A cataphract was a form of armored heavy cavalry utilised in ancient warfare by a number of peoples in Western Eurasia and the Eurasian Steppe.
The word in English is derived from the Greek: κατάφρακτος Kataphraktos (plural: κατάφρακτοι Kataphraktoi), literally meaning "armored" or "completely enclosed". Historically the cataphract was a very heavily armored horseman, with both the rider and steed draped from head-to-toe in scale armor, while typically wielding a kontos or lance as their weapon.
".. But no sooner had the first light of day appeared, than the glittering coats of mail, girt with bands of steel, and the gleaming cuirasses, seen from afar, showed that the king's forces were at hand." Ammianus Marcellinus, late Roman historian and soldier, describing the sight of Persian cataphracts approaching Roman infantry in Asia Minor, c. 4th century.[1]
Cataphracts served as either the elite cavalry or assault force for most empires and nations that fielded them, primarily used for impetuous charges to break through infantry formations. Chronicled by many historians from the earliest days of Antiquity up until the High Middle Ages, they are in part or wholly believed to have given rise to the Age of Feudalism in Europe and the later European equivalents of Knights and Paladins, via contact with the Byzantine Empire.[2]
Notable peoples and states deploying cataphracts at some point in their history include: the Scythians, Assyrians, Sarmatians, Parthian dynasties, Achaemenid Empire, Sakas, Armenia, Seleucids, Pergamenes, the Sassanid Empire, the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire.
In the West, the fashion for heavily armored Roman cavalry seems to have been a response to the Eastern campaigns of the Parthians and Sassanids in the region referred to as Asia Minor, as well as numerous defeats at the hands of cataphracts across the steppes of Eurasia, the most notable of which is the Battle of Carrhae. Traditionally Roman Cavalry was neither heavily armored nor all that effective; the Roman Equites corps were composed mainly of lightly armored horsemen bearing spears and swords to chase down stragglers and routing enemies. The adoption of cataphract-like cavalry formations took hold amongst the late Roman army during the late 3rd and 4th centuries. The Emperor Gallienus Augustus (253–268 AD) and his general and would-be usurper Aureolus, bear much of the responsibility for the institution of Roman cataphract contingents in the Late Roman army.
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The genesis is undoubtedly Greek: "Kataphraktos" (or various transliterations such as: "Cataphraktos", "Cataphractos", "Katafraktos",etc.) is composed of the Greek root words: κατά completely plus φρακτός covered, protected, which is interpreted along the lines of "fully armored" or "closed from all sides". The term first appears substantively in Latin, in the writings of Sisennus: "… loricatos, quos cataphractos vocant …", meaning "… the armored, whom they call cataphract."[3]
There appears to be some confusion of the term in the late Roman period, as armored cavalrymen of any sort which were traditionally referred to as Equites in the Republican period, later became exclusively designated as "cataphracts". Vegetius writing in the 4th century described armor of any sort as "cataphracts" - which at the time of writing would have been either lorica segmentata or lorica hamata. Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman soldier and historian of 4th century, mentions the: "cataphracti equites (quos clibanarios dictitant)" – the "cataphract cavalry which the they call Clibanarii," (implying clibanarii is a foreign term, not used in Classical Latin).
