These horsemen are a versatile medium cavalry equipped for both, skirmishing and shock actions. They are are comparably well protected and better prepared to fight the enemy at close quarters. Additionally they now use the four horned saddle, a new and very useful supplementation to cavalry equipment, that enables a firm seat in almost all situations.

 

Drawn from the upper classes of Provincial societies these are well trained and respected warriors that have become an integral part of many armies of the Res Pvblica. Together with other auxiliaries they give our Legiones the much needed effective cavalry support.

 

Historically various auxiliary cavalry completely replaced the Italic contingents in the Roman armies of the late Republic and Gaulish and Hispanic horsemen were seen as one of the best in the Roman state. At the time of Caesar they had become the backbone of the army's cavalry arm, fighting with Roman forces at places very far away like Aegyptvs and Mesopotamia. Celtic and Iberian tactics, fighting style and vocabulary remained dominant in the later regular cavalry arm of the Imperial army well into the 2nd century AD, when the major recruitment areas for cavalrymen had shifted to other provinces for many decades.

 

Allied and subdued states and tribes always had to supply the Roman army with troops.

 

Almost at all times at least half of the soldiers were non-citizens. During the first centuries of the Republic the old Alae of the Italic socii were organised and equipped in a similar way to the Romani, but around the beginning of the 1st century BC the situation changed. The Ordo Eqvester, since decades unable to provide a sufficient number of cavalry had split off in two main groups. A mainly political elite that filled out the numerous officer and administrative posts of the ever growing Res Pvblica, and a pure economical elite, the large majority of the Roman and Italic equestrians. Thus enfranchised aristocrats, mainly from Hispania and Gallia Cisalpina, were enlisted as auxiliary mounted troops, becoming in no time the mainstay of the late Republican cavalry.