Mysian Cavalry
Heavy Cavalry(0.6.7)Side / Back
Short description
These ferocious Mysian horsemen are the heaviest cavalry unit in the Attalid army, a deadly elite force originating in the years after the Peace of Apameia in 188 BC.;
Description
The ancient city of Pergamon lay in the South West of a landscape called Mysia, after the Thracian tribe that settled here at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. Bounded by the Hellespont in the North, the Rhyndakos river and the Asiatic Olympos in the East and the Aisepos river in the West (Strab. XII, 4, 4-5, C564), Mysia was a central thoroughfare for traders, messengers, migrants or armies between Europe and Asia. It was inhabited by the Thraco-Phyrgian Mysians, who mainly dwelled in the interior and on the mountains, and by Ionian and Aeolian Greeks who founded cities on the coast (such as Kyzikos) or in its immediate hinterland (such as Pergamon, if it was, indeed, founded by Greeks).
The Mysians were a warlike people and are thus mostly mentioned as warriors in early Greek sources (Hom. Il. II, 858; Hdt. IX, 32, 1). It may thus come as no surprise that the rulers of Pergamon recruited them to fight for their polis, and later on for their kingdom. Initially equipped in their native gear as archers or skirmishers (at Magnesia in 190 BC Eumenes II had 2500 Mysian archers with him; Liv. XXXVII, 40, 8), they were eventually settled as katoikoi in strategical locations in an area called Mysia Abbaeitis, especially during the 160s BC, and received Greek equipment.
Dedicated to Zeus Stratios, the 'warlike Zeus', these settlements served as forts and barracks, but some of them developed into major market towns. In one of them, near a small modern day village called Yiğitler, archaeologists found a funerary stele dated to the late 2nd century BC. It shows a rider wearing a composite cuirass and a chlamys standing next to a heavy charger, held by a young squire. It was probably erected just after the end of the Attalid dynasty in 133-129 BC, yet offers compelling evidence for the existence of Mysian heavy cavalry within the Attalid army: The man who dedicated the stele used his influence and status as a member of an elite regiment of the Pergamene forces to win recognition and prestige even in a post-Attalid landscape (Ma, John, The Attalids: A Military History (in: Thonemann 2013), p. 65).
Since neither Thureos bearing horsemen nor cataphracts are attested for the Attalid army, the Mysian cavalry will have formed the heaviest unit in the army after 188 BC (aside from the small number of the King's bodyguards). Protected by heavy armour and a round Aspis shield, equipped with a one handed lance and riding large war horses, they are able of delivering a lethal charge in battle.