The Ancients - Iron Age British and Roman Racing Chariots

Episode Date: June 6, 2021

How truthful are modern depictions of ancient chariots? In this second episode, Mike Loades explores the reality behind the scythed chariot shown in Boudica's Westminster statue. He then draws upon his experimental archaeology to discuss the truth about racing chariots in Ancient Rome. How many horses did they use, and how big were they? Would the riders really have been standing? Mike is a writer, television presenter, director and military historian who has personally tested many replica chariots, including on the streets of London.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast,

well, it's fantastic to see that the first episode in our new miniseries on chariots in antiquity has been really well received. And rest assured, we're continuing the story today and with the same guest. We've got Mike Lodes back on the show. In the last episode, he focused in on New Kingdom Egyptian chariots, on Hittite chariots, the Trojan War chariots, and also about chariots in ancient China. And now we're continuing the story.

We're going to be focusing in on how the chariot really did become the sports car of antiquity in the Central Mediterranean and in North Western Europe. We're going to be focusing in on late Iron Age Britain. We're going to be looking at the use of the chariot there. Remember the famous statue of Boudicca, which you can see on embankment near the Houses of Parliament in London. And remember on that statue that there are famously scythes. Now, are these scythes true or are they fictional? What are you about to find out? And from late Iron Age Britain, we then go to the heart of what would be the Roman Empire.

We go into ancient Rome and we're going to be focusing on how the Romans didn't use chariots for military means, but they used them for entertainment. So without further ado, here's Mike. Mike Lodes, great to get you back on the show. It is always my pleasure, Tristan. Now, last podcast, we talked really about the golden age of chariots. We looked at the Egyptians, the Hittites, Mycenaeans, ancient China, and the transition to the horse archer with the Assyrians. But now, let's go a bit further on in the story.

Let's go to Northern Europe in Iron Age times. Because, Mike, we do have archaeological evidence that suggests that chariots were prominent in that part of the world at that time. Yeah, we've got tons of archaeological evidence. They've been digging chariots up all over the place in Scotland and Yorkshire and Wales and Northern France and everything. Yeah, counter-intuitively, the Iron Age peoples of Northern France and the British Isles were chariot folk in Ireland, you know, huge amount of chariot folklore, Cuchulain and his

chariots. So chariots were huge. And of course, we have that wonderful account by Julius Caesar when he came in 55 BC, and he told us quite a lot about how they used them in battle. So not only do we know that they had chariots, we know that as late as 55 BC, they were still using them in battle. So strangely, still using them in battle. So strangely, we've got tons of information. Although, as always with ancient history, there are enough shadows to keep us guessing and constantly revising our views. And what does that mean? So, you know, it keeps it interesting too. Absolutely. Well, let's then focus in on Britain and the archaeology that we have found. These chariot burials, and I'm presuming more as well, but these burials, Mike, have they told us a lot about the construction of Iron Age British chariots? Yeah, huge amount.

So obviously wood is a principal material of a chariot and the second principal material of a chariot is rawhide. Both of these organic materials decay. But because they had such a status in Iron Age societies, they were very carefully buried and later undisturbed. So archaeologists today have a way of where the wood or the rawhide has rotted, they can interpret the size very precisely because the soil is different when the wood decays it leaves a void and that gets eventually over time an infill of soil but the soil's a different color and a different type because of that because it washes in obviously in those rotted areas and they by careful excavation can do this. And so they really can map them most carefully. We also have odd metal bits. So the metal bits on a chariot are the terrets. These are little semicircular

rings that sit on the yoke through which the reins come through. And I can get into that in a moment because there's some interesting and distinctively different things about British turrets. And the lynch pins. And the lynch pin is the pin that goes through the hub and the axle to keep the wheel from falling off. And you don't want your wheel to fall off. I did have a wheel fall off once in Turkey doing an Assyrian chariot. All the chariots I've driven, which have been Egyptian and Hittite and Isamian

and Chinese and Iron Age, European, have been built by a wonderful man, great friend of mine, Robert Hereford. But this Assyrian chariot, although Robert was there as a consultant, the television company needed it to be built by locals because that was what they were doing. So this locally built chariot, we were having a chariot race. It was the film about Assyrian chariots. And at the end, Jonathan Waterer and I had a race around the village of Haran, which is terribly exciting.

And I came screaming round a right angle corner. And I saw the wheel just drifting off to my side after the distance that I kind of, you know, cambered over very sharply. I didn't fall off. And that is one point of the story, because it's actually quite interesting. You don't fall off because one of the things about chariots is they have an inordinately wide wheelbase. And even when a wheel comes off, you don't tip over. Obviously, you lose a lot of functionality and grind to an embarrassing halt. But you don't come out because that wide axle stops the thing tipping.

