There was a long tradition of horse archers in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. Horse archers first turn up in a Roman army in 49 BC, during Caesar’s civil war, when his adversary, Pompey the Great, drew upon the eastern nations to supplement his army. On this occasion, King Antiochus of Commagene contributed 200 Syrian horsemen, reportedly including many hippotoxotae, a Greek loan-word for horse archers (Caesar, Civil War 3.4.5). Some years later, the cavalry force commanded by Pompey’s general Marcus Petreius included “numerous hippotoxotae” (African War 19.6). In the next round of civil war, Brutus and Cassius reportedly had “four thousand horse archers, Arabs and Medes and Parthians” (Appian, Civil War 4.88).
Naturally, when the emperor Augustus reorganized Rome’s military forces, he did not forget to incorporate horse archers. Tacitus records that the rearguard of Germanicus’ marching column prior to the Battle of Idistaviso in AD 16, comprised light-armed troops and ( 2.16). By contrast, 1), while in AD 238, it was the flanks of the column that the emperor Maximinus Thrax protected with “squadrons of cataphracts, Moorish javelinmen, and horse archers from the east” (Herodian 8.1.3).
