Sassanid Cataphract Third Century AD

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   Although we have little information, we
believe that the Aryan tribes, of which the Mitanni and Kassites were
two, raised horses. We know that in the last century of their
domination the Assyrians had large horses capable of bearing great
weights; something that could not be accomplished without planned
breeding. However, it was the Medes who left the first written proof of
horse breeding. They bred racing horses, whose blood still runs in the
veins of today’s Arab horses; from the seventh century BC, they started
breeding larger horses for heavy cavalry, and these were known as
Nisaean chargers. North of the Medes’ territory was the state of the
Massagetaes, a people of Iranian extraction. It is not known whether
they bought horses from the Medes or raised them themselves, but the
first mentions of armoured soldiers riding on large armoured horses,
dated to the sixth century BC, have been traced to them. Farther north
were the related Sarmatians; in the third century BC, making use of
their heavy armoured cavalry, they had destroyed the Scythian state.
When Media, neighbouring Parthia and more distant Armenia became part
of the Persian Empire, the Nisaean charger was used throughout Asia
Minor. 

With the growing aggressiveness of the role
of cavalry, protection of the rider and horse became important. This
was especially true of peoples who treated cavalry as the basic arm of
the military. One condition had to be fulfilled for equipping a heavy
cavalryman: a horse strong enough to carry the weight of its own and
the rider’s armour. In the third and second centuries BC, the
Sarmatians, Armenians and Parthians had such horses and were the first
to have fully armoured riders. The Greeks called these warriors the
cataphractii (covered over). Their equipment was very expensive, and
only the aristocracy could afford it: the cataphracts were therefore
the elite cavalry of the Parthians and, from the third century AD, the
Sassanids. Their principal weapons were a long straight sword and a
lance nearly 4 m/13 ft long. The lance was similar to the Greek sarissa
or the Byzantine kontos, and in combat riders held it with both hands.
The cataphracts used a dense formation in battle, horse to horse, and
attacked at the speed their heavy equipment allowed – a slow trot. 

On the banks of the Euphrates, at the
Ancient Greek location of Dura Europos (fourth century BC, destroyed by
the Sassanids in AD256) a well-preserved set of horse’s armour of this
period was found. It includes scales for protecting the neck, and
larger plates for the animal’s head (chamfrons). The armour was made of
iron scales approximately 6×4.5 cm/2½ x 2 in and about 4 mm thick. They
were rounded at the bottom, had two holes on either side, and four more
arranged in a square at the top. The scales were held together by
bronze wire threaded through the side holes. A set of armour consisted
of about 1,300 scales, arranged as 50 scales in 16 lines on each side
of the horse. Armour like this, together with the rest of the horse’s
equipment, could weigh up to 40 kg/88 lb. There was no armour under the
saddle.

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