It's almost untippable. I can't see how you would tip. Of all cultures, this is the same. This is a distinctive aspect of a chariot, is its width. That leads me to address the Thornycroft issue of scythes. So sculptor Thornycroft, the famous and glorious statue of Boudicca on the Thames of Bankbent facing Parliament. And it's very romantic and very wonderful with proud rearing horses and an iconic female warrior. And it has scythes on.

And it is in the popular imagination that we have scythes. Very problematic idea to have scythes. So in terms of whether European Iron Age chariots had size, there is one reference, a Roman geographer, Pontonius Mela. I'm not sure he ever visited Britain. I don't think there's any evidence that he visited Britain. But he sort of wrote about it in preparation for the Claudian invasion to let them know what they were going to.

And I think he pretty much took stuff from Caesar to do that. But I don't think he saw a chariot anyway, because we have this wealth of archaeology with chariots in Britain, not a hint of a scythe anywhere. And he's probably, you know, extrapolating because he's heard of scythe chariots because the Persians had them, but no evidence that we did. So I think it's bogus, shouldn't have sides on European chariots. And the Persians had them, but they were problematic. You do read a lot of nonsense about their value. You know, people will ride, oh, you had this chariot pulled by four horses and sides. Well, A, if you put four horses on it, the chariots don't extend beyond the outer edge.

So you have to have it wider than the horses for it even to begin to make sense. So it needs to be a two horse chariot if you're going to put size on the end. And it is certainly true to say, you know, having worked with chariots quite a lot, one of the things you learn to do quickly is shout mind the wheels. Because crew members, anybody helping with horses, people constantly, they see the bulk of the chariot. But these wheels stick out and there is quite a substantial protuberance from the hub as it sits on the end. It's a thick, solid axle. And all cultures, the hub that goes over this is quite a wide flange and has this sort of metal linchpin in to stop it coming off. So you've got harsh metal ends on there that stick

out that you don't really see in your peripheral visual. So taking people out from behind the knees is a real hazard with a chariot, whether you've got scythes or not. So I could see why the idea would come, oh, we'll stick some blades on here, and that'll terrify the enemy, and no doubt it would make you very aware. It's just not hugely practical, which is why it didn't really take off.

I'm sure the amount of sort of blue-on-blue casualties were immense, because the amount of times people have nearly walked into chariots. I'm just walking the horses, you know, as a preparatory to filming and things, and people just totally unaware. They think if they're standing next to the horses, they're safe. But of course, if the horse moves off, this thing is sticking out much wider than the horses

and it takes your leg. So it is a problem. So if you have a lot of these things moving around, real danger to your own camp, to your own net and to each other. There's one account of it being used successfully against a Greek foraging party. I think it was sort of fourth century BC. And the account that I've read of that is he had cavalry and two scythe chariots. And that starts to make a bit more sense.

You don't want to use a lot because, as I say, you're going to have a lot of blue on blue, green on green casualty. Using a couple, slightly suicide going ahead, maybe would strike terror and open a gap that allows the cavalry to get in and do its work. But of course, one of the antidotes is to drill your men to open the gaps and let these scythe chariots just come galloping through. Then you close up again and they're isolated the other side. But the idea, I mean, you read romantic historians will talk about the scythe chariots charging into men and cutting men in half and all of that.

Well, of course, they're not reversing in. The horses are in front and the horses are very vulnerable to pikes and spears. So it may have certain applications, but generally not a good idea. Only used by the Persians, not used a great deal, and certainly not used by British chariots. So back to the Thorneycroft statue of Boudicca. Wrong. Shouldn't be scythed. So I've brought us back to where we were going, which is British chariots or European Iron Age chariots.

It's all good, Mike. Actually, I'm going to keep on that tangent a bit longer because you mentioned the blue on blue with the scythes there's a famous case in the hellenistic period between the romans and the hellenistic seleucids where the seleucids they send in scythe chariots apparently charging towards the romans the romans scare them off and actually the scythe chariots they go back into their own ranks of cavalry cause cause absolute mayhem. And that flank is basically crumbles when the scythe chariots carve through their own people and the Romans take advantage or a Roman ally takes advantage and they charge in and that helps them win the battle. But it's a case, an example of where the scythes work against them. Perfect result. Terrible idea.

But it does look good and of course, filmmakers love the idea of it. But yeah, Iron Age chariots british chariots are wonderful things but they're very very different absolutely from any other chariot in any other culture so even the persian chariots with their sides still had a driver and an archer and a chinese chariot and a driver and archer and a hittite chariot and a driver and archer and the egyptian chariot and a driver and archer the two horse Chinese chariot had a driver and an archer, and a Hittite chariot had a driver and an archer, and an Egyptian chariot had a driver and an archer. They're two-horse chariots with a driver and archer. That's basically what a chariot is, and everybody's standing. In Iron Age Europe, there's a couple of things that are different. One, the construction of the chariot body is entirely different. It's pretty much a rectangle, and it is completely open at the front and the back with just a couple of hoops at the side.

