Cavalry and chariots against infantry

[Marja]

As a practical note:

If we want to understand how relatively common or uncommon it is for cavalry to defeat infantry or infantry to defeat cavalry, then it helps to decide on specific sources [such as all the battle descriptions in Ammianus] and then tally up the references both to cavalry defeating infantry and to infantry defeating cavalry, and then to expand this by adding additional sources [such as all the battle descriptions in Procopius] and keep tallying up the references both ways.

If we seek out examples of cavalry winning or infantry winning, these don't do as much to establish how relatively common or uncommon it is for cavalry to defeat infantry or infantry to defeat cavalry.

It may also be possible to tally how often the cavalry wins by frontal attacks, by flank attacks, by surprising unprepared infantry, and so on, by tallying the times the cavalry wins, and dividing these between unreliable accounts, unclear accounts, clear accounts of frontal attacks, etc.

It would be a big project, especially if we go through several different sources, and I'm not sure how reliable the actual battle descriptions are, but it might be worth doing.