Description
Following the tradition of elite Hellenic shock cavalry, these horsemen employed heavy armour and fearsome xyston or kontos-like lances. These were considerably longer than normal cavalry spears and balanced by a butt-spike. Using such weapons required Ptolemaic cavalry to forgo shields and steer their mounts with their legs in the same fashion as Saka and Sarmatian archers, and later cataphracts. Unlike their eastern counterparts, Ptolemaic cavalry did not armour their horses in scale until around the 1st century BC. They were heavily armoured themselves, initially wearing bronze cuirasses and helmets but later scale or chainmail armour. Recruited almost exclusively from the richest Greek colonists in Egypt, their numbers were never great but they provided a vital shock element alongside lighter Egyptian and mercenary cavalry.