There are reasons for this. One of them is it was used in a different way. So, A, it didn't have an archer, although bows existed and they were used for hunting. They seem to have been a little used for warfare during the Iron Age in Europe. The warrior on a chariot would have javelins. Caesar tells us very specifically, as part of the sort of overture to battle, the British chariots would come galloping in and the charioteers, you know, screaming and shouting and doing all sorts of acrobatic tricks, running up the pole and standing on the horses and back again and

wheeling all about them and throwing their javelins. Not too dissimilar from the All Blacks Haka for rugby fans. You can see that. It's a sort of haka on wheels and it must have been a wonderful sight. So it's a mobile missile platform for throwing javelins in the same way that it was a mobile missile platform for archers. But the driver, and we know this from things like the Padua Stella and images on coins that have been found universally throughout Northern Europe, including the British Isles, the driver is sitting. He is not standing.

He is sitting. And the Roman word for these chariots was isedum. I mean, sed, sedentary is at the root of it. There was an esedarius who was one of the gladiators in the ring. That would be a captured warrior from Britain, enslaved and forced to fight in the arena on his chariot. I believe something like that appears in the film Gladiator. I can never bear to watch the whole thing. So we have this very, very different character to the Iron Age British chariot, which is you have this seated driver. This is a very, very difficult concept for people to grasp because they think of chariots and they want to see people standing up.

I've done several television things with British chariots based on reconstructions of the archaeology. Two things they want. One, they always want to film it on a beach. No, we're not doing Egyptian chariots. We don't need sand. But they love the idea because, you know, the light is so shimmery off the sea. And the idea of an Egyptian chariot is so ingrained. Well, if we had them, then they're going to be like that. So I've lost so many battles with producers who want to film INA's chariots on the beach. And they were used on fields. And that's what one really needs to be testing. Because that's why the driver's sitting bumpy fields, not the flat desert plains

of the Middle East. This is where these chariots are found. And Caesar tells us also that they were so good with these chariots that they could gallop them downhill. Well, galloping horses downhill is a bit of a tricky thing. It's great galloping them up, but in terms of balance and everything, galloping downhill is not always the one. So they're galloping their horses downhill with this quite tricky ancient harness system and these vehicles. That shows wonderful horsemanship, immense control.

And it shows these things were fit to use on uneven, broken ground. There's bound to have been limits, but clearly it worked. And I would love the opportunity to do more trials on uneven ground and fewer on a beach I broke my own rule though once because you know I've always said I'm so anti seeing people stand up in chariots and the other thing I won't say the broadcaster but a prominent British broadcaster

we did a thing for chariot and we were doing the documentary part but a German co-production was doing the drama part so at least in this I said all this thing about the driver sitting the driver sits the driver sits only the warrior stands and but of course they're intercutting it with footage from the drama and they're all standing because that's how drama people when the left hand doesn't talk to the right. So we're fed these misinformation images all the time. They're so deeply ingrained. The driver says it's because he has a lower center of gravity sitting.

He's also not in the way for the warrior throwing his javelins 360 all about him, running up the pole, jumping back in again. He's tucked down. He's probably back in again. He's tucked down. He's probably of lower rank. He's less significant. The warrior stands tall and proud, brandishing his weapon. So culturally, the whole thing looks very different with an Iron Age chariot. But the earliest Iron Age chariots was, I did for the BBC, wonderful program called Chariot Queen.

My friend Robert reconstructed this chariot. It was a glorious thing. One of the things I'm proud about on that is I persuaded the producers that we should paint it because I'm fed up with seeing the past portrayed in drab greyscale when we know from everything we can learn about it that it was gaudy and brightly coloured. I mean, all the jewell jewelry and the enamel that we have from iron age europe shouts of love of color and vibrancy just as the middle ages we have you know flakes of paint here and there knowing it was a brightly

colored place vividly colored not the drab washed out tones of Hollywood just so we can look back at the past and make ourselves feel superior we're the drab ones for heaven's sake, so we used nice earth ochre paints which we mined from clear wall caves and this thing had colour and life and beautiful

Celtic patterns drawn on it, it was a lovely thing and we gave it the BBC gave it, to the British Museum to donate it after we'd done the programme. But as you know, that takes a while. Several months later, time the programme's edited and we make sure we don't need it again. But to celebrate it going to the British Museum and to announce it being in the British Museum, I was asked to drive it from the British Museum to Hyde Park Corner, taking an evening standard reporter on board.