Clibanarii is a Latin word for "mail-clad riders", itself a derivative of the Greek: κλιβανοφόροι Klibanophoroi meaning “camp oven-bearers” from the Greek word κλίβανος, meaning "camp oven" or "metallic furnace". However it appears with more frequency in Latin sources than in Greek throughout antiquity. The origins of the original Greek term are twofold: that it was either a humorous reference to the heavily armored cataphracts (as men encased in armor would heat up very quickly much like an oven) or that it was further derived from the Old Persian word: *griwbanar (or *Grivpanvar), itself composed of the Iranian roots: griva-pana-bara, which translates into "neck-guard wearer".[4]
Roman chroniclers and historians Arrian, Aelian and Asclepiodotus use the term cataphract in their military treatises to describe any type of cavalry with either partial or full horse and rider armor. The Byzantine historian Leo Diaconis on the other hand, calls them: "πανσιδήρους ιππότας", which would translate as "fully iron-clad knights."[5]
There is therefore some ambiguity as to determining what exactly cataphracts were in late antiquity, as well as determining whether or not they were distinct from clibanarii. Some historians theorise that cataphracts and clibanarii are one and the same type of cavalry, simply termed differently as a result of their divided geographical locations and linguistic preferences. Cataphract-like cavalry under the command of the Western Roman Empire always bore the Latinized variant of the original Greek name: Cataphractarii, where Latin was the official tongue. Those cataphract-like cavalry stationed in the Eastern Roman Empire had no exclusive term designated to them, with both the Latin variant or the Greek innovation Clibanarii being used in historical sources, largely because of the Byzantine's heavy Greek influence (especially after the 7th century when Latin ceased to be the official language). Contemporary sources however sometimes imply that clibanarii were in fact an even heavier type of cavalryman, or formed special-purpose units (such as the late Equites Sagittarii Clibanarii, a Roman equivalent of horse archers, first mentioned in the Notitia Dignitatum). Therefore either side can be argued, but given the fact that the term was used for more than a millennium by various cultures, it stands to reason that different types of fully armored cavalry, in the armies of different nations bore this name, that was simply ascribed to them by Greek and Roman scholars not familiar with the native names for such cavalry.
The reliance on cavalry as a means of warfare in general lies with the ancient inhabitants of the Central Asian steppes in early antiquity, who were one of the first peoples to domesticate the horse and pioneered the development of the chariot.[6] Most of these nomadic tribes and wandering pastoralists circa 2000 BC were largely Bronze-Age, Indo-Iranian populations, who migrated from the steppes of Central Asia into the Iranian Plateau and Greater Iran from around 1000 BC to 800 BC (see Indo-Aryan migration). Two of these tribes are attested based upon archaeological evidence: the Mitanni and the Kassites. Although evidence is scant, they are believed to have raised and bred horses for specific purposes, as is evidenced by the large archaeological record of their use of the chariot and several treatises on the training of chariot horses.[7] The one founding prerequisite towards the development of cataphract cavalry in the Ancient Near East, apart from advanced metalworking techniques and the necessary grazing pastures for raising horses, was the evolution of selective breeding and animal husbandry. Cataphract cavalry needed to be immensely strong and endurant horses, and without selectively breeding horses for muscular strength and hardiness they would have surely not been able to bear the immense loads of armor and a rider during the strain of battle.[8] The Near East is generally believed to have been the focal point for where this first occurred.
The previously mentioned early Indo-Iranian kingdoms and statehoods were to a large degree the ancestors of the north-eastern Iranian tribes and the Medians, who would found the very first Iranian Empire in 625 BC. It was the Median Empire that left the first written proof of horse breeding around the 7th century BC, being the first to propagate a specific horse breed known as the Nisean, which originated in the Zagros Mountains, for use as heavy cavalry.[9] The Nisean would go on to become renowned in the Ancient World and particularly in Ancient Persia, as being the mount of nobility and of their warhorses, sometimes referred to as "Nisean chargers", who were highly sought after by the Greeks and are believed to have influenced many modern horse breeds. With the growing aggressiveness played by the role of cavalry in warfare, protection of the rider and the horse became paramount. This was especially true of peoples who treated cavalry as the basic arm of their military, and indeed, the backbone of the Ancient Persian military such as that of the Medes or the successive Persian dynasties that followed them, was the horse. To a larger extent, the same can said of all the Ancient Iranian peoples, as second only to perhaps the bow, horses were held in reverence and importance in these societies as their preferred and mastered medium of warfare, due to an intrinsic link throughout history with the domestication and evolution of the horse.
