Roman Citizens Cavalry

Even from its earliest days, Rome’s citizen cavalry commanded prestige and respect in the military and political structure of Rome. From the violent days of Romulus, through the time of kings, and through the Republic, the citizen cavalry’s elite role in the Roman army provided a path for wealthy young men seeking to distinguish themselves for future political service. This citizen cavalry served Rome well for centuries before being mostly replaced by allied auxiliaries in the first century B.C. Although it is widely believed that the citizen cavalry declined due to military ineffectiveness, the citizen cavalry actually faded away due to social and cultural changes that affected the organization of the military.
Rome’s storied

This new class of citizens did not come from the hereditary founding nobility called the patricians, but from a group distinguished primarily by wealth: “The primary criterion for service in the cavalry was wealth” (McCall, 146). Possessing wealth and military merit, the equestrian class earned social standing at the founding of the Republic. To replenish the ranks of the senate that had been “thinned by the murderous cruelty of Tarquin”, Lucius Junius Brutus “brought into it leading men of equestrian rank ...lessening the friction between patricians and populace" (Livy, 2.1). The strata of Roman society were distinct, but malleable, and allowed for the introduction of the equestrian class, which contained strata of its own. First in the cavalry were the "equites equo publico, elite Romans who rode horses subsidized by the state and voted in the prestigious eighteen equestrian centuries of the centuriate assembly" (McCall, 134). The military function and sociopolitical value went together. "Later, wealthy Romans who served on their own mounts -equites equis suis - began to supplement the force of the equites equo publico" (McCall, 134). These cavalrymen who provided their own horses were in the equestrian census, but did not possess voting rights in the centuriate assembly. Although with minor disparity in political rights, the citizen cavalrymen "formed one undifferentiated pool of cavalry recruits" (McCall, 149). Likewise, the equestrian class became one undifferentiated pool of citizens: “Apparently, the term equites had become a technical term…referring to a distinct class that was superior, in economic terms, to the infantry” (McCall, 175). First, the cavalry comprised only nobility, then was expanded to the equestrian class, and then this class itself was expanded to supplement those needed for cavalry service in the ever-expanding Roman