Now, the trouble was the ponies that we had carefully trained to work in this chariot were film ponies. So, first of all, all chariots have to have small horses, tiny little kiddie-sized horses. That's why chariots were developed, because horses were not yet big enough to take an adult warrior rider. There's plenty of horse skeletons associated with chariots. We know the size of them. We could tell by the size of the wheels and the angle of the pole exactly how high they are and from Iron Age Celtic chariot, British chariot, 11 hands is it really. You don't want them any higher and the chariot's made for that. Now if you get them any different then obviously it tips the chariot pole

up and you're riding at an angle. The problem was the horses we had trained to drive this because it has a completely different harness system to modern harness which is not going to come over on a podcast i won't try and explain just know it's different challenging tricky different the horses have to be trained to use it the trained horses but they at the time of the british museum ride were in pantomime in bournemouth in cinderella so at short notice i.e. 24 hours notice, I said, well, let's get a pair of scurry ponies. And they did. And we got two scurry ponies. They were a little bit too tall, but not bad. They were also terrified. They'd never been in

a town before, let alone London. So two things happened. One was, I wasn't able to sit down because sitting down down I couldn't see because the horses were just that little bit too large. And the thing was tipped up at an angle and there was no vision. And the second thing was I had this lovely lady evening standard reporter. It was raining. She spent most of the time shivering and hiding under my big rider's raincoat. She was terrified. But the horses were also terrified. And one thing I know about horses, it's you just have to get them to trust you. There's a lovely story about horses in South Africa in the 50s.

It was a show jumping competition and the rider, English riders, his horse went lame. And the South Africans lent him a horse. And he was seen riding it up the steps of municipal buildings, riding it into marquees, to receptions. They said, what are you doing? Why aren't you jumping it? He said, I know it can jump or you wouldn't have lent it to me. I need it to trust me quickly. So I've got to apply this principle. So instead of sort of fussing and getting their nerves, as soon as they opened the gates of the British Museum forecourt,

and letting them get their nerves. As soon as they opened the gates of the British Museum forecourt, I said, yeah, get up, lads. And we galloped out of the British Museum doing a sharp, skinny turn onto Museum Street and we clattered up the street. And of course, the horses are generating so much noise with their hooves,

they can't hear the traffic. And you've put them in flight mode. So they're actually feeling perfectly safe. They're doing what their instinct wants them to do, which is to gallop. And it's the only way to do London in the rush hour. This was eight o'clock in the morning. We ran red lights.

Everybody parted, got out of the way. Taxi drivers honked and said, good on you, mate. And all of this, it was a wonderful rip-roaring ride. Till we got to Shaftesbury Avenue. You wouldn't believe the number of manhole covers in Shaftesbury Avenue. Because there's sort of dark spots that the horses perceived as holes. So we did this really erratic slalom up Shaftesbury Avenue and then around Trafalgar Square and up the Mall and past Buckingham Palace and up the Hyde Park corner. But yes, I was standing and it was fun, but I shouldn't have been standing.

So getting the horses right is very important. Why did they use them? We've talked about the sort of Harker on wheels, the menace, the threat, the bravado. Clearly, there's an element of transport in getting the prestigious warriors to the battle site. I have no doubt they'd have travelled on them. We see that on the Padua Steel. It seems to be in a travelling mode. But as Caesar tells us, their principal use was as some kind of battlefield taxi. And that alone tells us so much about ancient warfare. he tired, they would come in and collect him. And the archers on the back give a great handhold, and I don't think it can gallop in behind you. Just grab it and use its momentum to swing yourself up, like catching a 37 bus in the old days when they had the pole. And it's very useful for that, because if you think about fighting in the front line, you can probably only do a few minutes of actual fighting. Possibly the fittest people on the planet are heavyweight boxers. The amount of training they do, weight training,

aerobic training, they're incredibly superhuman beings. And yet in the ring, delivering blows with the force to knock someone out or receiving blows delivered with that kind of force is so debilitating that they can only go a few minutes without a break. Now, that's regulations are creating those breaks so they don't completely overdo it. But it's come about because they really couldn't sustain very much more. It's mostly there to keep the level of sport exciting because they would just be fading, fading, fading, fading. So you do need that reboot, as it were. And so we have this prima facie evidence from Caesar that the Iron Age peoples of Britain did do this.

They had their battlefield taxis relieving their frontline warriors. I'm sure there is much more evidence to come in other ages of frontline relief and rotation of troops. But it is one of the big stories that chariots tell us that this is a very essential function. It is super interesting, isn't it? As you say, when you take into account the whole element of fatigue in ancient battles and how chariots could be used in that regard. I also love there, Mike, how we touched upon perhaps the future direction of transport in London, what it should be. Absolutely. It's green. It's very green.

Very green indeed, although you've probably got to watch out for the excrement of the ponies well that could be used to grow vegetables well there you go there you go see we've got an answer for everything on this podcast you had no idea when you signed up Catastrophic warfare, bloody revolutions and violent ideological battles. I'm James Rogers and over on the Warfare podcast, we're exploring the vast history of ferocious global conflict. We've got the classics. Understandably, when we see it from hindsight, the great revelation in Potsdam was really Stalin saying, yeah, tell me something I don't know.