These early riding traditions, which were strongly tied to the ruling caste of nobility (as only those of noble birth or caste could become cavalry warriors), now spread throughout the Eurasian steppes and Iranian plateau from around 600 BC and onwards due to contact with Median Empire's vast expanse across Central Asia, which was the native homeland of the early, north-eastern Iranian ethnic groups such as the Massagetae, Scythians, Sakas, and Dahae.[9] The successive Persian Empires which followed the Medes after their downfall in 550 BC took these already long-standing military tactics and horse breeding traditions and infused their centuries of experience and veterancy from conflicts against the Greek city-states, Babylonians, Assyrians, Indo-Scythians, and North Arabian tribes, with the significant role cavalry played not only in warfare but everyday life, to form a military reliant almost entirely upon armored horses for battle.
When discussing the evolution of the heavily armored horseman, it should be noted that it was not isolated to one focal point during a specific era (such as the Iranian plateau), but rather developed simultaneously in different parts of Central Asia (especially among the peoples inhabiting the Silk Road) as well as within the Iranian subcontinent. Assyria and the Khwarezm region bear significant importance in fostering the development of Cataphract-like cavalry during the 1st millennium BC. Reliefs discovered in the ancient ruins of Nimrud (the ancient Assyrian city founded by king Shalmaneser I during the 13th Century BC), depict for the first time riders wearing plated-mail shirts composed of metal scales, presumably deployed to provide the Assyrians with a tactical advantage over the unprotected mounted archers of their nomadic enemies, primarily the Aramaeans, Mushki, North Arabian tribes and the Babylonians. The Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727 BC) period under which the Neo-Assyrian Empire was formed and reached its military peak, is believed to have been the first context within which the Assyrian kingdom formed crude regiments of cataphract-like cavalry. Though armed only with a pike, these early horseman still rather qualified as mounted cavalrymen, but when provided with a bow under Sennacherib (705-681 BC), eventually became capable both of long-range and hand-to-hand combat, mirroring the development of dual-purpose cataphract archers by the Parthian Empire during the 1st century BC.[10]
Archaeological excavations also indicate that by the 6th century BC similar experimentation had taken place among the Iranian peoples inhabitating the Khwarezm region and Aral Sea basin, such as the Massagetae, Dahae and Saka. While the offensive weapons of these prototype cataphracts were identical to those of the Assyrians, they differed in that not only the mount but also the head and flanks of the horse were protected by armor. Whether this development was influenced by the Assyrians, as Rubin postulates,[11] or perhaps the Achaemenid Empire, or whether they occurred spontaneously and entirely unnrelated to the advances in heavily armored cavalry made in the Ancient Near East, cannot be discerned by the archaeological records left by these mounted nomads.[12]
The further evolution of these early forms of heavy cavalry in Western Eurasia is not entirely clear. Heavily-armored riders on large horses appear in 4th century BC frescos in the northern Black Sea region, notably at a time when the Scythians who relied on light horse archers were superseded by the Sarmatians.[13] By the 3rd century BC, light cavalry units were used in most eastern armies, but still only "relatively few states in the East or West attempted to imitate the Assyrian and Chorasmian experiments with mailed cavalry".[14]
The western Greeks then first encountered cataphracts during the Greco-Persian Wars of the 5th century BC with the Achaemenid Empire. The Ionian Revolt, an uprising against Persian rule in Asia minor which preluded the First Persian invasion of Greece, is very likely the first Western encounter of cataphract cavalry, and to a degree heavy cavalry in general. The cataphract was then widely adopted by the Seleucid Empire, the Hellenistic successors of Alexander the Great's kingdom who reigned over conquered Persia and Asia minor after his death in 323 BC. The Parthians, who wrested control over their native Persia from the last Seleucid Kingdom in the East in 247 BC, were also noted for their reliance upon cataphracts as well as horse archers in battle.
