Ancient army numbers

[Tomenable]

Of all the cavalry present only the Companions would according to plan and training engage in melee, since they were the only "spear-bearing" (doratophoroi) horsemen present. Even the heaviest of the Persians were mounted javelineers at the time.

No, no, no.

The Persian time at that time was different than 100 years earlier. You are talking about earlier times (more or less times of the battle of Marathon) when even the heaviest Persian cavalry looked like this:



But by the time of Gaugamela the Persians already had units of heavy cavalry designed to carry out shock charges - very similar tactics to that of Companions. For example, they had cataphracts in their army. But also other types of heavy cavalry.

And regarding the "spear-bearing" cavalry on the Macedonian side - apart from Companions, also Thessalian cavalry was a "spear-bearing" heavy cavalry unit. Then we had Thracian, Odrysian and Paeonian cavalry - they can be classified as "medium cavalry" - they had both javelins and weapons intended for meelee combat, so they were dual purpose cavalry, but of course they wore less armour than Companion and Thessalian cavalry. And there were also already mentioned sarissophoroi (also called prodromoi) - lightly armoured, but also "spear-bearing" and capable of shock charges.

Only mercenary and allied Greek cavalry of Alexander were typical light skirmish cavalry armed with javelins. And maybe some Syrian horse archers, if he had them at Gaugamela.

As that, there was little fight at Gaugamela anyways, so low casualties (whatever one calls low) on the part of the Greeks, to me, should not be surprising.

In such case the Persians would also suffer relatively low casualties.

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Regarding Persian cavalry:

But by the time of Gaugamela the Persians already had units of heavy cavalry designed to carry out shock charges - very similar tactics to that of Companions. For example, they had cataphracts in their army. But also other types of heavy cavalry.

For example Sakae / Saca cavalry and Barkan (not sure if I translate this to English correctly) cavalry was armed in double-edged war axes called bipennis - clearly a weapon intended for use in close-combat. They were also armed in swords called akinakes and single-edged, smaller than bipennis, axes called sagaris.

Then they had very well armoured Persian, Bactrian and Indian cavalry.

As well as Scythian (Saca) cataphracts. Also Bactrians, Armenians and Cappadocians fielded some very well armoured, cataphract and other heavy cavalry.

Persian and Indian heavy cavalry units were armed with long spears.