Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Cataphract
/ˈkætəfrækt/noun
A heavily armoured cavalryman of the ancient and Byzantine world, with both rider and horse in mail.
The Greek roots
κατά
katá
down, completely
φράσσω
phrássō
to fence in, enclose
Literally: “fenced in all over”
The story of the word
κατάφρακτος first describes a ship that has been decked over rather than left open, and it moved to armour by the same logic of total enclosure. Parthian cataphracts ground down Crassus at Carrhae in 53 BC, and Rome spent the next four centuries copying them. Byzantine manuals specify layered mail over scale, adding enough weight that the horses had to be bred for the job.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
diaphragmphragmoplast
In a sentence
A wedge of cataphracts at a walk was less a charge than a slow collapse of the enemy line.