Carthaginian horse armour?

[Andreas Johansson]

As part of deciding what next, I was looking at FiB's Carthaginians*, and notice they do a code of heavy cavalry on armoured horses. This surprised me a little, because I don't recall seeing or hearing of Carthaginian horse armour before. Is there a historical justification for it?


* Apart from the whole painting business, I'm short four figures from a legal DBMM 200 army, and a few more from a sensible one.

[Imperial Dave]

only 4? tsk....call yourself a wargamer 

[Jim Webster]

As part of deciding what next, I was looking at FiB's Carthaginians*, and notice they do a code of heavy cavalry on armoured horses. This surprised me a little, because I don't recall seeing or hearing of Carthaginian horse armour before. Is there a historical justification for it?

wasn't there a picture in an Osprey once?

[Erpingham]

This one?

[Jim Webster]

That's the one

[Duncan Head]

The original idea comes from Peter Connolly's Hannibal and the Enemies of Rome - you can see it on the cover picture. (It's also incorporated in his Greece and Rome at War.) The idea, along with the mailed pikeman, was copied in the Osprey.

I cannot stress too strongly that there is no evidence for it whatsoever.

[Andreas Johansson]

I cannot stress too strongly that there is no evidence for it whatsoever.

Thanks

One thing less to buy ...

[Ade G]

I cannot stress too strongly that there is no evidence for it whatsoever.

Get off the fence Duncan...

[Jim Webster]

I cannot stress too strongly that there is no evidence for it whatsoever.

Get off the fence Duncan...

Just tell it as it is 

Did anybody ever produce figures for Ptolemaic cavalry with horse armour for which evidence was found?

[gavindbm]

I cannot stress too strongly that there is no evidence for it whatsoever.

Get off the fence Duncan...

Just tell it as it is 

Did anybody ever produce figures for Ptolemaic cavalry with horse armour for which evidence was found?

Perhaps the Carthaginian ones would work 😀

[Erpingham]

One thing that fascinates me having looked at numerous Carthaginian cavalry reconstructions in puruit of Jim's Osprey picture is the way this non-existent armour has been interpreted.  Some show a skirt of what looks like fabric, others go for a bronze cataphract style.  I also note a tendency for carthaginian cavalry officers to ride horses covered in entire lion skins (including head).  I wonder if there is any evidence for that either?

[RichT]

Peter Connolly's original 'Carthaginian peytral' is (I assume) based on one of the Pergamon reliefs and is therefore (presumably) real Seleucid cavalry armour (perhaps cataphract armour).



Connolly seems to have believed that the Carthaginian army (at least in 2PW period) was a typical Hellenistic army, so it was fair to reconstruct it with typical Hellenistic equipment (sarissa phalanx, armoured cavalry and all). How well founded a belief this was remains open to doubt (to put it mildly).

On the other hand, Carthaginian cavalry have to look like something and AFAIK we have precious little idea what that something was (Duncan can no doubt fill in gaps here - there is the figure in AMPW). If making toy soldiers, something a bit more vanilla than armoured cavalry would probably be a better choice. As it is these armoured cavalry seem to have become another of those wargamer's truths, as we were discussing a year or two back.

[DBS]

Without wishing to slander the memory of Peter Connolly, for whom I shall forever be indebted for fuelling my fascination with the ancient military history as a child, I suspect - to state the potentially obvious - that he fell victim to two contentious issues.  The first is the cursed Loeb translation's Punic "pikemen", which, if taken at face value, reinforced the notion that it was a Hellenistic army.  (And after all, Carthage had won the Mercenaries' War once its army was reformed by a Greek chap...)  Secondly, there is Livy's tale of Macedonians at Zama.  Hellenistic troops reinforcing Hellenistic troops.  Add to that the idea that a well dressed Carthaginian noble is not going to miss the opportunity to bling himself to match Ptolemaic or Seleucid nobles and you end up with this sort of thing.  After all, Xenophon had previously advocated certain eastern accessories for the well dressed cavalryman about Athens, which obviously were not widely in use by Greeks, but he thought should be.

I think the offending Osprey was the very first that I owned, but even as a schoolboy in 1982, the thing about that plate that annoyed me was the depiction of a "mounted standard bearer of the Sacred Band"; I might not be discerning enough to question the horse's armour at that age (and it matched St Peter's ideas, so must be right), but I knew damned well that the Sacred Band was a) a heavy infantry formation, so why a mounted standard bearer, and b) was not actually attested as being in existence by the time of the Punic Wars...  I therefore rationalised it as perhaps a reasonable portrayal, sans standard, of a Punic general.