Alan wrote:
I bought a second hand copy of "The Roman Cavalry" by Karen R Dixon & Pat Southern (1997) ISBN 0-415-17039-7 at the weekend. I have read the chapter on organisation and noticed that it and my copy of Josephus both use the term "attached" to describe the 120 cavalry…As a retired senior army officer the use of term "attached" to a legion would indicate that these cavalrymen were from a different unit and additional to any normal complement within the legion.
During the Third Macedonian Wary, a body of about 800 foragers, and according to Livy, all Roman, were attacked by the Macedonians. In the translation of Livy (42 66), the 800 Romans are mentioned as being a “detachment.” As these men were led by a military tribune, they are part of a legion and were not an additional unit. This so called “detachment” of foragers is actually a vexillation.
Time and time again, I have read of academics fussing over the meaning of a single word in the hope it will be the holy grail that will reveal the answer to some ancient puzzle. I remember once reading an academic paper in which the author came to the conclusion that in order to meet his theory, Livy had used the wrong Latin words on eight occasions. When the Latin did not conform to his theory, he needed to blame Livy for getting it wrong. The poor standards of academia continue to amaze me.
As I have already stated in this threat, if you compile all the cavalry numbers for the principate, you will get a better understanding of the legion equites. With that information, you will truly understand the cavalry numbers in Hyginus’ camp arrangement. They are all on the same page. So, what stands in the way? Answer: people’s perception of what they believe or what they have learnt about the Roman army. Has any academic ever questioned whether Josephus’ 120 legion equites is correct? All I see is academia following the previous generations of academics, like well-trained sheep. Josephus’ 120 legion equites is both right and wrong. The figure of 120 is correct, and that they are legion equites is incorrect. There layeth the problem.
In 228 BC, the Romans disregarded some of their most sacred religious covenants, the main one being they would now raise more legions than set by the tribal system. To do this, they altered the tribal system as explained by Varro. They did this purposely for the upcoming war with Carthage, in which the Romans planned to instigate. The Romans were not going to war with Carthage in the same manner as they did during the First Punic War, in which they were hamstrung by their religious principles. In 211 BC, the Romans violated their religious principles again, when Livy
(26 4 9) writes that “it was made practice to have the velites incorporated into the legion.” When Augustus came to power, he reimplemented the old principles of their religion, which dictated the number of legions that could be raised and the size of the legion, and especially the number of the legion equites that was allocated to a legion.
During the republic, everyone believes there were 300 Roman cavalry allocated to a legion. Polybius tells us so he must be right, because academia tells us he is right. Livy also claims a legion had 300 cavalry. However, Livy gives two examples of a legion of 5,000 infantry having 400 cavalry, which is a rounded number. Believe it or not, Livy is correct. However, academia has dismissed Livy’ 400 cavalry. There has been a massive failure to understand Roman military doctrines and practices. If they did, they would understand how 400 cavalry becomes 300 cavalry, and what happens to those missing 100 cavalry. If you compile all the data concerning the Roman cavalry of the republic, a clear picture will emerge, and yet strangely enough, academia has no interest in following such an exercise, and only interested in grabbing little snippets of data that benefit their theory, while discarding those that don’t.
The military practices of the republic carry on into the principes, but with some minor adjustments. The Roman military system maintains the same continuity since the reign of the last king. All that changes are the size of the units.
Alan wrote:
If this is the meaning intended by Josephus and given that the Legions had been on campaign and the terrain the 120 attached cavalry could well have been attached to either reinforce the mounted component of the legions or as replacements for battle casualties.
I would not follow this path of investigation. It is a road to nowhere.
Alan wrote:
In either case I'm no wiser about the actual organisation of legionary cavalry. Maybe there was no fixed organisation? and the proportion of legionary cavalry varied on the availability of horses (camels?) and riders, training, role, terrain and many other factors.
The legion equites had a fixed number and organisation. Hyginus and Arrian provide sufficient information. How this information gets used is a different matter.
Many on this forum follow the doctrines of academia, mainly due to many just reading academic books and accepting those ideas that suite their sensibilities. I do not see many challenging their own perceptions, but continually debase the primary sources to accommodate their theory. The other danger they follow is the favourites system, which has a particular ancient writer more reliable than other, which results in many ancient writers being ignored over others. This results in the Second Punic War being based on Polybius’ narrative, which if any academic worth his salt, would question, when all ancient historians are brought into play. The many contradictions presented by all the ancient historians paint a different picture to that of Polybius, which would make Goebbel’s happy, due to the high content of propaganda that can be found in Polybius. And many of these contradictions by other ancient historians that do not follow Polybius’ narrative, can be proven to be true. It’s understanding the data that reveals the truth.
However, I put this question to this forum. How can you ever understand the data in the primary sources when you are biased towards a particular ancient historian? How can you ever truly understand Hyginus when you believe he is full of errors?
And that is why to this day, academia has not advanced its knowledge of the Roman legion beyond the first book written on the Roman army by Lipsius in 1596.