Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Thracian Cavalry


The armies of Alexander and his successors contained a number of contingents of  allied cavalry to supplement the famed "Companions". 


Among them were the Thracians. It wasn't clear to me whether they fought as Light Cavalry, Medium/Heavy cavalry, or both. 


The Greeks considered them "Barbarians"... and those trophies are pretty Barbaric!
These nicely sculpted figures are by Crusader miniatures, and are still more from the original lot of Macedonian lead I purchased from Edgar back in 2015


By Пакко - File:Thrace modern state boundaries.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7567013


Here's the second unit of six. I have chosen to represent them as Medium cavalry equipped with Javelins/Spears. I have still more Thracian looking cavalry figures in the stockpile I got from Edgar, probably from Old Glory, and those will probably be painted as Light Cavalry.


The Osprey on Macedonian Armies after Alexander indicates that the Thracians wore purple cloaks. 


This seems improbable to me, but it certainly is distinctive, so I went with it! Besides, how often do we get to use purple! :-)


The same book suggests that the stripe at the bottom of the cloak seen on some depictions probably indicates an officer, so I added one to this sword armed figure. 


Alexander himself, or some other Macedonian general. 


This one looks like a Foundry figure. 


Hmm, missed that bit of errant yellow; I'll go back and touch that up!  


Not as convincing as I'd like with the tiger skin, but it will have to do!

17 comments:

  1. They all look good to me. I am not sure Alexander's steed is a Foundry horse.

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    1. Could easily be something else; they were all jumbled together, aside from the Thracians

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  2. Very nice work Peter, and I particularly like the standard bearer with the severed heads. It's not something I'd be wanting to carry around though.

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    1. Gruesome but dramatic. I doubt anyone would be eager to carry it - heavy and probably smelly in short order, too! Perhaps the heads were mummified?

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  3. Purple Dye, at least for Dark ages, was limited to the rich because of expense and difficulty in making it. I wonder was this different for the ancients for some reason?

    Nice color choices just the same.

    Cheers
    Kevin

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    1. I seemed to recall that somewhere in the Phil Barker books it stated that Thracians wore black cloaks, which would make a lot more sense. However, that was 50+ year old information. In ancient times, Purple dye came from Murex snails, and was very expensive. So who knows if they had an alternate dye, made their own (quite possible given the extensive coastline) although the process was expensive. My undergrad degree was in Chemistry so I love dyes and colors. The Wikipedia article on the subject is quite interesting, and it appears that reproducing the Ancient process was only achieved 10 years ago!

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  4. Very nice job on this cavalry Peter...and on Alexander!

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  5. Lovely looking Thracians and Macedonian general !
    Best Iain

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    1. Thank you Ian. I need to do some Thracian, etc Light cavalry and some Thracian Peltasts, and then it will be time to take the army to the Tabletop!

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  6. They look marvellous in their purple capes Peter. Excellent representation of the god-king too—I like your representation of the tiger skin!

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    1. Thanks, James. I've seen the Tiger skin done much better, but it gets the idea across!

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  7. Great looking Thracians, and the Man himself.

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