Sentence examples for cataphract from inspiring English sources
noun
Defensive armor used for the entire body and often for the horse, also, especially the linked mail or scale armor of some eastern nations.
After an extended period of dependence on Teutonic and Hunnish mercenary cavalry, the reforms of the emperors Maurice and Heraclius in the 6th and 7th centuries developed an effective provincial militia based on the institution of pronoia, the award of nonhereditary grants of land capable of supporting an armoured horse archer called a cataphract.
The Byzantine cataphract was armed with bow, lance, sword, and dagger; he wore a shirt of mail or scale armour and an iron helm and carried a small, round, ironbound shield of wood that could be strapped to the forearm or slung from the waist.
Though Wolfe relies merely on the strangeness of English — rather than creating a new language, like Elven or Klingon — he nonetheless dredges up some truly obscure words: cataphract, fuligin, metamynodon, cacogens.
Though Wolfe relies merely on the strangeness of English rather than creating a new language, like Elven or Klingon he nonetheless dredges up some truly obscure words: cataphract, fuligin, metamynodon, cacogens.
The function of these cataphracts (from the Greek word for "armour") was not to engage in long-distance combat but to launch massed shock action, first against the enemy cataphracts and then, having gained the field, against the enemy foot.
Armoured cavalrymen on the Parthian model, known to the Byzantines as cataphracts and to the English as knights, reversed the balance between steppe raiders and settled folk in eastern Europe.
The militia cataphracts were backed by units of similarly armed regulars and mercenary regiments of Teutonic heavy shock cavalry of the imperial guard.
Therefore, Turkish horse archers could not stand up to a charge of Byzantine cataphracts, but their greater mobility generally enabled them to stay out of reach and fire arrows from a distance, wearing their adversaries down and killing their horses.
The Forgotten Legion, by Ben Kane, read by Michael Praed (17½hrs unabridged, BBC, £24.50) In 53BC an army of 35,000 Roman legionaries led by Marcus Licinius Crassus, the richest man in Rome and a member of the first ruling triumvirate, was routed by 10,000 Parthian horse archers and cataphracts at the battle of Carrhae – the worst defeat in Roman history.
