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Late Roman Army Grade/Rank List under Anastasius
(07-01-2017, 06:18 PM)Longovicium Wrote: Maurice's Strategikon is specific that the cavalry unit can only form up 4 deep.

Uh. Well, you'd think that Maurice and this Anonymus dude could at least agree with each other, to do us all a favour!

If they're four deep then we're back to the 4 x 7 structure, maybe - but with only the five Veredarii as file leaders, which isn't exactly ideal...

I'm seriously tempted to imagine the cavalry just galloping about in some random clump. They are 'light horsemen' after all. Infantry are so much easier to sort out!


(07-01-2017, 07:43 PM)Timus Wrote: Do we have any other examples of using Alii to mean some sort of candidate ?

Not as far as I know - it just means 'others' doesn't it? I was a bit mystified by Onur's comment about this - if the Veredarii Alii are 'candidates' then surely the Augustales and Flaviales Alii would be too - what were they doing while they were awaiting promotion?

Anyway, as a respite from cavalry-headaches, and to indulge my love of drawing diagrams, I had another go at arranging the infantry ordo-thing. This one solves the problem of the file closers at least.

Set at 359 munifices, for a total legion size of 1472. I've added the beneficiarii, librarii and two extra tubicines to the semissales, and the poor old praeco to the ranks of the munifices. This gives us 36 munifices and 44 semissales and armaturae per ordo.

   

It's basically a 10x10 infantry phalanx, Flaviales at the front and back, with an additional front rank of Augustales Alii. The two senior Augustales act as deputies to the Ordinarius, and a sort of 'colour guard' protecting the signifer and cornicen at the front.

Funnily enough, this resembles Vegetius's much-derided notion that the contubernium had 11 men - the Augustales Alii here act as both file leaders and caputs contubernia... [Image: shocked.png]

(We could, of course, take one or even two ranks of munifices out, reducing the legion number by 100 each time and reducing the depth accordingly).

(Another thing I've just noticed - if you take away the Augustales and Flaviales ("added to the legion", acc. Vegetius) we're left with a traditional 80-man century, 8x10...)
Nathan Ross
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RE: Late Roman Army Grade/Rank List under Anastasius - by Nathan Ross - 07-01-2017, 08:57 PM

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