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Short description

The Royal Squadron are the mounted guards and companions of the Seleucid Basileios.

Description

These men are the Ile Basilike (lit. royal squadron), whose men will ride with the Seleucid king as he leads his army to new glories on the battlefield. Well-mounted on strong horses, and lavishly equipped with a metal cuirass, greaves, as well as (plummeted) Boiotian, Askalon, or Phrygiboiotian helmets, they face their enemy with the typical one-handed cavalry lance (xyston). Their charge will cause even the most determined enemy to collapse, and if well-timed might turn a dire situation on the battlefield to your advantage. Even if caught in melee with other horsemen or infantry, these men have the stamina and fierceness to hold their ground. Only making them run too much in battle will allow fatigue to settle in their ranks, eventually causing their numbers to dwindle.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The advent of heavy cavalry was a reasonably recent development in western warfare in 270 BC. The use of heavy cavalry that delivered a shock charge with lance and edged weapons, rather than fighting as mounted skirmishers, was first perfected by King Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great. Alexander’s heavy cavalry were trained to fight at close quarters with lance and sword, and were organised into squadrons (‘ilai’) which varied in size from 180 to 225 men (Fields (2023), p. 36). After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC the deployment of bodies of heavy cavalry on the battlefield became a standard feature of Hellenistic warfare among the Successors as well as other Greeks.

The Seleucid army fielded two standing cavalry guard regiments of 1,000 men each: the Hetairoi, made up of Greco-Macedonian settlers, and the Agema, recruited from Medes (Bar-Kochva (1976), pp. 72-74). Having inherited Alexander’s eastern dominions, the Seleucids could draw upon the strong equestrian martial tradition of the local Iranian population. It is probably this fact that stimulated the inclusion of a picked elite force of Median horsemen into the royal cavalry guard (Du Plessis, Seleucid Army (2022) 3.1). Both corpses of Hetairoi and Agema could accompany the Seleucid king into battle, or be briganded together into a single unit, which was made possible by their similar equipment (Head, Armies (1982), p. 23). At the Battle of Raphia (217 BC), the combined regiments spear-headed a massive charge led by Antiochos himself, shattering the opposing Ptolemaic cavalry on the left (Du Plessis (2022) 3.1.2). After the introduction of the cataphract in the second century BC, the Agema and Hetairoi were likely re-equipped in that fashion, as represented by the late version of the Seleucid General’s Bodyguard unit (Head (1982), p. 118).

The Ile Basilike may have formed the smaller unit around the king or his most important generals, a unit within the Hetairoi or Agema, as had been the case in Philip II’s and Alexander’s Macedonian army (Bar-Kochva (1976) p. 67). At various battles, Seleucid kings had 500 men of the Agema and Hetairoi each with them (Liv. 35.42.5, App. Syr. 17 (75), I Macc. 6.35) and this may explain why the Roman historian Livy can speak of the Ile Basilike of 1000 men in the Battle of Magnesia (190/189 BC, Liv. 37.40.10).

Hellenistic heavy cavalry were specialised in shock combat, and charged in a wedge formation with their lance. The triangular wedge formation was originally devised by the Scythians and taken up by the Thracians before being adopted by the Macedonians and Thessalians (Du Plessis (2022), pp. 87-88). A single rider formed the leading point, each successive wave containing more men. If a full squadron formed a single wedge, it would have some sixteen ranks. The wedge formation conferred two advantages; first, the narrow frontage meant that wheeling to charge direction could be done relatively quickly, as the formation just followed the leader ‘as in the flight of cranes’ (Asclepiodotus, Tactics, 7.3); secondly, the wedge made it easy to cut through enemy formations. Alexander the Great used his heavy cavalry to break the enemy battle line by charging into gaps in the wedge formation.

When a squadron in line charged an enemy unit, only some of the horsemen in the front rank were likely to find a convenient gap in the enemy’s line through which they could ride. Men in the target unit moving aside in one part of the line would cause denser crowding in others, so, unless the enemy broke and scattered straight away, many riders would have to come to a halt. By contrast, when a wedge charged the lead rider needed only to find a gap for himself to ride at and the rest of the squadron would pile into it behind him. The passage of the lead horse, assisted by its rider’s weapons, widened the breach for the two or three horses immediately behind; they did the same for the next rank, and so on and so forth (Sidnell, Warhorse (2007), pp. 79-80). The limitations of heavy cavalry during the Hellenistic period should be remembered. Such cavalry required flat, open terrain to be effective. In melee, cavalry were vulnerable to being unhorsed. The type of close mounted combat that the written sources depict is entirely consistent with the riding skills that result from sitting a horse without saddle and stirrups as well as the collected style of riding recommended by Xenophon and commonly depicted in the figured evidence. All else being equal, the bareback rider will be more skilled than one using a saddle. He will have a deeper seat with a lower centre of gravity; he will of necessity develop a better sense of balance, since no security will be offered by the shape of the saddle or lateral support from stirrups; and he will have better control by virtue of the close contact between his legs and the sides of the horse (Xen. Horse. 7).