"Scythed Chariots in Notitia Dignitatum" Topic

Question for the ancient warfare experts. I've been browsing through Notitia Dignitatum and came across images of what appear to be scythed chariots. In the link below these images appear on pages 150, 349, and 351. They are also repeated in other parts of the book.

This struck me as strange because in the conventional wisdom of wargaming I have never seen any mention of Romans ever having scythed chariots. However, elsewhere in the NT there is the image of the horse drawn bolt-thrower cart which has made it in to some of our resource materials. Can anyone shed any light on this?

link

They have appeared in WRG lists over the years, in small numbers. Phil Barker commenting that they were probably experimental and may never have been used in anger, but the fact that they were re-designed a few times to improve them suggests they were seriously under consideration.

Regards

David F Brown

I had a look at that link you sent and its really nice to see the full Notia.

The "Currus Drepanus" seems to be an attempt to modify the Catafract into a light scythe wheeled chariot.

From the various reports it doesn't seem to have hit the battlefield.

And quite frankly it looks like something that might have been built by a civilian enthusiast or antiquarian who read up on the Successors chariots and there presumptive effects on infantry hordes, but the weakness of their cumbersome nature. So he attempted to eliminate this cumbersome nature by removing the cab and having the "Drivers" ride the guide horses who are pulling a single axle with scythed wheels.

However this doesn't take into the necessary weight a scythe wheeled chariot would need to have to build up the momentum needed to scythe the legs off of multiple people and horses. Additionally, with only two horses the shock effect is much lessened with only two horses.

Scythe wheeled chariots could have been an interesting weapon to throw at the ill discipline hordes of infantry used by the early Migration Period Germans. I doubt they could form the channels used by the Macedonian and Roman armies against scythed chariots, or that they could break up a charge with volume of fire. It was probably these considerations that led our hypothetical antiquarian down this road.

Side note: Does anyone know if the driver and horse equipment is accurate to clibnarii or cataphracts? Things like the plumes, and the "bat wing" cloak, armbands, etc. Are the red scales meant to be bronze? painted iron? rawhide? I might lean on rawhide as the (likely) draft horses on the Carriage Ballista are wearing them.

There is another interesting chariot at 173.

Ancient equivalent of the "Goliath", or that giant D-Day Catherine wheel.

Strictly those chariots are not in the Notitia Dignitatum at all, but in the separate work De Rebus Bellicis, one manuscript of which is simply bound in one volume with the Munich copy of the Notitia. The best-known study of the DRB is E A Thompson's "A Roman Reformer & Inventor: Being a New Text of the Treatise De Rebus Bellicis" (Oxford 1952). The chariots are usually treated as experimental ideas that never saw a battle, but as David B says, Phil Barker has always thought that they may have been real and at one point suggested in Slingshot that he could see a technical progression between the various models implying that at least prototypes were built. Hence they've just about always been in the WRG/DBM/DBMM army lists.

Vegetius of course suggests that similar chariots ridden by cataphracts should be used against elephants, though he doesn't mention scythes on the chariots – "Two clibanarii in a chariot drawn by two catafract horses, attacked these beasts with sarissai, that is very long lances. They were secured by their armor from the archers on the elephants and avoided the fury of the animals by the swiftness of their horses." This may give some support to the idea at least being widespread.

The drawings of course are mediaeval and copied several times since the original, so it is quite hard to know whether any of the equipment remains an accurate portrayal of cataphract gear.

Thanks for all the responses. All very interesting. I did not know that they have appeared in the WRG products. I have played DBA, but none of their other rulesets.

It's very interesting that these scythed chariot/war machine images appear several times and at the same time Vegetius describes the same sort of thing. Isn't it true that historians tend to be dismissive of Vegetius?

I realize that what we have here are medieval copies so I do wonder about what medieval concepts might have intruded into the images.

Did you all see the image of the ship? I'm sorry but I did not note the page that is on. Doesn't it look like that ship is equipped with paddle wheels?

It's often forgotten that the DRB also advocated mounting a pair of greek fire syphons on the chariot car, with the cataphract horses wearing asbestos armour to protect them from the naphtha. In this way the chariot would advance across the field, immolating everything in its path in the name of the emperor. Fearfully dangerous elephants were quickly reduced to smoking, perhaps even yummy, toasted elephants.

Fantasy is never as outrageous as what is proposed in reality!