Hard riding no saddles or stirrups

[Tiberius Martius]

Ok..wait a minute everyone haha. Notice in my writing I use the words "reasonble to believe" or we assume this or that. I never said you can't train a horse to do those things. I simply tried to state that to do that in battle would have been impratical given the circumstances. It'd be like using a nuclear weapon against 10 infantry, it can be done, but it's largely impractical in the broad scheme of warfare. I'm not a Roman cavalryman, nor am I a scholar of any kind or master equestrian. But Caius I have spent time around horses extensively, I live in Iowa so naturally we have lots of farmland here. It's reasonable to believe that Roman cavalry were used primarily for other duties, not because horses not smart enough to be trained to charge, that was putting words in my mouth I never said that. I said with the money invested in cavalry it was more reasonable to believe cavalry would perform different roles than being thrown directly into enemy infantry in a headlong charge. It can be done, but it makes no sense concerning you would kill off most of your future officers and wealthy men and or allies. I simply said these tactics were more practical efficiently using the mobility of cavalry to its full advantage. With lots of training you can train a horse to charge into other horses, and then your horse is dead and all that training and time and money was wasted...beginning to see my point here? It's simply nonsense to believe an ancient commander would charge headlong into a phalanx or pila volley, that's suicide no matter how good your horse is.
Regarding the spear being couched. It is true that two handed spears were used for shock charges. However this left the rider very vulnerable to missile attack. It may absorb some of the shock, but imagine sitting on top of a car at 40 mph and driving your lance into a solid object, you're probably going to get knocked backward and I dont know if saddles of that time were advanced enough to keep a soldier mounted with that kind of force exerted. (even if they did, you'd get one heck of an enema!) So please don't quote me wrong here. I was trying to state for Woad way back at the beginning of the discussion that thunderous charges were probably rare on the battlefield because of their lack of practicality. Never did I say they can't be done, but that to do them would require such an investment of time and money that'd it would be highly unlikely to see such a force at work given the thousands of variables in war.