"Arms & Armour of Iberian Cavalry in the Punic Wars" Topic

How were the Iberian cavalry of the 2nd Punic War armed and armoured?

Were they simply mounted versions of Iberian infantry? I.e. they were armed with falcata, javelin or throwing weapon, and shielded with caetra or in rare cases an oval shield and perhaps a thrusting spear (Duncan Head, AMPW).

Is there much support for the heavier armament of oval shield, spear and perhaps body armour for the rider? I can't seem to locate any historic visual evidence online. Or can we accept javelins and caetra as the norm, which also implies a different tactical approach than spear-armed cavalry.

Polybius describes (III, 115, 3) the Iberian and Celtic cavalry at Cannae dismounting to fight their Roman counterparts.

Are there more detailed accounts of Iberian cavalry tactics?

Hail Caesar classes Iberian cavalry of the 2nd Punic War as 'medium cavalry'. I realise that the 'medium' category is more a wargamer's convention, but it denotes something more close ordered or tougher than unarmored, skirmishing, javelin-throwing cavalry, ala Numidian horse.

All of which is preliminary to what I do when Victrix releases their Iberian cavalry set: kitbash spears and oval shields, or use them as close-ordered javelin cavalry?

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Later period though.

Here's some I made earlier:

These are by Companion Miniatures, now sadly long out of production. They are mostly unarmoured, but I have recently acquired some more heavily armoured guys (thanks to Mike here on TMP!) that I will paint a bit differently as Celtiberians. Companion seem to have been very careful to research their figures as much as possible, and they look the part to me. I gave them long narrow shields because I didn't think the full body shield would work on a horseman, and I based them quite close together as heavier types. In terms of armour, some of them have do have pectorals, but the guys Mike sent me have a mixture of others in mail and scale. I use them as massed melee types with spears. Lighter cavalry probably were less likely to be armoured and would have the caetra and javelins.

From what I've seen of the new Victrix foot figures, long shields come included, so a mix of shields from the foot and cavalry boxes should give you all the options you need. If I were starting this army from scratch, those are the figures I'd use.

In terms of rules, we classify them using Tactica exactly as 'medium' horse, i.e. closer formation than light cavalry, but not heavies in terms of fighting power, which these rules define as a D6 range. Generally speaking, heavies are killed on a 5-6, mediums on a 4-6 and lights on a 3-6. You can also have slightly unusual types, such as light heavy cavalry (for lack of better term!) who would be in open order but killed on a 4-6; you could maybe argue this for some Spanish, Numidians or Huns. It gives a much wider range of possibilities.

It's a lovely army to paint too! My attempts can be found at

caliban-somewhen.blogspot.co.uk

Just look on the left hand column for 25mm Ancient Spanish under 'Labels'. For a lovely 15mm Spanish contingent for a Carthaginian army you can't beat Monty Luhmann's lot:

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Thanks for your views. It looks like a bit of kitbash may be the way to go, though I may just field a second unit with javelins since the practice of dismounting and fighting was mentioned at least twice by Polybius.

Your Spanish army is fantastic, Caliban! Thanks to you, painting Spanish in 28mm is on my bucket list. The Victrix releases might do the trick!

Yes, a super collection. Your notes on making up Celtiberians were very helpful.

Cheers, folks. I must admit I hadn't thought of Ether Drake's ideas for dismounted cavalry. I really like this, especially for a more detailed tactical or skirmish level game. I can just imagine myself as leader of a bunch of Iberian horsemen tasked with guerrilla warfare against the evil red tide. Ride to the intended ambush site; dismount, strike from cover, run away and then ride off. Rinse and repeat. Sort of like mounted infantry, but they can fight from horseback too!

Caliban, nice work on the cavalry. I also used them as mediums, but the armoured ones such as scale or chainmail are heavies!!! Cheers Mike Adams

Caliban, on dismounted cavalry:

Romans – Polybius mentions that the earlier unarmored cavalry of the Republic used to dismount for close combat, this may have stopped once they increased their body armour.

Spanish – Hannibal and the elder Scipio's battle at the Ticinus was a largely cavalry engagement also saw cavalry dismounting and slugging it out in melee.

There's also the caetrati pillion riders mentioned by Duncan Head in AMPW, the pllion rider would dismount for hand-to-hand, perhaps even the main rider, too. Who knows? Sadly, these only seem to be modelled in 15mm by Xyston.

Also, this tactic of dismounting reminds me of a similar practice by Celtic chariot riders in this period. Perhaps this and the javelin-based light cavalry tactics were the norm and the xyston-armed Alexandrian cavalry the brief exception?

Some useful links:

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@Emilio – Excellent! Thank you

You are wellcome!!