The Romans came to know cataphracts during their frequent wars in the Hellenistic East. During their early encounters, cataphracts remained ineffective against the Roman foot-soldier, being decisively defeated in the Battle of Magnesia (189 BC) and in the battle of Lucullus with Tigran the Great near Tigranocerta in 69 BC.[15][16] In 38 BC, the Roman general Publius Ventidius, by making extensive use of slingers whose long range weapons proved very effective, defeated the uphill-storming Parthian armored cavalry, forcing the Parthians to retreat from all Roman territories occupied since the Battle of Carrhae.[17]
At the time of Augustus, the Greek geographer Strabo considered cataphracts with horse armor to be typical of Armenian, Caucasian Albanian, and Persian armies, but, according to Plutarch, they were still held in rather low esteem in the Hellenistic world due to their poor tactical abilities against disciplined infantry as well as against more mobile, light cavalry.[16] However, the lingering period of exposure to cataphracts at the eastern frontier as well as the growing military pressure of the Sarmatian lancers on the Danube frontier led to a gradual integration of cataphracts into the Roman army.[18][19] Thus, although armored riders were used in the Roman army as early as the 2nd century BC (Polybios, VI, 25, 3),[20] the first recorded deployment and use of cataphracts (equites cataphractarii) by the Roman Empire comes in the 2nd century AD, during the reign of emperor Hadrian (117-138 AD), who created the first, regular unit of auxiliary, mailed cavalry called the ala I Gallorum et Pannoniorum catafractata.[21] A key architect in the process was evidently the Roman emperor Gallienus who created a highly mobile force in response to the multiple threats along the northern and eastern frontier.[22] However, as late as 272 AD, Aurelian's army completely composed of light cavalry defeated Zenobia at the Battle of Immae, proving the continuing importance of mobility on the battle field.[23]
The Romans fought a prolonged and indecisive campaign in the east against the Parthians beginning in 53 BC, commencing with the defeat of Marcus Licinius Crassus (close benefactor of Julius Caesar) and his 35,000 legionaries at Carrhae. This initially unexpected and humiliating defeat for Rome was followed by numerous campaigns over the next two centuries entailing many notable engagements such as: the Battle of Cilician Gates, Mount Gindarus, Mark Antony's Parthian Campaign and finally culminating in the bloody Battle of Nisibis in 217 AD, which resulted in a slight Parthian victory and Emperor Macrinus being forced to concede peace with Parthia.[15][16] As a result of this lingering period of exposure to cataphracts, by the 4th century the Roman Empire had adopted a number of vexillations of mercenary cataphract cavalry (see the Notitia Dignitatum), such as the Sarmatian Auxiliaries.[18][19] The Romans deployed both native and mercenary units of cataphracts throughout the Empire, from Asia Minor all the way to Britain, where a contingent of 5,500 Sarmatian cataphracts were posted in the 3rd century by emperor Marcus Aurelius (see End of Roman rule in Britain). This tradition was later paralleled by the rise of Feudalism in Christian Europe in the Early Middle Ages, and the establishment of the Knighthood particularly during the Crusades,[24] while the Byzantine Empire continued to maintain a very active corps of cataphracts long after their Western counterparts fell in 476 AD.
