Numerus- who was counted?

[Macedon]

An example would be the old Herodotus issue, 7.184.

[Sean Manning]

See Polybius 6 (where Polybius ignores servants and civilians but assumes they will be present)

I looked through book 6 (assuming that's what you meant) using the Penelope translation, and couldn't find any reference.

Polybius says that a new legion consists of at least 4200 pezoi “foot soldiers” and exactly 300 hippeis “horse soldiers” enrolled in specific types of fighting unit. He ignores noncombatants but implies that they exist by mentioning a market, by mentioning slaves in the camp who have to take an oath, and by not remarking “unlike our own, Roman armies are not accompanied by servants and merchants.” So these would be additional to the given figure.

the Strategikon attributed to Maurice

Couldn't find a copy on the internet.

Not everything is Maurice also divides his army into infantry and cavalry soldiers, to which are attached a certain ratio of grooms and servants (I think there is an exception in his description of the infantry file, but I am away from my books). To these would be added merchants, engineers, and the retinues of senior officers.

and Tabulae Vindolandenses 154 (available online)

It appears that the strength reported represents ualentes, which would be the total strength without absences (absentes) and those unfit for service (eorum). I can't find the term ualentes used by any classical author, and a net search only comes up with King Alfred the Great fragments and Crusader books.

That document shows that this particular unit produced counts of the number of milites and centuriones enrolled in a cohort and available for duty which did not also track servants, slaves, merchants, hangers-on, etc. in its camp. You can search the documents cited in the commentary for any reference to a count of noncombatants, but I have not heard of one.

If the numerus is given in terms of homines, then it would clearly consist of slaves and camp-followers since they were "men". A good example would be Livy 21.8.3 where the strength (numerus) of Hannibal's army is given:

"abundabat multitudine hominum Poenus"

Which would be 150,000 men, not 150,000 soldiers.

It could mean that, or it could mean that he included infantry and cavalry together, or it could mean that Livy wanted to be vague because his number would not resist scrutiny. As usual, wording and context and other sources are key.

[Sean Manning]

I am not sure that Livy 21.8.3 is a good support for your position, because Livy tells readers what his number represents. The PHI text has "Abundabat multitudine hominum Poenus – ad centum enim quinquaginta milia habuisse in armis satis creditur" that is "The Carthaginian abounded in number of men- it is reliably believed that he had a hundred and fifty thousand in arms." In Greek and Latin, men in arms/in arma/en oplois are normally trained, equipped, and arrayed soldiers.

[Jugibar]

Polybius says that a new legion consists of at least 4200 pezoi “foot soldiers” and exactly 300 hippeis “horse soldiers” enrolled in specific types of fighting unit. He ignores noncombatants but implies that they exist by mentioning a market, by mentioning slaves in the camp who have to take an oath, and by not remarking “unlike our own, Roman armies are not accompanied by servants and merchants.” So these would be additional to the given figure.

Oh, so you are referring to Polybius 6.26 (he mentions an oath) and 6.31 (talks about the market)?

Not everything is Maurice also divides his army into infantry and cavalry soldiers, to which are attached a certain ratio of grooms and servants (I think there is an exception in his description of the infantry file, but I am away from my books). To these would be added merchants, engineers, and the retinues of senior officers.

He recommended one slave for each three or four soldiers, which is based off of personal experience. (I know this because I reread Roth last night) Strategikon 1.2.70. In more unusual cases, Tacitus gives the ratio as one to two: 2.87.

That document shows that this particular unit produced counts of the number of milites and centuriones enrolled in a cohort and available for duty which did not also track servants, slaves, merchants, hangers-on, etc. in its camp. You can search the documents cited in the commentary for any reference to a count of noncombatants, but I have not heard of one.

I am not sure that Livy 21.8.3 is a good support for your position, because Livy tells readers what his number represents. The PHI text has "Abundabat multitudine hominum Poenus – ad centum enim quinquaginta milia habuisse in armis satis creditur" that is "The Carthaginian abounded in number of men- it is reliably believed that he had a hundred and fifty thousand in arms." In Greek and Latin, men in arms/in arma/en oplois are normally trained, equipped, and arrayed soldiers.

Ok, bad example on my part. A better reference would be Hyginus 1.4, 5.2-3 where the milites in a century would be 80 but there is 600 homines in a cohort. Correct me if I'm wrong, but since we're dealing with cohorts then there is no confusion between infantry and cavalry.