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experimental archaeology to the literature and the archaeology that we do have. If we move back to the European continent, you mentioned Caesar, the coming of the Romans, because the Romans, although they don't use the chariots in warfare, they still do love the chariot. Yes, they do. It's absolutely iconic. absolutely iconic. One of the things we know about Roman culture is how much it liked to give itself legitimacy by its references to the past. This new upstart nation loved to create these family trees going back to Achilles and all of this. So I think the symbolism of the chariot was part of that. They used the chariot really in three principal ways. One was the triumphal chariot. So, you know, when a general was given a triumph

or a great victory in parade through Rome, it was a parade vehicle. And there's one in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It's an Etruscan one, actually, which, again, it's the Romans giving themselves legitimacy. They're borrowing a lot of Etruscan prestige items. And so, you know, the Etruscans were a chariot people and they used them for triumphs and funerals.

The Romans used them for funerals as well. The thing I've always wanted to do with Roman chai is, oh, please, let's do a bit about Romans using them as funerals. Because what they did was they put an actor in the chariot wearing the death mask of the person being buried. Wouldn't it be fun if I was presenting and you had an actor in there with my face on? A nice thing to do.

But coming back to the triumphant type, I suspect it was Hollywood art directors visiting the Metropolitan Museum in New York. I don't know this, but I suspect. Who designed the chariots for the first sort of Ben-Hur, because that's what the Ben-Hur chariots look like, you know, whether it's the 1936 or the 1956 versions, they are these very, very high sided surround bodies, which of course, for a triumph triumph they used because they were embossed and painted with scenes of the heroes' triumphs.

You know, they became a canvas. So that's why we've got these high sides with this great infill. But that was a triumphal chariot, a completely different beast to the sports car that was the Roman racing chariot. The most exciting chariot of all time, in my opinion. So there's so much. So first of all, the Ben Hur is wrong. They didn't have these high sides. Great film.

He's not knocking it. It's wonderful. And the horses and stuff. So secondly, of course, the horses are tiny. Horse people will know, but they're 11 hands. It's not even four feet at the shoulder. Can't do that in metric. But it's really small, really small little ponies we're talking about.

This is what they were. And the challenge itself is absolutely stripped down to the bare minimum. And we get this addition of two extra horses. You start to get the quadriga, the four horse chariot. But they also race the big, the two horse chariot. We'll come on to the quadriga in a moment. First, the actual body of the chariot. You know, a chariot needs to be as light as possible, because what we're talking about is horses that are not yet big enough to carry a heavy man. Two horses pulling a wheeled vehicle can do so with much more ease, but you still want to keep that wheeled vehicle as light

as possible to maximize speed, etc. The front rail is the most conspicuous difference. I'm a little chap and it doesn't come up to my knees. Well, it just comes up to my knees. It's probably about Dan Snow's ankle, probably. It's a very, very low front rail. And you'd look at it and you'd think, crikey, they want me to drive that. Well, I'm just going to tip over. If this jolts at all, it's a trip pattern.

And I fall into the gap between axle and hooves and I'll just be churned in this washing machine as we gallop around. But we studied the little models. There's a lovely little model in the British Museum and there's many mosaics depicting new things and you really can build up a consistent picture of the proportions and what they were like and what is interesting is that you may remember in the previous podcast where we talked about Egyptian challenge that one of the features is that the platform from front to back is very narrow not even 18 inches so that you could rest one foot against the solid bar at the back of it and rest your hip into the high front rail, giving you a good position as an archer, and that

the high hide-covered rail gives you good armour protection against enemy arrows from the waist down. So that's why they're like that. This Roman chariot with its little tiny low rail had a very deep platform. I thought, that's very odd. Why has it got that deep platform? And the penny didn't drop until I got on board one. So Robert had built this wonderful thing. I think we were doing it for a television program. And of course, the first thing you get on one, the first thing you want to do is you want to minimize any weight going onto the horse's back. They're there to pull. They're not there to carry your weight in a downward way. So you stand either on or just behind the axle. Well, the axle on a Roman racing chariot is at the back of this platform. And I stepped up and it was a genuine Eureka moment. That's why they designed it like this.

Because I stepped on the back and you could see the slight lift, the weights come off the yoke at the front, and I could see this vast area before me. So that when I fell, which I did from time to time, well, dignified stumbles, not full falls, because, you know, the thing jolts, especially as you start off, or as you try to slow them down for a hairpin bend,

there's a little bit of sort of jolting motion, and you just can lose your footing a little. And you drop to one knee. And once you've dropped to one knee, which there was room to do in front, that low front rail was exactly the height you needed to be to stop you falling out. It caught you.

Standing up, it looked like it was nothing, but it was once you fell, you had room in front of you, dropping to a knee as you fell, and it was the perfect design. But of course, to a baying crowd looking for accidents, the charioteer looked very vulnerable, standing up there on a platform as if there's nothing to support him, nothing to stop him falling out. Actually, it catches you perfectly, no risk at all. But it looks wonderful to the crowd. So that was a great example of build it and try it. And the object will teach you something. You could look at other pictures and try and analyze it and it the object will teach you something you could look at other pictures

and try and analyze over and over again but it wasn't until i stepped up suddenly it was so obvious that's why it was built in this way i mean yeah you took the words right out of my mouth mike i mean this whole experimental archaeology that you've been talking about with iron age chariots now with roman chariots it can tell you so much more, can't it? It can. The objects inform you how they best want to be used. Our evidence is archaeology, is texts, is art, all three of which have to be seen in context.

