In brief, the author, Professor Fuminori Inoue of Kyoto, attempted to reconcile two opposing theories: on the one hand, Emil Ritterling’s famous 1903 proposal that the late Roman cavalry units designated as Illyriciani had originated in a special type of independent cavalry (“ever-battle-ready”) created, he conjectured, by Gallienus; on the other hand, Hans-Günther Simon’s 1980 criticism, suggesting that Gallienus had simply fielded “strong cavalry units” alongside legionary vexillations in mixed battle-groups.
I discussed both of these scholars’ ideas (amongst many others) in my 2025 book Phantom Horsemen.
A hybrid fantasy
Professor Inoue admits, in his 2004 paper, that Gallienus’ successor, Claudius II, had multiple cavalry units and explicitly not a unified cavalry force, so he casts doubt on whether Gallienus’ general Aureolus could have been “commander of the entire cavalry” (as the Byzantine writer Zonaras alleges). In my book, I presented what I think is rather an elegant solution to this dilemma, but Professor Inoue ’s rather less nuanced answer is to assert that “the entire cavalry” simply referred to whatever cavalry units happened to be under the emperor’s direct command at the time.He argues that there was no unified cavalry force under Aureolus’ command, since Zonaras records that Gallienus’ general Aurelian was also in command of cavalry. But, hold on — wasn’t it Zonaras who told us that Aureolus was indeed “commander of the entire cavalry”? Confused? No wonder.
Of course, Professor Inoue follows the herd in his refusal to relinquish the “fact” of Gallienus’ cavalry reform. (Professor David Potter’s Roman Empire at Bay, with its “Gallienic cavalry corps”, appeared in the same year.) But it doesn’t sit well with Inoue’s ideas. His solution is to claim that the “commander of the entire cavalry” (a phrase also used by the late writer Zosimus) was simply whoever grouped a few units together at a given time on an ad hoc basis. Only thus is he able to make sense of the even later writer Cedrenus’ (clearly erroneous) remark, that Gallienus invented cavalry units (plural), not a unified cavalry force (singular).
Myth upon myth
Professor Inoue is convinced that the Roman army absolutely required highly-mobile independent cavalry forces that could suddenly be deployed wherever the emperor wished. (I have questioned the logic of this in my book Phantom Horsemen.)There is no evidence that this ever existed, so he creates a parallel myth of highly-mobile independent infantry forces under the guise of legionary vexillations — he cunningly gives the false impression that, rather than deployed to perform a particular task at a particular location (as all vexillations were), legionary vexillations were, in reality, roving armies in their own right. Hmmm.
And in a final bizarre twist, he argues that this reform of Gallienus was aimed at creating a permanently functioning mobile army composed of both cavalry and infantry forces, whose powerful officers governed the empire.
To sum up, Professor Inoue proposes that Gallienus did indeed create a cavalry army, but it was an ad hoc grouping of separate units, which somehow became combined with mobile infantry units to create mobile field armies for deployment on widespread battlefronts.
Bringing it up-to-date
This twenty-two-year-old farrago of misplaced ingenuity only came to my attention because of the XIV Convegno Romeno-Italiano 2025 held in Iaşi (Romania), the proceedings of which have just appeared as Volume 21/1 of the journal Classica et Christiana.I was intrigued by a paper entitled “El ejército romano de Aureliano y Probo en la Historia Augusta”, by Miguel Pablo Sancho Gómez of the Catholic University of Murcia.
The summary of his paper implied an investigation of how the emperor Probus (AD 276–282) capitalized upon Aurelian’s successful military reunification of the empire (AD 270–275), drawing upon evidence from the Historia Augusta.
Crisis and cavalry
Browsing through the paper, my attention was drawn to a four-page section entitled “Crisis of the Third Century and the Rise of the Roman Cavalry”. The scene is set with the usual hyperbole of “fifty years of assassinations, rebellions, secessions, plagues, invasions, and usurpations”. (I have put this kind of pessimistic exaggeration into perspective in my book.)We then read that, because Rome was where the emperor was, swift and rapid campaigning was required, which in turn made cavalry essential. (I have examined this flawed logic in my book, but you can probably see where this is going ...)
The result was inevitably “the creation of new, large-scale formations of cavalry, previously a relatively secondary arm, which abandoned its almost exclusive auxiliary role in liaison, scouting, and skirmishing to spearhead many of the attacks of the Roman army”. This cavalry also became, we are told, “the emperor’s armed retinue, a training school and an officers’ academy for extracting experienced commanders who enjoyed total confidence owing to their affiliation with the sovereign’s entourage”.
And what is the evidence for this cataclysmic transformation? Why, the 2004 paper by Professor Fuminori Inoue (mentioned above), of course!
Once more the Schlachtenkavallerie
Although all of this mythology has been debunked in Phantom Horsemen, Señor Sancho Gómez may be excused for having missed it. His bibliography is predominantly pre-2010, though he lists Michael A. Speidel’s paper on “The Military in the Third-Century Roman Empire”, which appeared at the same time as Phantom Horsemen.
Like Sancho Gómez, Señor Magdalena Anda seems convinced of “the fact that Gallienus created a cavalry corps at some point between 255 and 260” (El emperador Galieno p. 265).
In his recent, broadly positive review of my Phantom Horsemen book (mentioned here), he doesn’t commit himself on the subject, appearing content to note that I have “identified several (not all) researchers who reject Gallienus’ battle cavalry thesis”. These are, of course, the writers who (like Professor Fuminori Inoue) embrace some form of Hans-Günther Simon’s equally flawed solution.
Señor Magdalena Anda, in fact, seems to equate my position with the one that Yann Le Bohec adopted in his 2009 book L’armée romaine dans la tourmente (a book that I read only recently, as explained here). But Le Bohec mentions neither Ritterling nor Cedrenus in this book. How, then, can he address an ongoing argument that has those two authorities at its root?
Round we go again ...
Let’s see what Professor Le Bohec actually does say. He tells us, first, that cavalry would not have been the answer to any problems experienced by the third-century Roman army. (Note that this is not the same as disproving the prevalent theory that it was the answer.) Secondly, he tells us that the notion of a “mobile army” is absurd, because no army is “immobile”. (Note, again, that this is not the same as addressing the prevalent theory that Gallienus developed a roving, ever-ready task force.)On the other hand, he tells us that Gallienus created new auxiliary units, “some recruited from the Dalmatae and the Moors, others called scutarii and stablesiani” and a special guard of protectores, and he increased the legionary cavalry from 120 men to 726. I notice that Professor Le Bohec gives no clear references for any of this. (Gallienic scutarii and stablesiani, at any rate, are a theory of M.P. Speidel’s, and H.M.D. Parker can be blamed for the legionary cavalry. I’ve dealt with the protectores in my book.)
Señor Magdalena Anda, for his part, seems to favour the mixed battle-groups theory, though he does at least address the evidence. But predictably, he has not yet shaken off the fundamental myth that equates Gallienus with cavalry in some form. No doubt it will take a while.
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