ABSTRACT
Like spears or darts, rocks could bring down a man from far away. They were cheap and plentiful and hard to see or dodge. They worked well against horsemen, horses being such large targets, and they worked well from horse-back as the epigraph to this chapter shows: Ariovistus’ horse guard, very likely wheeling right in a circle, hurled rocks at Caesar’s horse guard.2 The claim that rock-throwing proves the “inefficiency” of Germanic cavalry is mistaken, for Hadrian’s own Batavi horse guard trained in throwing stones while riding by.3
