Everything about Sagittarii totally explained
» For the constellation, see Sagittarius.
Sagittarii were
auxiliary archers. Despite the longstanding contacts with, and several defeats by,
Parthians and other Eastern nations for whom horse archery was tactically important, there's no definite mention of horse archers in Roman armies until the
Notitia Dignitatum, after contact with the
Huns. Horsed skirmishers with javelins, however, are often mentioned. Presumably, before that time, most regular Roman archers were infantry.
The normal weapon of Roman archers, both infantry and cavalry units, was the
composite bow, although
Vegetius recommends training recruits "arcubus ligneis", with wooden bows, which may have been made in the northern European
longbow tradition. It has been suggested that most Roman composite bows may have been asymmetric, with lower limbs shorter than the upper.
By the 5th century, there were numerous Roman cavalry regiments trained to use the bow as a supplement to their swords and lances, but the sagittarii appeared to have used the bow as their primary rather than supplemental weapon. According to the
Notitia Dignitatum, most units of sagittarii, especially equites sagittarii, were in the Eastern empire or in Africa. Possibly some of the other cavalry regiments there carried bows as back-up weapons, but were not the dedicated
mounted archers that the sagittarii were. The use of bows as a primary weapon probably originated in the East in the later 4th and earlier 5th centuries to help the Roman Army counter Persian and Hunnic bow-armed cavalry.
By the time of
Procopius's histories and Maurikios's
Strategikon, the main effective field arm of Roman armies was cavalry, many of them armed with bows. After the fall of the Western empire, Eastern Roman armies maintained their tradition of horse archery for centuries.
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