>>[I, 25.5] Among the votive offerings there is a Sauromatic breast plate.
>>On seeing this a man will say that no less than Greeks are foreigners
>>skilled in the arts. For the Sauromatae have no iron, neither mined by
>>them selves nor yet imported. They have, in fact, no dealings at all with
>>the foreigners around them. To meet this deficiency they have contrived
>>inventions. In place of iron they use bone for their spear-blades, and
>>cornel-wood for their bows and arrows, with bone points for the arrows.
>>They throw a lasso round any enemy they meet, and then turning round their
>>horses upset the enemy caught in the lasso. [6] Their breastplates they
>>make in the following fashion. Each man keeps many mares, since the land
>>is not divided into private allotments, nor does it bear any thing except
>>wild trees, as the people are nomads. These mares they not only use for
>>war, but also sacrifice them to the local gods and eat them for food.
>>Their hoofs they collect, clean, split, and make from them as it were
>>python scales. Whoever has never seen a python must at least have seen a
>>pine-cone still green. He will not be mistaken if he liken the product
>>from the hoof to the segments that are seen on the pine-cone. These pieces
>>they bore and stitch together with the sinews of horses and oxen, and then
>>use them as breastplates that are as handsome and strong as those of the
>>Greeks. For they can withstand blows of missiles and those struck in close
>>combat. [7] Linen breastplates are not so useful to fighters, for they let
>>the iron pass through, if the blow be a violent one. They aid hunters, how
>>ever, for the teeth of lions or leopards break off in them. You may see
>>linen breastplates dedicated in other sanctuaries, notably in that at
>>Gryneum, where there is a most beautiful grove of Apollo, with cultivated
>>trees, and all those which, although they bear no fruit, are pleasing to
>>smell or look upon.
While on the topic, I must commend Gillian Bradshaw's Island of Ghosts, on the Sarmatians in Britain. Read it before you roleplay a Pentan!
The Sarmatians came to Britain under Marcus Aurelius. While 'cataphract' simply means "armored [horseman}"; I think the true Bysantine cataphract was borrowed, a centruy later, from the Sassanians, under Aurelian or Diocletian. They were East Roman, hence the Greek name.
Paul MacLean Anderson
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----Original Message Follows----
From: "Jane Williams" <janewilliams20_at_...>
Going much further back, wasn't there once (Roman?) a class of heavily armoured cavalry called "cataphracts"? Who had immense trouble with some unarmoured peasants with clubs? I'm sure someone out there knows more?
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