Numidian Royal Cavalry (AOR)
Heavy Cavalry(0.6.7)Side / Back
Short description
Numidian Royal Cavalrymen were flexible and hardy; able to skirmish and yet also capable of delivering a shock charge and engage in melee.
Description
Numidia's royal horsemen were flexible and hardy cavalry, lightly armed, able to skirmish in the traditional manner of Numidian Cavalry with javelins, yet also capable of engaging in melee with their shield and spear.
The Numidian Royal Cavalry were equipped with a plumed Montefortino helmet inspired by Punic examples. While the cavalrymen used the traditional javelins of the Numidian Cavalry, they also carried a small round boss-less shield and a spear with which to deliver a shock charge and for close fighting and cavalry melee against enemy horse.
They wore a simple leather corselet over their tunic, together with a red cloak fastened with a brooch. They were organised into loose squadrons, and were recruited from among the kin and servants of the Numidian kings and aristocrats.
The Numidian Royal Cavalry were mounted on bridled horses; they were not the fastest cavalry (the Spanish were quite capable of riding them down), yet the small Numidian horse was agile and apart from being very manoeuvrable, could scramble through or over terrain that brought other mounted units to a halt. "Numidians found it more convenient to retreat to the hill rather than the plain, their horses being used to the ground, made their way easily through the thickets" (Sallust, The Jugurthine War, 51).
The effect of Carthaginian imperialism on those indigenous Libyco-Berber populations that lay beyond their direct territorial conquests was enormous. The process of emulation and competition transformed Libyan society. As early as the end of the fourth century BC we begin to hear of Libyan "kings", such as Aelymas, with whom the Sicilian tyrant Agathocles treated, and by the third century royal dynasties had emerged among the Numidians, ruling supra-tribal kingdoms such as Massyli and Mauretania.
Such was the assimilation of Punic culture, that these supra-tribal kingdoms comprised a large number of small native Numidian farming and semi-nomadic communities ruled by a bi-cultural, bi-lingual royal court.
The Numidian elite also assimilated many features of Punic war craft. The kings of the Numidian kingdoms were intimately connected to the governing class of Carthage by marriage alliances. Hamilcar Barca furnished a daughter to make a marriage-alliance with the Numidian prince Naravas in around 240 BC, and in a later decade a granddaughter (one of Hannibal's nieces) was married to a Numidian king. The famous Sophoniba, daughter of general Hasdrubal son of Gisco, was the wife of two Numidian kings in succession. The Numidian elite absorbed many features of Carthaginian and even Greek influence which is apparent in the equipment of the Numidian Royal Cavalry.