Cataphracts were almost universally clad in some form of scale armor (Greek: φαλιδωτός "Falidotos", equivalent to the Roman Lorica squamata) which was flexible enough to give the rider and horse a good degree of motion but strong enough to resist the immense impact of a thunderous charge into infantry formations. Scale armor was made from overlapping, rounded plates of bronze or iron (varying in thickness from 4 to 6 millimeters), which had two or four holes drilled into the sides, to be threaded with a bronze wire that was then sewn onto an undergarment of leather or animal hide, worn by the horse. A full set of cataphract armor consisted of approximately 1,300 or so "scales", and could weigh an astonishing 40 kilograms or 88 pounds (not inclusive of the rider's body weight). Less commonly, plated mail or lamellar armor (which is similar in appearance but divergent in design, as it has no backing) was substituted for scale armor, while for the most part the rider wore chain mail. Specifically, the horse armor was usually sectional (not joined together as a cohesive "suit"), with large plates of scales tied together around the animal's waist, flank, shoulders, neck and head (especially along the breastplate of the saddle) independently to give a further degree of movement for the horse and to allow the armor to be affixed to the horse reasonably tightly so that it should not loosen too much during movement. Usually but not always, a close-fitting helmet that covered the head and neck was worn by the rider; the Persian variants extended this even further, and encased the entire wearer's head in metal, leaving only minute slits for the nose and eyes as openings. Ammianus Marcellinus, a noted Roman historian and general who served in the army of Constantius II in Gaul and Persia, and fought against the Sassanid army under Julian the Apostate, described the sight of a contingent of massed Persian cataphracts in the 4th century:
Cataphracts would often be equipped with an additional side-arm such as a sword or mace, for use in the melee that often followed a charge. Some wore armor that was primarily frontal: providing protection for a charge and against missiles yet offering relief from the weight and encumbrance of a full suit. In yet another variation, cataphracts in some field armies were not equipped with shields at all, particularly if they had heavy body armor, as having both hands occupied with a shield and lance left no room to effectively steer the horse. Eastern and Persian cataphracts, particularly those of the Sassanid Empire carried bows as well as blunt-force weapons, to soften up enemy formations before an eventual attack; reflecting upon the longstanding Persian tradition of horse archery and its use in battle by successive Persian Empires.
Cataphract lances (known in Greek as a Kontos ("oar") or in Latin as a Contus) appeared much like the Hellenistic armies's sarissae used by the famed Greek Phalanxes as an anti-cavalry weapon. They were roughly four meters in length, with a capped point made of iron, bronze or even animal bone and usually wielded with both hands. Most had a chain attached to the horse's neck, and at the end by a fastening attached to the horse's hind leg, which supported the use of the lance by transferring the full momentum of a horse's gallop to the thrust of the charge. One reason for this was the lack of stirrups (especially amongst Western armies); although the traditional Roman saddle had four horns with which to secure the rider,[26] nevertheless these were largely inadequate for keeping a soldier seated upon the full impact of a charge action. During the Sassanid era, the Persian military developed an innovative solution to overcome the lack of stirrups and effectively "fasten" the rider to the horse's body. Persian horseman had a cantle at the back of the saddle and two guard clamps which curved across the top of the rider's thighs and fastened to the saddle, thereby enabling the rider to stay properly seated, especially during violent contact in battle[27] There are also reliefs in Iran from Firuzabad showing Persian kings doing battle in a fashion not dissimilar to later depictions of jousts and mounted combat from the Medieval era.[28]
While they varied in design and appearance, cataphracts were universally the heavy assault force of most nations that deployed them, acting as "shock troops" to deliver the bulk of an offensive manoeuvre, while being supported by various forms of infantry and archers (both mounted and unmounted). While their roles in military history often seem to overlap with lancers or generic heavy cavalry, they should not be considered analogous to these forms of cavalry, and instead represent the separate evolution of a very distinct class of heavy cavalry in the Near East that had certain connotations of prestige, nobility and Esprit de corps attached to them. In many armies this reflected upon social stratification or a caste system, as only the wealthiest men of noble birth could afford the panoply of the cataphract, not to mention the costs of supporting several war horses and ample amounts of weaponry and armor.
Fire support was deemed particularly important for the proper deployment of cataphracts. The Parthian army that defeated the Romans at Carrhae in 53 BC operated primarily as a combined arms team of cataphracts and horse archers against the Roman heavy infantry. Archer fire was concentrated on the dense Roman ranks which prompted the legionaries to loosen their formation in order to present a wider target area for the enemy. This then made them fatally susceptible to a massed cataphract charge. The end result was a far smaller force of Parthian Cataphracts and horse archers wiping out a Roman cohort four times their size numerically, due to a combination of fire and movement, which pinned the enemy down, wore them out and left them vulnerable to a concluding deathblow.
