: Well, for one thing, Roman cavaly's effectiveness was
: limited by the fact that they didn't have any
: stirrups, but it goes deeper than that. The Romans
: never seem to have really figured out how to use
: cavalry effectively, and Roman cavalry seems to have
: been much less effective than their equipment and
: numbers would suggest. In fact, during the Second
: Punic War, Roman Heavy Cavalry units were routinely
: trounced by smaller numbers of Hasdrubal's Numidian
: Light Cavalry, which frequently led to the Roman
: flanks giving way, and so causing some of the greatest
: Carthaginian victories of the war (such as at Cannae,
: where such tactics destroyed the largest army Rome had
: ever fielded up to that point: 8 double Legions;
: nearly 80,000 men.)
: I'm not that knowledgeable about the Byzantines, but Late
: Roman cataphracts possessed too much heavy armour to
: be able to charge and still remain in formation. In
: fact, they usually trotted into battle with lances
: levelled, rather than doing true charges, and perhaps
: it would be more accurate to think of them as a kind
: of mounted phalanx rather than as shock cavalry. All
: this meant that, while a cataphract unit was difficult
: to break, it was also not very manoeuverable, which a
: cavalry unit really needed to be, since flank attacks
: were the main method by which cavalry cound even the
: odds against opposing infantry blocks. The Romans
: never seem to have been able to produce shock cavalry
: as effective and well trained as Alexander's
: Companions, for example.
All said and done very good. I think you are right on most if not every point.
Some comments so your ego doesn't smash planets...
1) The Romans might have had really bad commanders compared to those of Hasdrubal. Well handled Light Cavalry is not incapable of beating Heavy Cavalry.
2) I'm not sure what you mean by "they usually trotted into battle with lances levelled, rather than doing true charges"
I thought you only had lances levelled on a charge. Personally I think (judging by Age of Empires II) that the Byazantines learn to put less heavy armor on. But I'm not going to argue that it was the core of the Byzantine army unless I get some research out.
Overall
the core of the Roman Army was it's infantry, I think if they had wanted good cavalry they would have been able to have it.
Seraph (who really wishes he had more books on the Romans, Greeks and Byzantines)
