Huge Roman mosaic uncovered in Cyprus

[Imperial Dave]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3732887/Rare-4th-century-mosaic-chariot-race-Cyprus.html

I am not in the habit of looking at the mail online I hasten to add....got the link from somewhere else!

[Patrick Waterson]

Good find, Dave: interesting is the way the outer horses are linked to the whole arrangement.

[Tim]

Holly, I think you are a secret Daily Mail reader but after all those expensive rulesets you have purchased don't have any money left to actually buy a copy...

Mosaic is really interesting even if the website ain't up to much...

[aligern]

Interesting. It has always perplexed me that rules tend to have four horsed chariots as slower than two horsed , whereas for racing four horses would appear to be faster and more exciting.
Roy

[Erpingham]

Interesting. It has always perplexed me that rules tend to have four horsed chariots as slower than two horsed , whereas for racing four horses would appear to be faster and more exciting.
Roy

It's all about power/weight ratios.  Racing chariots were lightweight.  Your Middle Eastern four horse war chariot was built much more solidly - just compare the wheels.

[Patrick Waterson]

There is also the further consideration of trying to stay in some sort of formation, or at least line, and without bumping into your neighbour - which was not really a constraint in chariot races!

[aligern]

Yes but Anthony. The two horse chariot is pulling a small cart with two men in it. The cart for a four horse chariot is a bit bigger and stouter , but I doubt its twice as heavy . The crew may be  an extra man or two men, but even then it is only doubling the load for a doubling of power input. Of course there is some loss of power because adding a unit of power does not just increase arithmetically. However, Hittites are happily running around with a three man crew, a stout chariot and just two horses...more loading per horse than an Assyrian four horse.
IMO rules writers have bought in to an original myth that four horse chariots are slow...with little or no evidence.
One of the key advances in the study of chariots was , I think, Jed Davies of Chariot Miniatures who made an Assyrian chariot following the pictorial evidence . It turned out to have a cab not much larger than that of a two horse chariot. However, wargamers have been led astray, I fear, by the representation of four horse chariots with huge cabs that four men can stand abreast in.

Maintaining line, Patrick, is a constant for four horse and two horse chariots. A four horse chariot may take more space to turn, but then the turns at the races are quite tight.  However, turning circle does not affect forward speed.

[Erpingham]

But a racing chariot is a one man, stripped back racing frame with top horsepower.  It is going to be faster than any even moderately sturdy, battlefield-capable or road legal vehicle with two or three passengers.  The question is really is a two horse light chariot of say Egyptian or British type much faster than your everyday three or four horse Assyrian rig.  That is a question for those who know their chariots.

[Mark G]

Do not forget axle width and position.

Axle at the back of the cast mean all the rider weight is forward the axle , I.e. Between the wheel and the horse, I.e. Entirely downward onto those two points.  So the horse has to pull all the weight.

Axle half way along the cab allows riders forward and behind the axle, tipping the weight off the pole and horse like a see saw, so the horse has much less weight to pull and the wheel carries more weight.  Hence 2 horse 3 man chariots going just as fast if not faster than 2 man 2 horse chariots.

The converse is speed vs turn stability.

Narrower axles, much stronger (snapping a long vs short stick if same width), but much less stable on tight turns.

Hence battle cab chariots used for formation charges tend to be with wheels tight on the cab, for strength. Light chariots for turning at high speed tend to have axles protruding out further to add stability on a high speed turn where there is not the weight to compensate.

Think of drag racing cars that never turn vs the way side car passengers lean out on a turn.

I think this probably feeds into the 4 wheel box cars of the Sumerians that look impossible to turn as well

[Patrick Waterson]

The question is really is a two horse light chariot of say Egyptian or British type much faster than your everyday three or four horse Assyrian rig.  That is a question for those who know their chariots.

Or those like me who think they know them.

If simply adding horses is sufficient to confer extra speed, then the eight-of-hand and sixteen-of-hand vehicles appearing in parades would have been sovereign on racetrack and battlefield alike.

There are however various considerations balancing power, weight and agility.

1) The more horses you add, the harder they are to control.
One horse is simple, easy and effective from a control point of view.  Two have to be able to work together and understand what each is supposed to be doing, particularly in turns.  Three or four, even more so - and one under-performing horse can hold up or disrupt the whole ensemble.  A four-horse Late Assyrian chariot could probably keep up with an Egyptian two-horse model in a straight race once it got up to speed, but the first direction change would emphasise the difference between the two, as would any attempt at deceleration.