And, you know, was the artist any good? And is this archaeology representative or is it a one-off? You know, so even that is not absolute. We have to interpret everything. And the further back we go, we're still left with shadows behind the curtains. And the one thing that experimental archaeology can do is it can just throw a little light. It can just pull the curtain back a little bit and let some light in. But obviously, if a modern person, whether we're talking about the draw weight of bows or how you ride a chariot, the modern person can't do something. That may simply be the limitations of the modern person, either as the individual's limited skill set,

or that modern man has lost something that we haven't yet relearned but if a modern person can do something it doesn't prove that it was done that way but it opens the possibilities and throws light that helps us interpret the hard facts of archaeology and text and images. Wonderful. So we've talked quite a bit about the two-horse chariots in ancient Rome, the spectacle, the risk, or let's say less risk because of how they position themselves. But you also mentioned the four-horse chariot.

Yes. And this is a curious thing. So this is obviously, again, the popular image and it's a powerful image. It's a powerful image for Rome because one of the things it does is it represents horses in the wild. it's either pairs or single horses neatly in file one behind the other. The four horse chariot, they're spread out in a line in front of you. The way you would see them stampeding in the wild. A great line of horses. So if you imagine a chariot race with 12 chariots, the start is 48 horses, line abreast in a great crashing tsunami

of rolling waves of horses, just as if you'd walked out into seeing, you know, a massive herd stampeding in the wild. So in some sense, I think, speaks to that Roman desire to have dominion over the natural world and all the wretched bestial animal fights in the Colosseum. This idea of we rule all, we don't just rule you, we don't just rule the countries we've conquered, we rule the natural world. So we contain the natural world. So evoking that image, 48 horses line of rest stampeding, but little tiny Romans are controlling it, is, I think, a powerful idea. In terms of function, it doesn't make the chariots go any faster. If anything, they may be slightly slower. So the harness system. Imagine a T. So that's the pole coming from your vehicle forward and the cross at the top of the T is what we call the yoke.

That's how the challenge is pulled. Two horses under a yoke, little upside down Vs slot over the horse's back and those Vs attach to this transverse bar at the top of the yoke. That's what pulls the child, gives it traction. Modern harnesses used to have things, now have things called traces, which are straps from a collar that attach to the child. They didn't have those, which makes it much trickier, much harder, much more nuanced to drive the vehicle. Technically, from a horse equestrian point of view, it's technically very challenging. You have to have tremendous light finger touch on it.

The reins giving signals to stop the hindquarters swinging out. The extra two horses are not attached to the yoke. They're not attached to the chariot. They simply have an attachment at the bridle to the adjacent horse. They are outriggers. They are free. Why?

Why would you do that? One, I think, because you are invoking this spectacle. Two, because it is so much more difficult, so it has a level of technical difficulty, which is also going to create more crashes because it's hard. Having said that, by having them, you do make the horsepower bit equally wide to the axle. So counterintuitive, this thing of axle to axle,

which again is a Ben-Hur image, actually becomes not impossible, but less likely to happen. So it is tricky. The Assyrians tried with their three-horse chariot to have a loose horse on the outside so that when they're swinging around, riding and shooting at infantry and they wheel away, that becomes a horse that potentially is a disposable horse that they cut free if it gets wounded and their main pulling power is untouched. So this may be the derivation of extra horses. But for Rome, I think it was just spectacle. But you don't get any more pulling power. It's just more challenging to manage them. A lot more challenging. You've got a hell of a lot of leather in your hands. I mean, it's an absolute

white knuckle ride. And you're totally balancing. You're not leaning against anything. You're completely balancing. Almost like playing the organ. I pull this rein a little bit, that one's getting a head. I just pull him in, just turn that head slightly so that he swings his hindquarters. I mean, everything's happening at lightning speed. It's very exciting to do. How do you get horses to do this? So I had the privilege of driving a four-horse chariot, and it worked for me. It was not great. But I used horses trained by the Atkinsons. Ben Atkinson is a guru of guru horse master and because these horses were trained by him they stayed for a rest without anything too under board going and what Ben does the main thing he does in fairs and displays or what is he does the Roman

ride now the Roman ride is when you see people riding two horses one foot on each of their backs, standing up. So it's a circus trick, but it's a feat of equestrian mastery known as the Roman ride. He does this and gallops around. And he often will have two spare horses galloping along beside him, because he trains them free.

