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Short description

Tanais Cataphract: Very heavy cavalry best used as shock troops.

Description

The Tanais Cataphract is a heavy cavalry unit. The cataphracts were the tanks of antiquity, both the rider and the horse were at least partially covered by an armour, if not fully protected. The Tanais Cataphract wear a scale armour that covered the top half of the body, but left the legs bare, except for a trouser. The head is also protected with a bronze and steel helmet. The Tanais Cataphract is of the melee kind; indeed Cataphracts either used a bow and a lance, or a lance and some shorter weapon for the hand-to-hand fight. The Tanais Cataphract use a kontos, a four-meter-long lance wielded with both hands, and a mace as a melee weapon.

Tanais was the name of a river and of a city in antiquity. The river, named the Don nowadays, was regarded as the boundaries between Europe and Asia by Strabo. In the Book of Jubilees, it is mentioned as being part of the border, beginning with its easternmost point up to its mouth, between the allotment of Japheth to the north and that of Shem to the south, sons of Noah. During the times of the old Scythians, it was known in Greek as the Tanaïs, and has been a major trading route ever since. The city was situated on the delta of the river, situated in the Maeotian Marshes, in the North-East of the sea of Azov (the Lake Maeotis for the Greeks), East of Crimee. The area near the delta of the Tanais River had been the meeting point for Greek and Nomad merchants since the 7th century BC. The Greek colony was founded in 3rd century by merchants from Miletus, it quickly developed into an emporium, a Greek trading city. The city had access to the steppes in the east, controlled by the Scythians, to the north with the river, and to the whole Black Sea and its numerous Greek emporium. Although the city had never been a part of the Bosphoran Kingdom, its influence was really important in the city, and both shared the same culture.