2) Horse breeds differ.
Some horses are happier at speed than others: the traditional English shire horse can manage a gallop, but prefers a steady amble (as, usually, does its owner).  The traditional Arab is a more mettlesome creature, and built for life in the fast lane: it prefers to run.  For chariotry, one needs horses which are 1) obedient 2) enduring and 3) fast, in about that order.  The more horses you add, the more important this order becomes.

3) Chariot designs matter.
Any chariot is a compromise between speed, structural strength and stability.  As Mark indicates, the fast ones tend to have the wheels at the back, while the load-bearers tend to have them at the mid-way point.  From the equine point of view, the mass to be pulled is actually the same in both cases.  Egyptian chariots were light and strong, and could be carried by one man when the country being traversed was not flat and firm.  Assyrian chariots were heavy and strong, but to get them anywhere in difficult terrain required special measures.  My impression is that Assyrian chariots progressed to three and then four horses because they needed the extra horsepower as their designs added mass rather than that they added horses for extra performance and then realised they could make a larger and stronger design with more fighting crew.  Scythed chariots soon settled into a four-horse-one-driver configuration but we have no indication whether their speed was any better than the traditional Assyrian 4-man vehicle, although they did seem to need a long runup to get there.  However, stability and the need not to overstress the vehicle as opposed to equine power output would probably have been the principal limiting factors on performance - all chariots in antiquity had chariot collars around the necks, as opposed to the chests, of the horses, which would tend to restrain and impede the animals, but only if they put their heads down for a gallop.  More horses may well have meant more acceleration for a given load rather than more absolute speed - for a one-man load, would a two-horse pony trap be faster than a one-horse pony trap?

4) Doctrine matters.
I would suggest there is an optimum speed for any given design of chariot, one which maintains a good rate of progress without unduly tiring the horses.  Chariot formations would tend towards this speed, as opposed to the maximum speed of which the horses and vehicle were capable.  There is the further consideration of whether in a charge one desires to go all-out for maximum impact at the expense of subsequent controllability or prefers to keep some sort of formation in order to avoid individual vulnerability post-impact.  In the latter event one's formation will not be going quite so fast or so furiously.

From the above, one might conclude that while four-horse chariots carrying four men could keep pace with two-horse chariots carrying two men, the four-horse chariot will be less nimble and less agile and hence will have a lower convenient operating speed for everything except a charge.  In a charge, doctrine will determine speed, depending upon whether one seeks impact (a la Prince Rupert) or controllability (a la Cromwell).

[aligern]

But rules do not take into account all the variables that Patrick cones up with. Generally they have two horse faster than for horse...in Armati its 15 or 12 inches fir  two versus 9 inches for four. I see no evidence that a four horse rise chariots will be much slower than the two horse types. As I said, Hittites run three men in a stout two horse cart , Egyptians have a lighter looking vehicle, That might make a difference in speed, it might not, as you say, doctrine intervenes, as Mark says the position of the axle and the nature of the yoke are an influence. What I cannot see is that there is any substantial case for adding two horses and two men making the vehicle substantially slower.
As to the racing chariot having a light structure...well so what? Though it is interesting that the racers settled on 4 as the optimum combination of presumably, speed and controllability.
The onus ought to be able n those who see the four horse as slower to come up with evidence, not just the notions that we generally deal in.
The debate reminds me of the 'Why Vikings are loose the order' logic where they were said to need room to swing the axe, which fell as art when it became accepted that the axe was operated in a near vertical plane.
The chariot speed. differential is rubbish because it is based upon the idea that the cab must have been a massive structure....because that is how wargames figure manufacturers made them.
Roy

[Erpingham]

As to the racing chariot having a light structure...well so what? Though it is interesting that the racers settled on 4 as the optimum combination of presumably, speed and controllability.

Because comparing what a racing chariot can do to what a military chariot can do is like using a formula 1 car as an operational model for a Toyota technical.  A racing chariot is operating on a prepared flat surface, it is optimised to accelerate down a short straight and take a hairpin bend with as little loss of pace as possible.  As Patrick has said, a battle chariot has other constraints on optimum design and out-and-out pace and tight cornering might not be top of the list.

