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+--- Thread: Cohort commander? (/showthread.php?tid=21847)
Cohort commander? - Burzum - 01-18-2013
Quote:I beg your pardon?? Defend the borders against Celts?? :? :???: :???:
What would you call the Caledonii picts in Caledonia then? "blue painted faced party animals? ;D lol
Quote:Teutons is such a 19th c. name.. please use Germanics or something like that: Goths, Vandals, Franks.
Germania if you really want to be correct.
Teutons is just a term I use often when I talk about the Germans. Forgive me if I wasn't adhering to the times. ;D
Cohort commander? - Flavivs Aetivs - 01-18-2013
By the Time of the Magister Militum Aetius' self-imposed Regency over Valentinian III Britain was it's own independent nation, not Roman.
Furthermore the Borders were defended - St. (Hygenius I think) of Noricum records that there was still a Garrison at Batavis, but the other Garrisons were destroyed or disbanded. Considering he's writing about 10 years after Aetius it can be theorized that Aetius or Majoran had the Danube Frontier (minus Pannonia Valeria and Pannonia Savia) garrisoned against the Iuthungi and Alemanni along the border, along with the Rugii and Amalic Goths.
Was there a shortage of men? Yes. Was the Roman Army any less effective because of it? No. Garrisons were moved around, Vexilliationes were created and positioned, the Garrisons were withdrawn to re-enforce the field army for major threats, and then put back, and so on and so forth.
Cohort commander? - Burzum - 01-18-2013
Quote:Was there a shortage of men? Yes. Was the Roman Army any less effective because of it? No. Garrisons were moved around, Vexilliationes were created and positioned, the Garrisons were withdrawn to re-enforce the field army for major threats, and then put back, and so on and so forth.
I just don't accept that.
You claiming that even with few men the Roman army remained effective. Yes. They were, but there weren't sufficient amount of men in order to keep the territories and ward off the barbarians.
You cannot have an effective Roman legion battling on border garrisons and winning a few battles incrementally. You have to inject fresh blood in places of the fallen.
I don't accept what you said.
Cohort commander? - Renatus - 01-18-2013
Burzum,
I am looking at your posts #328512 and 328549. Where is this stuff coming from? Some of it looks highly contentious. Sweeping statements like these are valueless without authority to back them up.
Cohort commander? - Flavivs Aetivs - 01-18-2013
The number of men has nothing to do with how efficient they are in battle. The Roman Army had declined by the Era of Aetius, not because of a lack of manpower (although there was one to some extent) but because the State couldn't afford the Army after the fall of their last Viable Tax base. Estimates of the amount of money lost are over 1 million Solidi. That's enough money for 40,000 infantry or 18,000 Cavalry per Annum. The Roman army in 395 in the west only numbered less than 100,000 men. After the Ravaging of all the Tax bases Aetius theoretically only had around 30,00 men in Total that the state could afford, plus his personal Bucellarius of a few thousand Huns. Many of these men were drawn from the Border Garrisons of Gaul to the Field Army.
Sidonius Apollinaris, Jordanes, and Hydatius all mention that his army was comprised of Auxilliaries. This translates to 2 things - either Auxilia Palatina or Limitanei. It was likely a combination of both, mostly Veteran Limitanei troops with some Palatina as a Core for this army.
Aetius was able to win every battle recorded non-stop in the 5th century except Rimini, so certainly the lack of manpower was not effecting the efficiency of the Army. The Goths of Theodoric alone could field around 20,000 men (estimated), which is larger than the Gallic Field Army of that time.
I had a complex theoretical compilation of how the Roman Army under Aetius coallesced, but this is an off topic side discussion.
I reccomend these posts be deleted or moved to an individual thread.
Cohort commander? - Burzum - 01-18-2013
Quote:The number of men has nothing to do with how efficient they are in battle. The Roman Army had declined by the Era of Aetius, not because of a lack of manpower (although there was one to some extent) but because the State couldn't afford the Army after the fall of their last Viable Tax base. Estimates of the amount of money lost are over 1 million Solidi. That's enough money for 40,000 infantry or 18,000 Cavalry per Annum. The Roman army in 395 in the west only numbered less than 100,000 men. After the Ravaging of all the Tax bases Aetius theoretically only had around 30,00 men in Total that the state could afford, plus his personal Bucellarius of a few thousand Huns. Many of these men were drawn from the Border Garrisons of Gaul to the Field Army.
