description of scythed chariots from, it seems far more likely that they came from his own experience of working with, and fighting against, the weapon than some mysterious "lost source".  The difference between the actual performance and the fictional one is more likely to fit the idealising nature of the description - this is how it should have been, with better crews.

[Erpingham]

In pursuit of sources, I noted this article in a blog referenced in the concurrent discussion of scythed chariots.  Not much for analysis but useful for its references to classical descriptions.

[RichT]

Yes everything worth saying has been said, several times.

I did check the possibility of Roman cavalry doing the disruption, but in Livy's text the legionaries are definitely disorganised by the 'horses and vehicles' crashing through their formation, not by 'cavalry and vehicles' or just 'cavalry'.

That is incorrect, the Roman infantry lines are disordered by the flight of the Roman cavalry, see my post #180 in this thread. The sequence is clear:
- Roman cavalry chase off Gallic cavalry
- Gallic chariots (and wagons? or two types of chariot? or one type of chariot described artistically?) chase off Roman cavalry
- rout of Roman cavalry disorders legions
- Gallic chariots attack disordered legions (maybe from the flank?) and cause losses

I see no similarities between Sentinum and Thymbra, other than both involving chariots v. infantry in some form. Abradatas' chariots at Thymbra are scythed, are in front of the centre, charge enemy chariots, in most cases pursue them, and just a few ("it was only the personal friends and mess-mates of Abradatas who pressed home the charge with him") crash into the Egyptian infantry, where they are destroyed after causing some losses. At Sentinum, the chariots rout the Roman cavalry, whose flight disorders the legions, which the chariots exploit by attacking them. There are really no similarities at all.

Maybe if we defined 'skirmishing' to mean not just 'shooting from a distance' but also 'shooting or threatening from a distance until disorder or weak points present themselves, at which point optionally charging into the weak points to exploit' then we could all agree that chariots skirmish, and wind this thread up?

[Erpingham]

Maybe if we defined 'skirmishing' to mean not just 'shooting from a distance' but also 'shooting or threatening from a distance until disorder or weak points present themselves, at which point optionally charging into the weak points to exploit' then we could all agree that chariots skirmish, and wind this thread up?

I think we can wind up the main thread topic.  The "horses as battering rams" is based on a misunderstanding that, as a horse will usually come off best in an accidental collision with an individual human at speed, two or four horses will be unhurt ploughing into a tight crowd of people armed and intent on doing harm.  Or that any chariot driver could manage to drive horses into other horses flat out without them straying off line, or that such a collision would just lead to a little light bruising and an exchange of strong words. 

I think we have explored the role of lighter chariots quite well (once we disposed of the fallacy that they were just smaller battering rams) and may have gone as far as we can on scythed chariots.  Where I think we may still have work to do is on the heavy chariot and on chariot tactics outside Europe and the Middle East, though they are doubtless worthy of their own threads another time.

[Patrick Waterson]

At Sentinum, the gauls charged the Roman cavalry and followed up into the disordered infantry.

Although it is by no means clear, Richard's insistence notwithstanding, that they followed Roman cavalry into the infantry.  I did at first think it was a 'converted charge', but considering further why the chariots abstained from combat for two clashes of both sides' cavalry, it became apparent they were being retained specifically for an anti-infantry role.  Hence, once they had helped to see off the Roman cavalry, they went ahead with their anti-infantry activities.  The rout of the Roman cavalry does seem to have worried the Roman infantry, but not to have created any ready-made gaps.

We may note in passing that had Roman maniples fought with gaps in between, the chariots (and any Roman cavalry heading by preference through their own lines) would simply have passed through the gaps rather than tearing their way through the antepilani (hastati and principes).  So here is another passage which indirectly indicates that Roman infantry fought with gapless lines.

In the Cyropaedia account, they attack infantry.  There is no mention of scythed chariots at Sentinum.  Essedum is a standard latin word for a light chariot (Celtic in origin) - there is no reason to assume it has scythes.