[aligern]

No no no, the point is that the racing chariot still takes up the same space and axle width as a two horse or four horse chariot.  Manoeuvreability is not of great moment to rule writers because of a point Patrick made, chariots are operating in a line abreast, or a line astern. They won't be in blocks because those in the middle of a block would be useless. If in line abreast then the whole line has to wheel to manoeuvre or they have to have large intervals to oerform 180% turns within the unit. If, and more likely, they are in line astern then again turning circle is hardly relevant. They are towed along at speed with the archer shooting and the rest of the crew doing what they do. The example that the racing chariot gives us  is footprint for turning ability, though that dies not concern me greatly, its a matter of speed that I take issue over and no one has yet come forward with a convincing argument as to why a four horse rig should be significantly slower than a two horse one. I fear you are just trapped in the conventional view that it has always been thus in  wargames.
Arguments about doctrine don't cut it, because we just do not know if doctrine for the many varieties of chariot differed except for later scythed chariots. The big difference would be weight, if the four horses were pulling more than twice the weight of a two horse we would expect them to be slower, but they are not pulling more than double the weight. I recall Jed saying, when he made the model of the small cab four horse chariot that the examples of them on the reliefs showed small cabs and I recall, the chariots being easily carried. 
Of course, it depends upon the rules used, but no one has even attempted to explain why a Hittite chariot with three crew/ two horses, should be faster across a wargames table than a Babylonian chariot with four horses and four crew??
There was an excellent article in Slingshot a while back, by Alastair, I think, in which he explained how a Sumerian four wheel chariot could turn on a sixpence if the crew leaned to the back, lifted the  front wheels off the ground and made a two wheel turn. Marvellous open mindedness.

[Patrick Waterson]

What I cannot see is that there is any substantial case for adding two horses and two men making the vehicle substantially slower.

Agreed the maximum speed of the vehicle might not be substantially different; the difference in operating speeds (assuming there was one) would lie in the effects of inertia: four men, four horses and a strongly if lightly constructed wooden box with big wheels would generate at least double the inertia of two men, two horses and a strongly if lightly constructed wooden box with small wheels.  The net effect of this would be that prior to the point where everyone thunders forward in an unstoppable charge, the drivers of larger chariots would have wanted to proceed more slowly so they were not spending the whole time accelerating and decelerating to maintain station and making their passengers seasick.  This, if anything, I would regard as a justification for giving larger (3-4 horse) chariots a slower overall movement rate when not charging.

Once the signal sounds and the charge begins, I see no particular reason why four-horse chariots should be noticeably slower than their two-horse counterparts, depending of course on doctrine - do you want a steady line (so everyone can shoot during the approach), or do you want everyone going forward at the best speed they can manage?  Judging by Kadesh reliefs, Egyptians preferred the steady line while Chaldeans went for the all-out charge.  Sargon II of Assyria was an all-out charger when he met the army of Urartu in his eighth campaign; this may have been a one-off for a specific situation (barrelling into the enemy centre straight from the line of march) or it may have been standard Late Assyrian doctrine.

We might also introduce another consideration: suspension, and its effects on crew performance.  Egyptian two-horse chariots had a sprung hide floor which wonderfully damped the bumps and oscillations of chariot travel and permitted a steady(-ish) aiming platform.  I am not sure how the Assyrians sprung the floors of their chariots (does anyone know?), though I assume they would have done so as a solid wooden floor is the worst of all chariot platforms for aiming, shooting and maintaining one's balance generally.  As a general rule, the less well sprung the floor, the slower the effective combat speed of the chariot.

This makes me wonder whether the Sumerian 'battle wagon' four-wheeler, with its fighting compartment up front, had a sprung hide floor for that fighting compartment, or whether the four onagers ever got the contrivance up to a speed that would make such a design feature desirable.

Out of interest, the Chinese seem to have divided chariots into 'light' and 'heavy'.  Does anyone have any useful information on this, design- and operating speed-wise?

[Duncan Head]

Out of interest, the Chinese seem to have divided chariots into 'light' and 'heavy'.

I don't think they really do, or not as a rule anyway. Sunzi for instance speaks of light and heavy che, but his heavy che are baggage-wagons and all war-chariots are  in the "light" class.