In the Circus Maximus, they had two types of horsemen. They had Horatores, who we should talk about in a second, and they had Desultatores. The Desultatores were equestrian acrobats who did somersaults on their horses, did all the things you'd expect from a circus, entertained the crowd, and famously did the Roman ride. So it is my theory that that is how chariot horses were trained. That the Roman ride that we see simply as if it were only an entertainment trick, what I suspect they were doing in the Circus Maximus with the Zoltatoris

is showing off the up-and- coming chariot teams, maybe even showing off the horses that were going to be in the next race to help you pick your bets. Who were you going to back? You want to see these horses in action. So they're not upstaging the charioteers. They're just driving the horses to do that. But it tells me how they're trained because you look at people at the flying frenchman's another one if you want to youtube him who has this magical way with horses they gallop all over the place go over jump serpentine and zigzag and circle spin and swerve with one foot on each of two horses backs but also with another couple of horses running alongside because horses are herd animals. And with this extremely elevated level of horsemanship that people like Ben Atkinson

can achieve, you could see these teams going as one and all staying in line together. And I think that that's what the horsemanship in the Circus Maximus was about. And we've still got a lot to learn about that. So that's potentially how it's done. Why it's done remains a little bit of a mystery. We've alluded to some things, but shipwrecks. Shipwrecks was the Roman name for crashes in the circus. And then, of course, the circuit is very interestingly designed.

It's got two long sides with a spine down the centre with really sharp, blind corners at the top ends, hairpin bends that you can't see round. If you think 12 teams fill the track, it's full. Wall to wall, horses and chariots until one gets ahead. Once you get a crash on a corner or a spin or a touch that does it with the wheel off, then you've got an obstacle. Once you've done the second round, you've now got two obstacles, three obstacles. The more crashes there are, the more it becomes an obstacle course.

So you get chicanes, like there's a chariot crash there and one chariot there. These two chariots are now racing. Who can get to that gap first? Because if they don't get to that gap first, they've either got to pull up or they have a crash. And then that's a bigger pile that's in the way. So lap after lap after lap, as these crashes happen, more crashes happen because it becomes more challenging. And especially driving four horses to go around.

I think it's what the Horatoris are for. So the Horatoris are horsemen, which in some mosaics, we see riding at the same time as the charioteers. we see riding at the same time as the charioteers. Now, very often in early art, you would see what in real life would be consecutive actions portrayed as simultaneous actions. It's a way of narrative art. So we can't say for sure. But if it was simultaneous, if these Horatores riders were in there at the same time as the charioteers. And the connection is they tend to be wearing the same colour shirt as the charioteer they're near to. So it's like each charioteer has got his horseman who might just go ahead. He might be able to signal to you what crashes ahead. When you get round the bend, there's a big pile up hard

on your left. Publius is coming round on the right. What you need to do is you need to get across and cut him off before he can get that kind of thing. They may be shouting instructions like a racing driver gets when he pulls into the pits. Don't know that, but that's my speculation for the role of the horror toys. But but certainly as you build up the shipwrecks then the skill in driving becomes so much greater and so what rome is delivering with this four horse chariot is it for the crowds it's delivering majesty it's delivering this image of stampeding horses in nature it's delivering delivering skill, spectacle. It's delivering a different type of spectacle. People are really good at what they're doing. It's clever stuff to be able to

manage these teams on that kind of a course. And it's delivering jeopardy for the crashes and jeopardy for losing your bet. Because don't forget, it's racing. It's all about the gambling. because don't forget it's racing. It's all about the gambling. So it's a very interesting package, the Roman racing thing. We see it earlier in Greece, of course. There were chariot races,

two-horse chariot races in the Olympic Games. I think we should bring chariot racing back as an Olympic sport. I think I'm not too old for a gold medal. I really think we should bring that back. And the Panathenaic Games had chariot racing. They had a very interesting thing where for part of the chariot race, a runner had to run beside the chariot and board it. And I find that especially interesting because it speaks to that idea we have with the Iron Age chariots that we talked about of them being battlefield taxis, that being able to hop aboard a moving chariot is a skill that you need as a warrior. So time of the Trojan War, Hittites

and Niceneans, it would be chariot to chariot. But if it wasn't, it would be battlefield tactics. So they're not going to come and park up and you're not going to wander over and get on. You've got to get on the move. This is going to come galloping by you and you don't want to miss that bus. You've got to be able to leap aboard. And so I think that's an interesting thing. And then the other thing with runners and chariots. Remember with the Chinese chariots that by the latter period,

after the Qin dynasty, they're starting to put chariots in the field with 25 infantry. So it becomes part of a combined forces. And remember the Egyptians with their pereirs, that their third person, their runner with the chariot, is the person who may not be with you when you're off shooting your bows but needs to keep up with you in case a strap needs tightening, a strap's worked loose, this needs shifting, horses heads need turning around, you've got a little bit of wheelspin and some soft sand that you need it bumping out. You need that third person. So having somebody able to keep up on foot, to jump on and off, is absolutely inherent to all chariot activity across all cultures.

