Mercenary Aitolian Cavalry

Description

Although Aitolia is a country of hills, swamps, mountains, and lakes, its inhabitants are good riders, who excel in skirmishing tactics and in deadly ambushes. The Romans considered them the best cavalry in all of Greece, and far more often than not, they lived up to this reputation. Armed with a cavalry spear and javelins, these Aitolian horsemen can fight both from afar and in melee. They are protected by muscle cuirasses, greaves and Boiotian helmets, but fight without a shield. Their chlamys marks them as members of the elite, and they are a valuable force in any Aitolian army or as mercenaries abroad.

Historical background

The horsemen of Aitolia had a great reputation, yet no precise description of their equipment exists. The main source on the Aitolian army is Polybios of Megalopolis (ca. 200-118 BC), who served as cavalry officer for the Achaian League, arch-enemy of the Aitolians. In the surviving parts of his Histories, no clear characterisation of Aitolian armament survives. This is probably not due to his hatred of the Aitolians, but to the simple fact that most people at the time will have known how the Aitolian horsemen fought. Yet, Polybios implies that their cavalry were the best at skirmishing in all of Greece (Polyb. 18.22.5) and even praised their orderly retreats and back-and-forth movements and attacks in battle against the Achaians (Polyb. IV, 12). In the work of Livy, we then find the following statement, which is probably based on his source Polybios, on a battle of a combined Aitolo-Roman force against Macedonians and Thessalians:

"The Aetolian cavalry was the greatest safeguard to prevent their utter rout. [13] At that time their cavalry was by far the best in Greece; in infantry they were inferior to their neighbours.” (Liv. XXXIII, 7, 12-13).

Despite this eulogy, Livy, too, does not tell us how the Aitolian horsemen were actually equipped. We know they, like most Greeks, must have deployed Prodromoi, and 200 BC, again like most Greeks, they used cavalry armed with Aspis shields (McCall (Cavalry (2005), pp. 42-45) thinks this influenced reforms in the army of their Roman ally, too). Before the introduction of Aspidophoroi, however, the elite must also have been armoured, and this is why this unit is a heavy version of Prodromoi. They all have Boiotian helmets, they wear prestigious muscle cuirasses and greaves, but no shield, since that would not have been introduced as of yet. This is all speculation, but good speculation nonetheless, and it fits the Aitolian way of fighting from afar. In the rough terrain of their mountains and swamps, cavalry charges of Xystophoroi would have been rather impractical, and thus skirmishing on horseback would instead have been perfected. Not least because Aitolia never fell under Macedonian control and they therefore ignored some contemporary military trends – they never adopted the Macedonian phalanx either.

Since Aitolian horsemen were so renowned, they were also recruited as mercenaries. Aitolian cavalry appears in the Epirote army of Pyrrhos (Dion. Hal. XX.1.3) and horsemen may have been among other Aitolian mercenary forces, such as those of Skopas in Egypt (Liv. XXXI, 43, 5-7). However, the Ptolemies get more than enough units as it is, so we have not given them direct access to Aitolian cavalry in RIS.