How Effective were Spears Against Cavalry?

[Domen]

Nazarius suggests that they went to all this trouble and considerable expense to form a unit of heavilly armoured cavalry, but then they forgot to train them to do the one thing that was supposed to make them so effective, and that is moving about in unit! Silly buggers!

A newly-mobilized unit of recruits, perhaps ???

History knows many examples o very well-equipped, but poorly trained units.

Even within the same kinds of formations. The only "maneuver" which could be done by Polish hussars in 1750 was to deploy in a line according to seniority of ranks. The same military formation 100 years earlier was perfectly trained in carrying out dozens of complicated maneuvers on the battlefield.

To assume that every single unit of the cataphracts, in every single army, in every single historical period (since cataphracts also existed for many hundred years) was of the same quality, is stupid.

BTW - who was buying the equipment for the cataphracts?

Weren't the cataphract soldiers themselves obliged to buy proper equipment? Parthian cataphracts were recruited from rich nobility - I don't think their equipment was stored in state arsenals.

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One more comment regarding that charge down the hill at Mount Gindarus:

According to Goldsworthy The Roman Army they could catch them because the Parthians, swollen with confidence after the defeat of Crassus, were convinced the legionaries would flinch as soon as they would make a charge towards them, and found out too late that they wouldn't.

Once again some stupid claims that a text includes something which it does not include.

Not that I despise Goldsworthy or something, but having a surname Goldsworthy does not mean that everything he writes always make sense - sorry, but in this case he simply invented some silly hypothesis, which is not in the original Ancient text. Plutarch does not mention anything like this.

I quoted the proper fragment from Plutarch above. He writes, that the Parthians were confident because their charges were victorious at Carrhae ("the Parthians, because of their numbers and because they had been victorious once before,despised their opponents and rode up to the hill at dawn") - nothing about "flinching". On the other hand, at Carrhae the Roman infantry also did not flinch - yet still the charges of the Parthian cataphracts at Carrhae (once before = at Carrhae) "had been victorious".

Why would they even be convinced about some "flinching", considering that once before at Carrhae, the legionaries did not flinch when the cataphracts charged them. But still got destroyed.

What the cataphracts were convinced, was that they would be able to smash the infantry deployed on that hill - that is why they charged up the Mount Gindarus. But that was a mistake, as the Romans counter-charged them down the hill. Having a hill advantage and a numerical advantage proved enough to repulse the Parthian charge (or perhaps the Parthians flinched, on the other hand).

And there is no mention, what kind of Roman troops made that charge - cavalry, infantry or both - and if infantry, what kind of infantry (legionaries or auxiliary infantry with spears or maces or whatever else - nothing is said about their equipment by Plutarch).

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After that, Parthian, and later Persian cavalry, no longer dared to charge the Roman infantry

Now you just went over the top... Provide sources which support this wild claim. Parthian and Sassanid cavalry - was very successful in many battles, wars and campaigns against Rome.

Shapur I the Great conquered Mesopotamia, Syria, Cappadocia and Armenia from the Romans.

In the battle of Edessa, the same Shapur's forces captured the Roman Emperor Valerian (who later died). Apart from Valerian also Gordian III and Julian were killed in battle or captured by the Persians. What other historical enemy of the Roman Empire managed to kill or capture 3 Roman Emperors?

You guys should actually read about the Parthian-Roman and the Sassanid-Roman wars.

The Roman and Persian Empires fought each other for many hundreds years. And you just quote descriptions of two battles - Carrhae and Gindarus - from the early phase of those wars.

But these 2 battles, as I already proved, also don't confirm your points, Eduard.