Building a cavalryman vs. building a charioteer

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Chariot archers have a wider arc of fire because (right-handed) horse archers can't shoot to their right side. Their arc of fire is around 200 degrees.
Chariot archers have a longer range because they can shoot longer, heavier bows.
Chariot archers can carry more quivers than horse archers so have more ammo.
Even with stirrups to let horse archers stand in the saddle, chariot archers still had a more stable platform from which to shoot.

All of those points seem to make cases that chariot archers were actually militarily superior for a long time, and that it may have taken specific advances in military technology to make cavalry a better option, even if those advances weren't the ones usually supposed.

It also just struck me that your argument about larger horses, and about stirrups not being needed for lance combat, both point to shock cavalry tactics becoming more effective; but they don't seem to point as obviously to mounted bowmen becoming more effective. That almost sounds like it could point to a coexistence of chariots for archery and cavalry for lances.

A historical note that might be relevant is that after the wars between the Greeks and Persians, Greek iconography changed. Before that, Heracles was shown carrying a bow. After that, the bow was disliked as a Persian weapon (perhaps even with something like the dislike more recent troops apparently have felt toward snipers?) and Heracles was shown carrying a club. That seems like an actual case of the militarily effective bow being rejected because it was the weapon of an alien power. . . .

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by whswhs

A historical note that might be relevant is that after the wars between the Greeks and Persians, Greek iconography changed. Before that, Heracles was shown carrying a bow. After that, the bow was disliked as a Persian weapon (perhaps even with something like the dislike more recent troops apparently have felt toward snipers?) and Heracles was shown carrying a club. That seems like an actual case of the militarily effective bow being rejected because it was the weapon of an alien power. . . .

When I think of archery in Greek myth, I think of two things—(1) hunters like Artemis (2) Odysseus showing off his prowess as an archer to prove his identity. I think at least one other archer is mentioned in the Iliad but the IIRC the Iliad gives the impression of the Greeks only having a few archers in their army, not using massed archery tactics. I've also heard it suggested that the hoplites' large, heavy shields made archery fairly ineffective against them. So this may be less a case of an effective weapon being rejected for cultural reasons as a weapon's associations shifting from "hunting weapon" to "foreign weapon".

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

I think at least one other archer is mentioned in the Iliad but the IIRC the Iliad gives the impression of the Greeks only having a few archers in their army, not using massed archery tactics.

Paris, Odysseus, Teukros, Pandaros, and Helenos were archers. A couple of passages in Book 15 suggest that many low ranking troops also used bows [15.313-4, 15.709]. The Lokrian contingent is described as consisting entirely of archers and slingers [13.712-8] and Akamas refers to the Argives as "arrow fighters" [14.479]. In Book 13, Homer refers to a "swarm of missiles" [13.555] and in Book 16, he says that "many sharp spears were driven home about Kebriones and many feathered arrows sprung from bowstrings" [16.772-773]. Some of the main characters were injured by arrows: Menelaos [4.127-147], Diomedes [11.375-8], Agamemnon [16.26], and Eurypylos [11.582]. Achilles was eventually killed by an arrow (though not part of the Iliad). Homer’s depiction of the Trojan War gives the impression that both bows and javelins were used extensively. Javelins were becoming more prevalent than they were during earlier times but archery had not yet declined much.