The cataphract charge was very effective due to the disciplined riders and the large numbers of horses deployed. As early as the 1st century BC, especially during the expansionist campaigns of the Parthian and Sassanid dynasties, Eastern Iranian cataphracts employed by the Scythians, Sarmatians, Parthians and Sassanids presented a grievous problem for the traditionally less mobile, infantry-dependant Roman Empire. Roman writers throughout imperial history made much of the terror of facing cataphracts, let alone receiving their charge. Parthian armies thus repeatedly repelled Roman incursions across the Euphrates, due in large part to the Roman's ineptness in dealing with mobile warfare and particularly cataphracts.
Persian cataphracts were a contiguous division known as the Savaran (Persian: سواران, literally meaning "rider of the horse") during the era of the Sassanid army, and remained a formidable force from the 3rd to 7th centuries until the collapse of the Sassanid Empire.[2] Initially the Sassanid dynasty continued the cavalry traditions of the Parthians, fielding units of super-heavy cavalry. This gradually fell out of favour and a "universal" cavalryman was developed during the later 3rd century, able to fight as a mounted archer as well as a cataphract. This was perhaps in response to the harassing, nomadic combat style used by the Sassanids' northern neighbours who frequently raided their borders, such as the Huns, Hephthalites, Xiongnu, Scythians and Kushans, all of which favoured hit and run tactics and relied almost solely upon horse archers for combat. However, as the Roman-Persian wars intensified to the West, sweeping military reforms were again reestablished. During the 4th century, Shapur II of Persia attempted to reinstate the super-heavy cataphracts of previous Persian dynasties to the counter the formation of the new, Roman Comitatenses, the dedicated, front-line legionaries who were the heavy infantry of the late Roman Empire. The elite of the Persian cataphracts, known as the Pushtigban Body Guards, were sourced from the very best of the Savaran divisions, and were akin in their deployment and military role to their Roman counterparts, the Praetorian Guard, used exclusively by Roman Emperors. Ammianus Marcellinus remarked in his memoirs that members of the Pushtigban were able to impale two Roman soldiers on their spears at once with a single furious charge. Persian cataphract archery also seems to have been again revived in late antiquity, perhaps as a response (or even a stimulus) to an emerging trend of the late Roman army towards mobility and versatility in their means of warfare.
In an ironic twist, the elite of the East Roman army by the 6th century had become the cataphract, modelled after the very force that had famously defeated and slaughtered their forebears numerous times more than 500 years earlier. During the Iberian and Lazic wars initiated in the Caucasus by Justinian I, it was noted by Procopius that Persian cataphract archers were adept at firing their arrows in very quick succession and saturating enemy positions but with little hitting power, resulting in mostly non-incapacitating limb wounds for the enemy. The Roman cataphracts on the other hand released their shots with far more power, able to launch arrows with lethal kinetic energy behind them, albeit at a slower pace.
Some cataphracts fielded by the later Roman Empire were also equipped with heavy, lead-weight darts called Martiobarbuli, akin to the Plumbata used by late Roman infantry. These were to be hurled at the enemy lines during or just before a charge, to disorder the defensive formation immediately before the impact of the lances. With or without darts, a cataphract charge would usually be supported by some kind of missile troops (mounted or unmounted) placed on either flank of the enemy formation. Some armies formalised this tactic by deploying separate types of cataphract, the conventional, very heavily armored, bowless lancer for the primary charge and a dual purpose, lance-and-bow cataphract for supporting units.
Interestingly, references to Byzantine cataphracts seemed to have disappeared in the late 6th century, as the famed manual of war, the Strategikon of Maurice, published during the same period made no mention of cataphracts or their tactical employment. This absence persisted through most of the Thematic period until the cataphracts reappeared in Emperor Leo VI's Sylloge Taktikon, probably reflecting a revival that paralleled the transformation of the Byzantine army from a largely defensive force, into a largely offensive force. The cataphracts deployed by the Byzantine Empire (most noticeably after the 7th century when Late Latin ceased to be the official language of the empire) were exclusively referred to as Kataphraktoi, due to the Byzantine Empire's strong Greek influence, as opposed to the Romanized term Cataphractos, which subsequently fell out of use.