Another piece of evidence Roth offers is when discussing the size of Vespian's army (BJ 3.69), Josephus says the total strength of the army is sixty thousand without servants. The distinction between slaves and fighting men may have been necessary because Josephus' sources has the two counted together, not separately.

[D B Campbell]

A better reference would be Hyginus 1.4, 5.2-3 where the milites in a century would be 80 but there is 600 homines in a cohort. Correct me if I'm wrong, but since we're dealing with cohorts then there is no confusion between infantry and cavalry.

You have misread Hyginus. He says that, when laying out the camp, the vexillarii are allocated the same amount of space as the legionary cohort, "which is reckoned at 600 men on account of their baggage" -- in other words, this is not the actual number of men, but this is the number used in the calculation, to give extra space for the men's baggage. There is no question of the cohort including 120 extra non-combatants.

[Jugibar]

You have misread Hyginus.

It was a cross-reference from Roth. But, as you said, the point stands that the 600 includes 120 non-combatants, which is why he used the term homines.

In comparison, it would be interesting to see whether any of the Latin authors use milites or homines when describing the composition of the legion.

[Macedon]

Maurice, Leo, Phocas etc always make it very clear what their numbers mean in their manuals. These are not history books but tactical textbooks. Whenever they are discussing numbers to be arrayed for combat, they always mean enlisted men. Attendants/servants are not in the numbers of, for example, a file, a tagma, a meros or an army. They are counted beyond that although of course mentioned. I keep mentioning enlisted men, because in the numbers there were men who did not actually fight. An example would be the daepotatoi or depotatoi, men entrusted with the task to carry the wounded and then collect the spoils. These men were enlisted soldiers given this task and not some specialized force in a tagma, so at one battle a man could be somewhere in the third rank while at the next behind the phalanx following as a daepotatos.

As for the Josephus instance, in my eyes, he just wants to emphasize the great size of the army as is evident from the text. He does not mean that "this number I give here is without the servants, so other numbers I have given are including them." This is why he immediately adds : "...who followed in multitude."

[Jugibar]

Maurice, Leo, Phocas etc always make it very clear what their numbers mean in their manuals.

That's fine by me. So, if there was wounded men who were too unfit to take part in combat, they would still be a part of the enlisted men?

[Macedon]

Yes, as long as they were present, as would be all these left as a garrison at the camp, who could number in the thousands. But here again we have to look at the context. If the author is specifically writing that in the battle partook 20,000 men, then these would be the enlisted men on the field. Sometimes he could write that while including men in the camp or even away for other tasks, like to gather forage or wood, but that would be a mistake on his part, probably because he just did not know details about men outside the battle. But most accounts of numbers are broader and describe armies before battle, which would include all enlisted soldiers, even those not present on the battlefield.

[Jugibar]

The Vindola Tablet 154 (here: http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/) that Sean posted and the pridiana (described here: http://www.academicroom.com/article/mili...vindolanda) would suggest that the numbers represented those fit for fighting, and not enlisted men (since some enlisted men would not be fit for fighting due to battle wounds or desertion). The only one that reports enlisted men in the article are morning reports. I know these are primarily Latin sources. I'm just checking to see if you are following the sources posted.

So, is there any reason why classical historians would use enlisted men instead of those fit for combat? Or maybe preference varied based on the battle being described? Because, like you said, it all depends on context.

[Macedon]

There has been little if any change throughout history in these matters. A military record that gives the strength of a unit at a specific point of time is almost never used by those giving broad accounts of any battle. So, even today, when we say that in the battle of X city in Iraq 10,000 US marines fought against 30,000 Iraqi soldiers we use enlisted numbers.

The same is generally true for most such accounts historically be it battles of WWI, WWII, the American Civil War, the Napoleonic Era, the 100 Years war etc. You also have to keep in mind that such records were not kept on a daily basis in a format that was accessible by researchers. What you propose broadly happened when you see accounts of army A having arrived at Iberia 30,000 strong, there joined by 10,000 more, but when battle time comes a force less than that is being given. This is evidence of more detailed numbers having been accessed by the author (maybe through interviewing witnesses or other scholars, because of access to more detailed archives, stelae or most usually works of other historiographers - do not forget that most authors quote other, more ancient authors). There is no account I know of of any ancient battle that gives numbers in freakish detail, apart from the number of the dead, which is understandable, since these men were considered important enough to be immortalized in public monuments.

[Sean Manning]

So, is there any reason why classical historians would use enlisted men instead of those fit for combat? Or maybe preference varied based on the battle being described? Because, like you said, it all depends on context.