More or less what I was going to say, although for a different reason.  The Thymbra account deserves mention, though, because there, as at Sentinum, the chariots attack cavalry and then move on to attacking infantry.

As to where Xenophon got his description of scythed chariots from, it seems far more likely that they came from his own experience of working with, and fighting against, the weapon than some mysterious "lost source".

If that were so, his supposedly fictionalised account of Thymbra would have the Egyptians beating their spears against their shields to scare the chariot horses.

The difference between the actual performance and the fictional one is more likely to fit the idealising nature of the description - this is how it should have been, with better crews.

First point, there is no reason to suppose his account of Thymbra is fictional.  Second point, the chariots at Cunaxa which went through the Greek lines were the crewless ones, so if he is extrapolating from experience the chariots crashing into the Egyptians would be those whose crews had managed a 'preliminary athletic departure'.

I think we can wind up the main thread topic.  The "horses as battering rams" is based on a misunderstanding that, as a horse will usually come off best in an accidental collision with an individual human at speed, two or four horses will be unhurt ploughing into a tight crowd of people armed and intent on doing harm.

Which somewhat over-represents the average capability of Asiatic infantry in general.  1) They were not necessarily a 'tight crowd' and 2) their intent was often more influenced by the question of apprehending rather than inflicting harm.

Or that any chariot driver could manage to drive horses into other horses flat out without them straying off line, or that such a collision would just lead to a little light bruising and an exchange of strong words.

We do not know that they were going 'flat out'.  Those of us paying attention to past posts would have remebered that the existence of chariot runners suggests a pace somewhat less than breakneck speed.

I think we have explored the role of lighter chariots quite well (once we disposed of the fallacy that they were just smaller battering rams) ...

We have not realy explored the role of light chariots at all, and if there was any such disposal activity, where is it?  And what fallacy?  All this expostulation began when the lighter chariotry at Sentinum was shown to have acted as 'smaller battering rams' and not as skirmishers in any shape or form.

[Patrick Waterson]

Yes everything worth saying has been said, several times.

I did check the possibility of Roman cavalry doing the disruption, but in Livy's text the legionaries are definitely disorganised by the 'horses and vehicles' crashing through their formation, not by 'cavalry and vehicles' or just 'cavalry'.

That is incorrect, the Roman infantry lines are disordered by the flight of the Roman cavalry, see my post #180 in this thread.

Let us examine the text.  I am using Benjamin Oliver Foster's Latin for Livy's X.28.11:

turbata hinc etiam signa legionum multique impetu equorum ac vehiculorum raptorum per agmen obtriti antesignani

Ben Foster renders this as:

from them the disorder was communicated to the standards of the legions, and many of the first line were trodden underfoot, as horses and chariots swept through their ranks.

OK, strictly speaking the hinc (from which disorder arose) does indeed refer to the preceding 'improvida fuga' of the Roman cavalry, but there is nothing I can see in the text or its sense to suggest any penetration of the Roman infantry by the Roman cavalry.  (If there is, please point it out.)  The disordering effect was moral rather than physical; the physical penetration - and the level of disorder which encouraged the Gallic infantry to attack - came from the 'impetu equorum ac vehiculorum raptorum per agmen' which 'obtriti' the 'antesignani', i.e. the impetus of the horses and vehicles tearing through the 'agmen' (formation) crushing the hastati and principes (not all of them obviously, as there were plenty left for the Gallic infantry to attack).

Maybe if we defined 'skirmishing' to mean not just 'shooting from a distance' but also 'shooting or threatening from a distance until disorder or weak points present themselves, at which point optionally charging into the weak points to exploit' then we could all agree that chariots skirmish, and wind this thread up?

Except that the Gallic chariots at Sentinum do not do this.  The impression Livy gives is that they move straight into the assault on the Roman infantry without pause once the Roman cavalry is out of the way.  This is reminiscent of the kind of approach we see in the 'elephant victory', where the chariots head straight for Antiochus' line without hesitation, deviation or repetition (and then tragicomically back again into their own lines once they see the elephants).