These later Byzantine cataphracts were a much feared force in their heyday. The army of Emperor Nicephorus II, relied on its cataphracts as its nucleus, coupling cataphract archers with cataphract lancers to create a self-perpetuating "hammer blow" tactic where the cataphract lancers would charge the enemy, disengage, and charge again and again until the enemy broke and routed, all the while supported by cataphract archers who continually pelted the enemy with missile barrages.
Contemporary depictions however imply that Byzantine cataphracts were not as completely armored as the earlier Roman and Sassanid incarnation. The horse armor was noticeably lighter than earlier examples, being made of leather scales or quilted cloth rather than metal at all. Byzantine cataphracts of the 10th century were drawn from the ranks of the middle class landowners through the theme system, providing the Byzantine Empire with a motivated and professional force that could support its own war-time expenditures. The previously mentioned term "Clibanarii" (possibly representing a distinct class of cavalry from the cataphract), was brought to the fore in the 10th and 11th centuries of the Byzantine Empire, known in Byzantine Greek as: Klibanophoros, which appeared to be a throwback to the super-heavy cavalry of earlier antiquity. These cataphracts specialised in forming a wedge formation and penetrating enemy formations to create gaps, enabling lighter troops to make a breakthrough. Alternatively, they were used to target the head of the enemy force, typically a foreign emperor.
As with the original cataphracts, the Leonian/Nikephorian units seemed to have fallen out of favour and use with their handlers, making their last, recorded appearance in battle in 970 and the last record of their existence in 1001, referred to as being posted to garrison duty. If they had indeed disappeared, then it is possible that they were revived once again when the Komnenian restoration, a period of thorough financial, territorial and military reform that changed the Byzantine army of previous ages, which is referred to separately as the Komnenian army after the 12th century.[29] Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (1081 to 1118) established a new military force from the ground up, which was directly responsible for transforming the ageing Byzantine Empire from one of the weakest periods in its existence, into a major economic and military power, akin to its existence during the golden age of Justinian I. However, even in this case it seems that the cataphract was eventually superseded by other types of heavy cavalry.
It is difficult to determine when exactly the cataphract saw his final day. After all, cataphracts and knights fulfilled a roughly similar role on the medieval battlefield, and the armored knight survived well into the Early modern era of Europe. The Byzantine army maintained units of heavily armored cavalrymen up until its final years, mostly in the form of Western European Latinikon mercenaries, while neighbouring Bulgars, Serbs, Avars, Russian states, Alans, Lithuanians, Khazars and other eastern European and Eurasian peoples emulated Byzantine military equipment.
As western European metalwork became increasingly sophisticated, the traditional image of the cataphract's awe-inspiring might and presence quickly evaporated. From the 15th century and onwards; chain mail, lamellar armor, and scale armor seemed to fall out of favour with eastern noble cavalrymen as elaborate and robust plate cuirasses arrived from the west, this in combination with the advent of early firearms, cannon and gunpowder rendered the relatively thin and flexible armor of cataphracts obsolete. Despite these advances, the Byzantine army, often unable to afford newer equipment en masse, was left ill-equipped and forced to rely on its increasingly archaic military technology. The cataphract finally passed into the pages of history with the Fall of Constantinople on May the 29th , 1453, when the last nation to refer to its cavalrymen as cataphracts fell (see Decline of the Byzantine Empire).