So that in the Panathinaian Games, the fact that they had a race that included that, I think is very telling. Mike, I think all of you have been talking about is so interesting. I think is very telling. Mike, I think all of you have been talking about it. It's so interesting. And you mentioned earlier how we definitely see some differences in how chariots are used between different cultures in antiquity. But is it also so astonishing, from what you said just there, that actually you can see some incredible similarities globally

in antiquity with the chariot? Absolutely. For me, that's the great joy, is finding the common things rather than the different things. The people in China and people in Egypt and people in Wales were all thinking about the same technical problems and ways to solve it. The thing that varies the most is the design of the wheels, which you would expect it to, because the other thing that varies the most is the design of the wheels, which you would expect it to, because the other thing that varies the most is the terrain. So you need heavier built wheels, larger wheels,

or you need lighter wheels, or you can get away with lighter wheels in some terrains that you wouldn't get away with in others. And all of this, you know, the width of the wheel. You don't want a narrow cutting wheel in wet ground because you'll get bogged down or you need a slightly wider wheel and that means you've got to have a heavier wheel. But it's still a two-wheeled vehicle and it's still being pulled by two horses and it's still basically a driver and a warrior and it is all proto-cavalry. It is all changing the way man fights his wretched wars across the planet those advantages of lightning

strike that cavalry offers you was perceived to be worth the cost and the expense of not only having more highly trained i think therefore expensive warriors elite warriors they're doing it but the vehicles themselves which need two horses each. Well, they wouldn't need two horses. They'd need 10 horses each because you've got to have, you know, at least four pairs of spares to run them out, either because one gets wounded or because of stamina. You know, you go to a polo match, you know,

people talk about they have a string of polo ponies. You go to a polo match, they do 10, 15 minutes flat out galloping. When they come back for the next break, they've got a fresh horse. And they come back and they get a fresh horse. They don't keep using the same horse. So they need a lot of horsepower to put 5,000 chariots on the field. You need 20,000 horses. That's something to think about.

So to do that, but they did it in China. They did it in Assyria. They did it in Egypt. The Hittites did it. The Mycenaeans did it. They did it in Northern France. They did it in Ireland. They did it in Scotland. They did it in Wales. They did it in Yorkshire. All these places are reaching for that goal because it was the first way before we rode horses, they worked out this system of trying to seize the advantage in warfare. There you go. It's an incredible topic. Had to divide it into two podcasts because it's such a huge topic,

but thank goodness we did. Now, Mike, just before we finish, we talked a bit about archery on top of the chariots. We've also mentioned in the last podcast, you have done a book all about archery through the ages, and that is called? That is called War Bows, and it deals with the longbow, but it also deals with the crossbow. The crossbows, of course, were very much in use on Chinese chariots, and there's quite a chunk in there, that aspect of them. The composite bow, which of course was the bow for chariot warfare,

whether it's the angular bow of the Egyptians or the Chinese bow for their chariots, etc. And there's also a chapter on the Japanese bow. So yeah, war bows has some chariot references. The other great function of chariots, and where they... I've just talked about how they were all channeled for war. They probably originated in the hunting field. I've written a book about dogs recently, and as I mentioned, I was talking about Dalmatians, and I said,

well, you look at certain Egyptian images, and it looks like they've got a spotted dog running beside them. Sometimes they are, but very often, if you look closely, it's actually a cheetah. And cheetahs were used as hunting companions by the ancient Egyptian and indeed right up through the Renaissance the Gazzoli frescoes in the Medici Palace in Florence have cheetahs sitting on the back of the saddles and in Indian India right up to the 19th century they were using cheetahs for

hunting deer so the chariot as a hunting vehicle is very much part of its origin. And we do also see one other type of chariot there is. We see from Libya. We have this rock art, rock paintings across North Africa from Libya, going right across. You find it as far west as Mali even. But we got more in Libya and Tunisia. And their chariots don't seem to have been used for war at all. And they make the Roman racing chariot look heavily over-engineered. They are so skeletal that they're just two pairs of wheels and a little tiny platform with no rails whatsoever.

And young men absolutely dashing about you know going full pelt with them it seems to me there could have been an early form of racing or most likely it was used as a hunting vehicle for pursuit in hunting that's interesting i'm glad we mentioned that at the end because i think it's like herodotus or someone mentions the chariots in that part of the world doesn't he he? He does, he does. But they're post-Egyptian. Although there's sort of, you know, this primitive art in rock painting, it might hint that they were, you know, very prehistoric.

They're not. They're dated to after the chariot came to Egypt. So it's a wheeled vehicle, but I think it was a stripped-down version for hunting or just a sporting vehicle. Brilliant. vehicle but i think it was stripped down version for hunting or just a sporting vehicle brilliant well there we go mike that was a whirlwind global tour of chariots as always thanks so much for coming on the show my very great pleasure as ever thank you Thank you.