cunei and old-style alae. The evidence is that units of the comitatenses were believed to be higher quality than of the limitanei. But the difference should not be exaggerated. Suggestions have been made that the limitanei were a part-time militia of local farmers, of poor combat capability. This view is rejected by many modern scholars. The evidence is that limitanei were full-time professionals. They were charged with combating the incessant small-scale barbarian raids that were the empire's enduring security problem. It is therefore likely that their combat readiness and experience were high. This was demonstrated at the siege of Amida (359) where the besieged frontier legions resisted the Persians with great skill and tenacity. Elton suggests that the lack of mention in the sources of barbarian incursions less than 400-strong implies that such were routinely dealt with by the border forces without the need of assistance from the comitatus. Limitanei regiments often joined the comitatus for specific campaigns, and were sometimes retained by the comitatus long-term with the title of pseudocomitatenses, implying adequate combat capability. Specialists The late Roman army contained a significant number of heavily armoured cavalry called cataphractarii (from the Greek kataphraktos, meaning "covered all over"). They were covered from neck to foot by a combination of scale and/or lamellar armour for the torso and laminated defences for the limbs (see manica), and their horses were often armoured also. Cataphracts carried a long, heavy lance called a contus, c. long, that was held in both hands. Some also carried bows. The central tactic of cataphracts was the shock charge, which aimed to break the enemy line by concentrating overwhelming force on a defined section of it. A type of cataphract called a clibanarius also appears in the 4th-century record. This term may be derived from Greek klibanos (a bread oven) or from a Persian word. It is likely that clibanarius is simply an alternative term to cataphract, or it may have been a special type of cataphract. This type of cavalry had been developed by the Iranian horse-based nomadic tribes of the Eurasian steppes from the 6th century BC onwards: the Scythians and their kinsmen the Sarmatians. The type was adopted by the Parthians in the 1st century BC and later by the Romans, who needed it to counter Parthians in the East and the Sarmatians along the Danube. The first regiment of Roman cataphracts to appear in