Comprehensive armor for horses might have been used in China as early as the Three Kingdoms period. It wasn't until the early 4th century however, that cataphracts came into widespread use among the Xianbei tribes of inner Mongolia and Liaoning, which led to the adoption of cataphracts by the Chinese armies during the Northern and Southern Dynasties era. Numerous burial seals, military figurines, murals, and official reliefs from this period testify to the great importance of armored cavalry in warfare. Later, the Sui Empire maintained the use of cataphracts, but the use of horse armor declined in the Tang Empire (becoming limited to ceremonial guards of honor) for reasons that remain unclear. The use of cataphracts was then revived in the Liao, Western Xia, and Jin dynasties - the super-heavy cataphracts of the Xia and Jin were especially effective and were known as Iron Sparrowhawks and Iron Pagodas respectively. The Song Empire also developed cataphract units to counter those of the Liao, Xia, and Jin, but the shortage of suitable grazing lands and horse pastures in Song territory made the effective breeding and maintenance of Song cavalry far more difficult, in addition to the Song's vulnerability to continual raids by the emerging Mongol Empire for over two decades, which eventually vanquished them in 1279 at the hands of Kublai Khan. The Yuan Dynasty, successors to the Song, which were a continuation of the Mongolian Empire seem to have all but forgotten the cataphract traditions of their predecessors, and the last remaining traces of cataphracts in East Asia seems to have died with the downfall of the Yuan in 1368.
Other East Asian cultures were also known to have used cataphracts during a similar time period to the Chinese. Korean cataphracts reached their pinnacle in Korea's Three Kingdoms period. Meanwhile, the Tibetan Empire utilized cataphracts as the elite assault force of its armies for much of its history.
In addition to ordinary cataphract types the Byzantine Empire sometimes fielded a very heavy type of cavalry known as a clibanarius, literally meaning "boiler boy" (pl. clibanarii), but more properly translating into "camp oven bearers", a sort of humorous reference to that fact that men encased in metal armor would almost certainly feel incredibly hot and perspire rapidly, much like an oven. The clibinarii are vaguely attested in Eastern Roman sources but there is dispute over their actual role and difference from cataphracts in warfare.
The 5th century Notitia Dignitatum mentions a specialist unit of clibanarii known as the Equites Sagittarii Clibanarii - evidently a unit of heavily armored horse archers based on the heavy cavalry of contemporary Persian armies.
An anonymous 6th century Roman military treatise also proposed one unusual, experimental unit of scythed chariots with cataphract lancers mounted on the chariot's horses, though there is no evidence that this unit ever materialised.
Nations in the East occasionally fielded cataphracts mounted on camels rather than on horses (the Romans also adopted this practice, calling camel mounted cavalrymen dromedarii), with obvious benefits for use in arid regions, as well as the fact that the stench of the camels, if up wind, was a guaranteed way of panicking enemy cavalry units that they came into contact with. Balanced against this however, is the relatively greater vulnerability of camel mounted units to caltrops, due to their softly padded soles on their feet, unlike the hardened hooves of horses.
Ancient War elephants, although not cavalry per se, fulfilled a role very similar to that of heavy cavalry such as cataphracts in their use in antiquity. War elephants correspondingly were also heavily armored much like cataphracts, particularly those fielded by the Seleucid Empire, Ancient Carthage and the Persian Empires (see Persian war elephants), who incorporated scale armor and large crested howdahs (or large carriages mounted directly on the back) onto the elephants, which effectively turned them into mobile missile platforms that could also charge enemy positions. This is analogous to the Eastern cataphract horse archers mentioned previously, who carried both bows and lances, and alternated between missile and charge attacks as the terms of a battle dictated. The three to four men manning the howdah, including the driver, known as a mahout, were armed with sarissae, javelins, pikes or bows to harass enemy soldiers who attempted to close in and attack the elephants. The tough hide of elephants afforded them considerable protection and the scale armor worn on top of this made them almost invulnerable to missiles such as arrows, bolts, stones and so forth. Cavalry were also easily frightened by the smell and presence of the elephants, particularly if they had never been exposed to them previously, which allowed them to be used as living, mobile fortifications to counter cavalry manoeuvres on the battlefield in addition to light artillery platforms.[30]
