By the 6th century the heavy cavalry was the backbone of the Eastern Roman army, and the cataphracts were the heaviest of the heavies. With man and horse largely covered in metal armour, the basic idea came from the east, and developed as civilisations gained the means to fabricate the metal armour required, and to selectively breed horses strong enough to carry such a heavily armoured man. As they came into contact with these eastern peoples, Rome adopted the technology and fielded her own cataphracts, although not all were Roman by birth. This continued after the loss of the Western Empire, but over the following centuries there was an increasing reliance on mercenaries as the Roman authorities took money tributes rather than military service, and this was particularly prevalent after the disastrous battle of Manzikert in 1071.

There was no uniform look to Roman cataphracts, but they were by definition heavily protected with armour, and this is what we find on these figures. All wear typical conical helmets with a plume, and all have an armour curtain or hood which includes coverage of the whole of the face apart from the eyes. The main body armour is scale armour, but there are also mail elements to some of the garments, all of which looks good. The corselet has short sleeves, but most have protection on the lower arm, generally splint armour vambraces, and a couple of the poses also have splint armour greaves. Several also wear a rather narrow cloak, which would have interfered with the weapon arm and so not a wise choice when going into battle, but other than that the armour and clothing all looks to be fine.

Five of the six poses are of lancers, and each holds a specimen of about 40 mm (2.9 metres) in length. This is well below the famous four metre kontos, but the evidence suggests that lances of this length were quite common, so this is accurate. It would have been nice to have seen at least one pose with a full kontos in hand, although we do understand the difficulties of making a figure with such a long weapon. The sixth man is using a bow, and in fact one of the lancer poses also has a bow by his side. It is correct to portray bowmen like this, despite the fact that bowmen are usually associated with light cavalry, although the practice of carrying both lance and bow seems to have died out by the 10th century, so the figure with both (the first in our top row) must date to no later than this. All the men have a sword as a sidearm, usually with a straight blade, and one man is particularly well equipped as he has an axe on his right hip, which is also a valid weapon, but less common.

Despite being so well protected, all these men also carry a shield. Four of these are the cavalry version of the infantry kite shield, sometimes described as ‘almond shaped’, which first became popular during the 11th century (hence why figure one in the top row does not have one). All here are of a good shape and bear no engraving or decoration, which is great. The remaining two poses (including the man drawing the bow) have a simpler round shield of about 8 mm (58 cm) in diameter, which gave less protection but was cheaper and easier to handle whilst mounted, and would be appropriate for any part of the Byzantine period.

Moving from the men to the horse flesh, there are six horse poses which are also to be found in the companion second set from RedBox. All have bards on both front and back of the animal, apparently made of scale, mail, quilted fabric or even solid plates. All metal armour would probably have been attached to a fabric or leather backing, and on several of the horses this is clearly visible. The animal with plates across the chest would date to much later in the period, so is not wrong but rather limits the use of this animal, particularly as by the late stage of the Eastern Empire cataphracts were much less common as they were an expense the empire could increasingly ill afford. Every animal also has head protection, either a solid metal chanfron or else one apparently covered in scale armour, although most lack any identifiable ears! The saddles look okay, but they have quite a high pommel and cantle, which would have helped a lancer get a more secure seat, but tends to only appear later in the period. All the horses are relatively sedate, either standing or walking at most. This makes good sense as carrying such a heavy burden meant the horses quickly tired, strong as they were, and so would spend very little of their time at full gallop. Even during a charge, full speed would only be achieved just before contact with the enemy. However we were not impressed with the arrangement of legs and hooves on some, which are not particularly natural, though this is much less evident than in some sets with unnatural charging poses thanks to the barding.

The fit between man and horse is not particularly good, as all the horses are a little too fat to accommodate the riders legs, meaning they ‘ping’ up when forced down onto the saddle. In other respects however we thought the sculpting was very good. This is a subject with huge levels of detail, and the sculptor has managed to reflect this pretty well. As so often, the attempt to reproduce mail and scale armour means individual links and scales are shown, which are therefore far bigger than they actually would be, so a more indistinct texture would be a better strategy in our view, but many like this sort of exaggerated style, so that is a personal preference. We assume these were sculpted at their actual size (rather than being pantographed down), so the level of detail is impressive, and should look good painted. There is a little excess plastic where shields are being held close to the body, but we could find no sign of any flash on any man or horse, which is a pretty rare thing to say so must be applauded.

Lances are a nightmare weapon for a sculptor thanks to the limitations of the traditional steel two-piece mould. Having them shorter helps, but the best pose of all – having the lance couched under the arm – is very hard to do. The usual approach is to twist the figure to a degree, and the middle pose in the top row is done this way. The result is not bad, but inevitably the man is looking well to his right, and pointing his lance that way too, so unless the lance is provided as a separate piece (which none are here), this is about as good as you can get with traditional methods. The practice of couching the lance in this way only appears in the late 10th century, however. The man holding his lance at an angle is not necessarily the most likely of poses as it is directly to his side rather than to his front, but the remaining poses are fair. However the archer has been made with the tips of his bow well behind him, so the bow points at least 20 degrees away from where the arrow is pointing, which of course is impossible. This figure is best seen from the front, where this peculiarity is not noticeable.

Although we have made a number of comments about aspects that are less than ideal in this set, it is still a very attractive collection. Many customers will probably happily accept the quirks, and enjoy a good-looking set of mounted cataphracts. As we have said, several features of these figures date them to at least the 9th or 10th centuries, and toward the later part of the life of the empire their heavy mounted warriors would have much more closely resembled the mounted knights of Western Europe than anything here, so these do not cover the whole of the Byzantine period, but they are still perfectly useful, and would represent the core of any cataphract unit.