Sidonius Apollinaris, Jordanes, and Hydatius all mention that his army was comprised of Auxilliaries. This translates to 2 things - either Auxilia Palatina or Limitanei. It was likely a combination of both, mostly Veteran Limitanei troops with some Palatina as a Core for this army.
Aetius was able to win every battle recorded non-stop in the 5th century except Rimini, so certainly the lack of manpower was not effecting the efficiency of the Army. The Goths of Theodoric alone could field around 20,000 men (estimated), which is larger than the Gallic Field Army of that time.
I had a complex theoretical compilation of how the Roman Army under Aetius coallesced, but this is an off topic side discussion.
I reccomend these posts be deleted or moved to an individual thread.
How do you replenish the fallen?
An army loses it's effectiveness if you don't have the men or funds to replenish it.
You cannot deny this.
Quote:The number of men has nothing to do with how efficient they are in battle.
This is insane.
But this is indeed off topic. Noted.
Cohort commander? - Burzum - 01-18-2013
Quote:The Goths of Theodoric alone could field around 20,000 men (estimated), which is larger than the Gallic Field Army of that time.
A Gallic field army under Roman occupation? If you mean in Caesar's time? You looking at roughly over 50,000 and higher numbers that Vercingetorix deployed in a field at one time ranging roughly over 90,000.
And correction, Theodoric's army consisted of 30,000.
Franks maybe, but they also consisted of Burgundians and Alans and Saxons to the north of Roman Gaul.
Quote:That's enough money for 40,000 infantry or 18,000 Cavalry per Annum.
That's exactly the estimation of Flavius Aetius's army against Attila.
Cohort commander? - Thomas Aagaard - 01-18-2013
Quote: Where is this stuff coming from? Some of it looks highly contentious. Sweeping statements like these are valueless without authority to back them up.
You are both using different numbers. But where do you get them from? what are our sources?
Do we have a surviving firsthand account of about it? is it an estimate by an historian made in an opsrey book? or?
And that goes for both Theodoric's army in the 5th century.
And do we have other sources about what Caesar faced than what he wrote himself?
Iam in no way asking for translations of originals... but I would like to know what our sources are.
And to get back to the original topic.
Burzum, you are stating that:
Quote:"For the other cohorts they all had 6 centuries with a centurion, optio and tesserariusin in charge of each.
The pilus prior was in command of each cohort and was an elected centurion right underneath primus pilus during battle."
Are you suggesting that one centurie was without its centurion since he commanded the cohort? (the optio would properly just take over)
or that there was actually 7 centurion pr cohort? (Iam simply not sure from your text)
Nathan Ross writes:
Quote:a centurion of any grade may have lacked the authority to command a legionary cohort.(a view based on comments by popularis )
So again we have two views that is sort of oposit. So who is correct?
Some sources to back up both statements would be nice
Cohort commander? - Nathan Ross - 01-18-2013
Quote:You are both using different numbers. But where do you get them from? what are our sources? Do we have a surviving firsthand account of about it?
No we don't, really, which is partly the point. There are a couple of military treatises from the Roman era, but they aren't exactly free from confusion and neither do they necessarily complement each other. Hyginus' 1st century work on laying out a camp gives some figures for unit sizes (8 men in a tent group, 480 in a cohort, double-size first cohort etc), while Vegetius, writing in (probably) the late fourth century gives some alternative figures - 555 men in a standard cohort, but only 5 centurions! (he implies that the centuria was obsolete by his day).
The multitude of surviving career inscriptions for centurions and other officers, meanwhile, provides us with a lot of detail about military rank and hierarchy (demonstrating, apparently, that the six traditional centurion positions from the republic survived into the six-century imperial cohort, for example). Unfortunately, interpreting this mass of evidence is often very difficult, as titles and terms altered over the years and were perhaps rather mutable anyway.
The more you study the Roman army, I often think, the more you come to realise that most confident assertions of military structure and numbers - including a lot of what you read in popular history books - is based on conjecture and best-guesswork.
