Roman Cavalry - Early Cavalry (to Ca. 338 BC)

Early Cavalry (to Ca. 338 BC)

Romulus supposedly established a cavalry regiment of 300 men called the Celeres ("the Swift Squadron") to act as his personal escort, with each of the three tribes supplying a centuria (century; company of a 100 men), This cavalry regiment was supposedly doubled in size to 600 men by King Tarquinius Priscus (conventional dates 616-578 BC). According to Livy, Servius Tullius also established a further 12 centuriae of cavalry. But this is unlikely, as it would have increased the cavalry to 1,800 horse, implausibly large compared to 8,400 infantry (in peninsular Italy, cavalry typically constituted about 8% of a field army). This is confirmed by the fact that in the early Republic the cavalry fielded remained 600-strong (2 legions with 300 horse each).

An important question is whether the royal cavalry was drawn exclusively from the ranks of the Patricians (patricii), the aristocracy of early Rome, which was purely hereditary. This is certainly the mainstream view among historians, starting with Mommsen. (However, Cornell considers the supporting evidence tenuous.) Since the cavalry was probably a patrician preserve, it follows that it probably played a critical part in the coup against the monarchy. Indeed, Alfoldi suggests that the coup was carried out by the Celeres themselves. However, the patrician monopoly on the cavalry seems to have ended by around 400 BC, when the 12 centuriae of equites additional to the original 6 of regal origin were probably formed. Most likely patrician numbers were no longer sufficient to supply the ever-growing needs of the cavalry. It is widely agreed that the new centuriae were open to non-patricians, on the basis of a property rating.

According to the ancient Greek historian Polybius, whose Histories (written ca. 140s BC) are the earliest substantial extant account of the Republic, Roman cavalry was originally unarmoured, wearing only a tunic and armed with a light spear and ox-hide shield which were of low quality and quickly deteriorated in action.