There were two obstacles to giving exact strengths at a given place and time. First, only the best organized armies kept records of the number of men available on a given day. Tracking this required a lot of time and clerical work, and even then the figures might be unreliable. From other times and places we know of various scams: consider a captain who let soldiers leave camp for a few days in exchange for a bribe and hid this by fudging the records, or collected pay for soldiers who were not there (Thucydides implies that Tissaphernes was doing something like this to the Phoenician fleet in 411 BCE). And second, historians often did not have access to such records. So they used heuristics like “a legion is this many infantry and that many cavalry, and an auxiliary unit is this many infantry or that many cavalry" or "the decree I read said that 1300 hoplites and 100 cavalry were sent to Euboia, so I will assume there were that many soldiers at the battle." Finding accurate numbers for enemy, foreign, or disorganized armies was even harder.

Edit: I found some of my notes on the Strategikon attributed to emperor Maurice.

Chapter 1.2 of the Strategikon (pp. 13-14 of Dennis' translation) says that each cavalry trooper should maintain a servant, or at least that every three or four cavalrymen should maintain one.

Chapter 12b6 (pp. 139, 140 of Dennis' translation) says that each file of 18 infantry should assign two soldiers to handle the wagons and other things. If this is historical, it suggests that infantry counts might include a few noncombatants. The Roman army experts who I have read seem to think that early imperial immunes were called back to their unit in wartime, and were still expected to fight.

Frontinus, Strategems 4.1.6 describes how many servants Alexander the Great allowed to each cavalryman (eques) and infantryman (pedes).

As far as I know, the first English translation of the Strategikon was by G.T. Dennis a few decades ago, so there is no translation out of copyright. I do not own a Greek text, and I am not sure if any is in the public domain. Macedon may own one.

[M. Demetrius]

If this is historical, it suggests that infantry counts might include a few noncombatants.

It would make perfect sense to have at least some of the baggage handlers be trained soldiers. More than once, baggage trains were attacked. Those wagons and mules were not extraneous: they needed those articles of equipment.

[Frank]

There were two obstacles to giving exact strengths at a given place and time. First, only the best organized armies kept records of the number of men available on a given day.

At least for the army of the principate we can assume, that the opposite was the case. Konrad Stauner described on about 500 pages the administration of a roman army. He documented all known sources and comes to the conclusion, that there were well defined processes standardized for the entire empire: e.g the daily report. There was no coherent form and the romans used different material (tablets, ostraka, papyri, ...), but the content was always the same:

- soldiers available
- soldiers absent (classified as: in vexillationes, at the governors HQ, on vacation, ....)
- solders sick (classified as: wounded, diseased ...)
....

The imperial army had a huge buerocracy led by the cornicularii, the princeps praetoriae and the praefectus castrorum with lots of librarii, exceptores, and exacti, in order to document all activities of the legion.

Nowhere the romans documented calones or civil employees in such reports. Perhaps we just not found so far list of the calones. Looking to the precision of the roman buerocracy, they should have existed. The calones and other are sometimes mentioned exceptionally in literature. The daily reports are focussing on enlisted men only. But a governor had most propably a clear number about the availbale soldiers on every given day (except scams).


A good read about this subject is:

Konrad Stauner:
Das Offizielle Schriftwesen des römischen Heeres von Augustus bis Gallienus (27 v. Chr.–268 n. Chr.): eine Untersuchung zu Struktur, Funktion und Bedeutung der Offiziellen militärischen Verwaltungsdokumentation und zu deren Schreibern.
Bonn: Habelt, 2004, ISBN 3-7749-3270-0

[Sean Manning]

There were two obstacles to giving exact strengths at a given place and time. First, only the best organized armies kept records of the number of men available on a given day.

At least for the army of the principate we can assume, that the opposite was the case.

Yes, so the Roman army of the first two centuries CE was "one of the best organized armies." But even then, I think that we know much less about what records were kept by a marching army then what records were kept by units in camp.

The third obstacle to giving precise figures was rhetoric. Small armies beating big ones make good stories; large round numbers are more impressive and easier to remember than small precise ones; certain figures could have symbolic importance; and giving precise figures did not make for better literature. For example, I am told that a few Late Antique writers give flat figures in the hundreds of thousand for armies on the other side of a civil war, either to impress their readers or to use the topos that barbarian armies are countless but ineffective.

I will add Stauner's book to my list of books to read.