"Seleucid Cavalry" Topic

I am trying to figure out if I was playing my old DBM army wrong so many years ago. I ran a Seleucid army with several heavy cavalry types. I had a companion type unit, another was cataphract and fully armored and fully barded, lastly I had a unit with half barding but equipped more like the companions…Is that right? If so, what is the name of the half barded unit, Agema? Or were those the Seleucid version of companions?

Most common interpretation is that the Agema and line cavalry were cataphracys ( fully armoured) while the Companions (Hetairoio) were less fully armoured.

Chris

It is based on the description of the army at Magnesia.
This is from Livy.
" 3000 cavalry, clad in mail armour and known as "cataphracti." These were supported by the "agema," another body of cavalry numbering about 1000; they were a select force, consisting of Medes and men drawn from many tribes in that part of the world"
"3000 cataphracti and the king's personal cavalry, 1000 strong, with somewhat slighter protection for themselves and their horses, but otherwise closely resembling the cataphracti, made up mostly of Syrians with an admixture of Phrygians and Lydians"

The assumption is that since the Agema aren't described as having lesser protection but the Companions are, then the Agema were as the cataphracts.

Nobody knows and they certainly didn't have such tight groupings and capabilities as wargamers like to put into their games.

Agema were or are guard cavalry.They might have half armoured horse or not. The cataphracts were fully armoured cavalry. No one for sure knows how these were used or how they looked. IMHO used them the way you want!!! Mike Adams

The Agema were often brigaded with the companions so it would seem reasonable that they were armoured in a similar fashion. I have my companions and agema on part armoured horses, EHC in the old wrg classification while the "line" cavalry is on fully armoured horses, SHC.
While no-one knows for sure, I always think that this shouldn't be used as an excuse to allow whatever you feel like, we can at least try to use the "best guess".

At risk of oversimplifying, a rule of thumb may be you can use Heavy Cavalry with Extra Heavy Cavalry, or Extra Heavy Cavalry with Super Heavy Cavalry, but not Heavy Cavalry with Super Heavy Cavalry.