Equites - finished unit

In every battle that I fought so far with my Republican Roman army, the absence of Roman cavalry was a major issue I had to face. Therefore it was crucial to paint some units of cavalry. Now the first step is done to solve this problem: I painted three units of equites. More light cavalry are needed later on to represent the allied cavalry contingent.

During the times of the Republic the Romans had only a few horsemen in their legions. According to Polybius, a manipular legion of 4500 soldiers contained only 300 cavalrymen, called equites. This cavalry was purely Roman, the soldiers were from the wealthiest class of Roman citizens, often sons of important politicians and other statesmen. Further cavalry units were provided by their allies for the Roman Army, but those were probably less armed and trained than equites.

The equites were medium cavalry according to the contemporary conditions. 30 horsemen made up a turma, which was the basic unit of Roman cavalry and each legion had 10 turmae. When a consular army (2 Roman + 2 allied legions) deployed for battle, the Equites Romani made up the right wing.

The figures are from Victrix Miniatures's Republican Roman Cavalry boxed set. Actually the spears in the set are extremely thin and fragile, so I decided to use hastae (long spears) from the republican legionary set of Victrix instead. Also I do not recommend to use the cloaks, they are unnecessary for equites, however it is difficult to paint the horsemen with cloaks on.