Roman Baggage Trains?

[Sean Manning]

I saw that some in this thread casually mention mule-carts, and suggest referring to modern examples to reconstruct their carrying capacity, but according to Landels (Engineering in the Ancient World), carts pulled by mules (and sometimes horses) were only light passenger vehicles, as the throat-and-girth harness dominated until the 9th century CE, when more effective types of harnessing finally came into universal use in Europe (although some were already developed in the late Roman period, but somehow, few seemed to have been interested in adopting these new technologies until far into the Middle Ages). The throat-and-girth harness is effective for heavy pulling only with oxen. With asses, horses and mules it only works as long as the load is far less than the equids would actaully have been able to pull. So, 1/2 ton for a mule cart is far too much. Mule carts were not used for supplying the troops, pack mules were.

Dear Eduard,

That sounds suspiciously like the theory of the French soldier Lefebvre de Noettes as revived by Lynne White. In the last few decades, his ideas about the inefficiency of ancient horse-harnesses have been very strongly criticized. M. Demetrius' link gives one overview from a Romanist's perspective, but one can also find good work by medievalists.

I think that Maurice strongly implies that Roman armies used carts drawn by horses and mules in his day.