North British Horses

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It is, of course, feasible to ride like that and there is one school of thought which will instantly cite various North American tribes and their small horses; my answer to that is , yes, they were very good light infantry, but the horses they were riding derived from Spanish horses imported by the Conquistadores, so we're back to Iberian stock so strength and ability! I would also add, however, that Plains Indians do not have the same amount of low level, dense vegetation obstacle as the North European Roman cavalryman and as we are time and continent seperated I am dubious about any comparisons in this area.

As for Native British horses, again, yes you can ride like that and it takes considerable skill to do so as the points of balance are different. Not riding with any saddle at all naturally makes you sit in an "L" shape and the knees become an essential anchor point. How effective you can be fighting like that is something I've yet to try. My comment would be that with the introduction of the horns on a saddle pad to allow the knees to brace rather than grip, that creates a whole new centre of balance and strength and therefore rider agility.

All of these methods of riding require a strong, indpendent seat something which modern riders in any sphere can be very lazy about; they rely too much on stirrups for balance and sadly hanging onto the horse's mouth too. With the bitting we see it is clear to me that the essentials of a good, firm seat on a horse and light hands is unarguable. After all, if one carries a weapon and shield, how else do you control the horse but from the legs and the seat? And if the horse is too "small" for the length of leg (bearing in minds my comments about taking up the leg), it has to be the seat.

There is also the evidence from the iconography. Greek sculpture and art shows the rider sitting as you have mentioned far more often than in the Roman equivalent. Roman evidence, however, shows the leg going backwards towards the horse's flank. I am open to any ideas as why this may be the case; it could be indicative of the horns on the saddle putting the leg in a different position. It could also be the "aid" by which the rider makes the horse adopt what is generally held to be the levade - the horse balancing on its hind legs and in a half "rear". Again this is one of the movements implied by Xenophon and would be handy for a cavalry horse to use as the striking out forelegs would keep the close enemy at a distance neatly comparable to a thrusting spear.

EDIT: as John's photographs have appeared as I was drafting this response, you can see how the leg has a tendancy to naturally grip up and back, not forward). I would also point out that in discussing human height, you have to consider the length of limbs as much as you would a horse.

as an aside, the skeleton assembalge from Krefeld-Gellep, a sufficiently confirmed Roman context, and auxiliary to boot, indicates that the group of six horses found there are all in the 15hh bracket.