Mules in the Roman Army

[M. Demetrius]

Sizes of the mules will vary depending on the sizes and breed of both the horse and the donkeys involved. Since the general opinion is that our horses are typically/frequently larger than the Roman horses, it would stand to reason that their mules would be correspondingly smaller, too, don't you think? Smaller mules can carry less weight, one could conclude.

A mule bred from a Shetland pony and a miniature donkey would be cute, maybe, but not likely to carry much weight, while a donkey-Clydesdale would be a right hefty mule.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt ... CBEQ9QEwAw

[Carvettia]

Cluny Johnson of York University did her PhD on ways to distinguish horse and mule bones in archaeological assemblages. She mentions, incidentally, the average sizes of animals and how they changed during the Occupation. I don't recall the figures for mule sizes, as when I read her thesis I was looking for info on horse remains, but no doubt the sizes would have mirrored those of horses - at the time when the Roman army arrived in Britain horses were averaging 12.1 hands and the increase in size to around 13 hands average was slower than improvements in other domestic stock (cattle, sheep and so on). But bear in mind that these are averages, and there will have been larger and smaller animals than the mean.

" ... in the Iron Age, horses (or more accurately ponies) averaged 12.1 hh in height and resembled the modern Exmoor breed in terms of overall build. Roman horses show two distinct types; the first similar to the Iron Age ponies but taller (13.3 hh), the second taller still (14-15 hh) and more heavily built (much like a modern cob). During the Saxon period there appears to be a change back to predominantly smaller (13.2 hh) but quite robust ponies. In the Medieval period the average horse appears very similar to Saxon ones, although a few relatively large individuals begin to appear." (Johnstone 1997)

The horse in the Anglo-Saxon Lakenheath burial (~570 AD) was about 14 hands high although his rider is estimated to have been six feet tall.

If I have time I'll read through Johnstone's thesis again and look at mule sizes.

[Carvettia]

Modern estimates of the carrying capacity of mules vary widely, from as low as 72 kg. (160 lbs.) to as high as 135 kg. (300 lbs.). There are various estimates in between, generally between 100 kg. (225 lbs.) and 113 kgs. (250 lbs.) The only direct ancient evidence on the carrying capacity of mules is Diocletian's Price Edict. This document gives a figure of 300 Roman lbs, 98.24 kg. (216 lbs) for the load of a mule, and would seem to indicate that Roman Mules had a more or less identical capacity to later ones......

Bear in mind also that the load capacity is also influenced by its volume. A mule could probably manage a heavier load of dense material like metal or stone, but a load of something bulky like wool or straw would be very difficult to manage at the same weight, because of its higher volume. Example: My husband is a retired haulier, and while dense loads like fertilisers or stone were easy to move (though heavy), bulky loads of wool, hay or straw were far less manageable and tended to attract the attention of well meaning people who thought he was overloaded - even though he was actually well under the GVW for his vehicle.

[Carvettia]

As promised, the extract from Johnstone's thesis on Roman period mules. She looked at remains of horses and mules from Roman sites in Britain, Gaul, the Danube and Balkans areas.

The mean withers height of the mules from Roman deposits was 1446 mm (14.1 hh), significantly larger than the mean height of the horses. As has already been discussed in Section 6.2, there may be a slight bias in the discrepancy between these mean values, as the taller horses and shorter mules were not as clearly identifiable to species, leading to the possibility that only the taller mules and smaller horses contributed to the mean withers height estimates. Until the identification procedure can be refined to enable some of these more problematic individuals to be identified, the possible bias in withers heights should be borne in mind. However, it is suggested here that although it may be slightly exaggerated, the difference in heights is real. This suggestion is based on the knowledge that modern mule breeders expect their mules to mature at a height greater than that of the mares, and this has been estimated to be as much as 100 mm (1 hh).