Equites
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The equites constituted the second of the property-based classes of ancient Rome, ranking below the senatorial class. A member of the equestrian order was known as an eques.
Caesar Augustus
A Roman senior officer (centre) of the time of Polybius, as depicted on a bas-relief from the Altar of Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, c. 122 BC. Probably a tribunus militum (joint legionary commander), the officer wears a decorated bronze cuirass, pteruges, mantle, and Attic-style helmet with horsehair plume. The sash around his cuirass probably denoted knightly rank. In the republican army, tribuni were elected by the comitia centuriata (main people's assembly) from the members of the equestrian order.
A Roman coin issued during the Second Punic War (218–201 BC) showing (obverse) the god of war Mars and (reverse) probably the earliest image of a Roman cavalryman of the republican era. Helmet with horsehair plume, long spear (hasta), small round shield (parma equestris), and flowing mantle. Roman cavalry was levied from the equites, and from volunteers of the second property class, until the early 1st century BC. Bronze quincunx from Larinum mint.
Picture of an equestrian dressed in his rank toga and tunic, the angusticlavia
Knight
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A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity.
A 14th-century depiction of the 13th-century German knight Hartmann von Aue, from the Codex Manesse
A Norman knight slaying Harold Godwinson (Bayeux tapestry, c. 1070). The rank of knight developed in the 12th century from the mounted warriors of the 10th and 11th centuries.
Hungarian knights routing Ottoman spahi cavalry during the Battle of Mohács in 1526
David I of Scotland knighting a squire