"Kyrene/Cyrene/Kurene Greek" Topic

Interested in what these boys looked like. In particular their heavy chariots and how they might differ from their ancestors back in ancient Greece.

Also looking for suitable 15mm figures for now and 28mm figures later.

I think there is nothing to suggest they were much different to any other Greeks.

At least for the citizens and colonist types, the local north African tribes would be the usual Libyan stuff.

I'm not sure if their chariots were ‘heavy' whatever that might mean for your rules.

The Kyrenean chariots were four-horsed and copied from their Libyan neighbours:

Likewise the Greeks learnt from the Libyans to yoke four horses to a chariot.

– Herodotos IV.189.

Xenophon says that the Kyreneans used their chariots in the old manner of the Trojans, so probably for javelin-skirmishing and transporting warriors who could leap on and off the vehicles.

So they probably looked much like the Libyan chariots depicted at Persepolis: link

Various manufacturers' Carthaginian chariot models are based on this relief via AMPW.

Any chariots would have looked like local Libyan ones. Square and boxy is the likely bet

Historically there is no evidence of them being used directly in battle, they were battle-taxis that brought the hoplites up and they would all be dismounted and drawn up before the battle. Much fresher for the battle since they didn't have to march cross country carrying their armour and shields.

Rules writers just can't resist adding them as combat elements.

Hmmm. Aeneas describes two- and four- horse wagons being used to transport the hoplites. Xenophon's mention of four-horse chariots being used in the same way the Trojans had done sounds like something entirely different, since the Trojans in the Iliad do use their chariots on the battlefield, and since in context he is contrasting Cyrus' scythed chariots with the way that he describes the Lydians, Babylonians, etc., using their chariots on the battlefield. When Ophellas took a Kyrenean force to aid Agathocles of Syracuse, he had 100 chariots and 300 "charioteers and men to stand beside them", parabatai. So combat chariots are a legitimate, and likely, interpretation of the limited evidence.

Thanks gents,very helpful. Yes I believe they will be armed like their contemporary Greek relations, so the chariots are what I have been after.

Any chariots would have looked like local Libyan ones.

Why? Couldn't this technology be a survival of the Bronze Age (consider this is a peripheral area, both for the Carthaginians and for the Greeks)?

Also, Herodotus says nothing about Cyrene or Lybian war chariots.

Also, Herodotus says nothing about Cyrene or Lybian war chariots.

That's not quite true. Besides various references to Libyan charitos that may be for non-military purposes, we've got these:

4.193 Next to the Maxyes of Libya are the Zauekes, whose women drive their chariots to war.

(From an ethnographical sketch of Libya.)

7.86.2 The Libyans, too, were armed like the men of their infantry, and all of them also drove chariots.

(This is from the list of contingents in Xerxes' army, so the context is unambiguously military.)

7.184.4 These, then, were the ships' companies from Asia, and the total number of them was five hundred and seventeen thousand, six hundred and ten. There were seven hundred thousand and one hundred footsoldiers and eighty thousand cavalrymen; to these I add the Arabian camel-riders and Libyan charioteers, estimating them to have been twenty thousand in number.

(Summing up of Xerxes' army.)

OK you're right, what I wanted to say is that in that passage H. does not say that the citizens of Cyrene drove Lybian chariots: the passage is mostly about the goddess Athena and some traditions about her that he believes were of Lybian origin. My point is that there were Greek war chariots in the times of H., against all accepted (modern) historiography: a relic of the Bronze Age. That would be very easy to prove, but I would like to write something serious about that, and I'm not going to do that here – unless you want to bet a significant sum of course : )

So, who makes them in 25/28mm?

The DBMM lists (and, from memory, the DBM lists before them) allow a few 4 horse light chariots with javelin armed crew before c275BC (described in the notes as copied from the Lybians) and carts to mount the hoplites. I don't know who wrote that list but has certainly also had a close eye cast over it by Duncan Head, whose opinion on these matters I value very highly. If I were building a Kyrenian army of that earlier period, I'd be going with Lybian style chariots rather than relic Bronze Age era Greek style.

Cheers,
John