On the matter of the cohort commander (or not), I'd still recommend the Ross Cowan article I mentioned in my first post ('The Centuria in Battle' - Ancient Warfare Special issue 2010), and particularly the section called 'The Cohort Command Conundrum'.
While granting that several historians believe that the cohort was commanded by the pilus prior (he specifically mentions Brian Campbell, War and Society in Imperial Rome, 2002), Cowan maintains that there was no such commander in practice - the cohort functioned as 'a grouping of cooperative centuries'. His view is supported to some extent by the lack of any reference in literature or inscription to a dedicated cohort commander, or to a cohort standard before the 4th century (when Vegetius provides it with a draco). Absence of evidence, of course, is not evidence of absence, but it's curious that such a pivotal figure, if he existed, goes completely unmentioned!
Cowan is drawing heavily (it seems) on B.H. Isaac's 'Hierarchy and Command Structure in the Roman Army', in the same author's The Near East Under Roman Rule (1998). Isaac explains the 'absence of middle tactical management' in the legion as a product of communication limitations on the battlefield. The individual centurion 'led as many soldiers as could be effectively commanded by a single man in the chaos of battle' (Cowan, p.48), and no senior figure was possible or required.
The desire to establish a cohort commander, whether the pilus prior or one of the tribunes, comes, Cowan suggests, from a misapplication of modern military principles to ancient armies.
For a study of careers within the centurionate, detailing what can be established of the complexity of hierarchy and command, I suggest Robert Summerly's thesis Studies in the Legionary Centurionate (1990), which I believe is available online somewhere!
For a comparison of the legionary centurion and the officers of the equestrian tres militiae (including some possible reasons why centurion or prefect level officers might not have commanded citizen cohorts) see Brian Dobson's 'Legionary Centurion or Equestrian Officer, a comparison of pay and prospects' in Ancient Society 3 (1972). Alternatively, Yann le Bohec's The Roman Imperial Army provides a fairly detailed summary of command hierarchy based on available evidence.
Hope that helps a bit - like I say, there's seldom one single interpretation of anything to do with the Roman army (or indeed history in general!), so it pays to remain open minded. But that doesn't mean, of course, that you can just believe whatever you like...
Cohort commander? - Burzum - 01-18-2013
[quote][quote="Renatus" post=328572]Nathan Ross writes:
[quote]a centurion of any grade may have lacked the authority to command a legionary cohort.[/quote]
(a view based on comments by popularis )[/quote]
That's why he used the word "may" because this is history forgotten.
[quote][quote="thomas aagaard" post=328580]While granting that several historians believe that the cohort was commanded by the pilus prior (he specifically mentions Brian Campbell, War and Society in Imperial Rome, 2002), Cowan maintains that there was no such commander in practice - the cohort functioned as 'a grouping of cooperative centuries'. His view is supported to some extent by the lack of any reference in literature or inscription to a dedicated cohort commander, or to a cohort standard before the 4th century (when Vegetius provides it with a draco). Absence of evidence, of course, is not evidence of absence, but it's curious that such a pivotal figure, if he existed, goes completely unmentioned![/quote]
I have long believed that centuries cooperated in command long before having read that litrature. But I have disregarded that belief because logical sense and the way an army is organized just tells me that pilus prior maintained a role of command in each cohort.
Cohort commander? - Renatus - 01-18-2013
Quote:For a study of careers within the centurionate, detailing what can be established of the complexity of hierarchy and command, I suggest Robert Summerly's thesis Studies in the Legionary Centurionate (1990), which I believe is available online somewhere!Jim Summerly, actually. He was one of the late Brian Dobson's research students at Durham University. His thesis is available for free download on the British Library's EthOS website here:
http://ethos.bl.uk/SearchResults.do
Just type 'James Summerly' into the search box and click 'Go'.
Quote:I have long believed that centuries cooperated in command long before having read that litrature. But I have disregarded that belief because logical sense and the way an army is organized just tells me that pilus prior maintained a role of command in each cohort.That is your opinion and you are entitled to it but please state it as such and not as a fact.
Cohort commander? - Burzum - 01-18-2013
[quote][quote="Burzum" post=328587]I have long believed that centuries cooperated in command long before having read that litrature. But I have disregarded that belief because logical sense and the way an army is organized just tells me that pilus prior maintained a role of command in each cohort.[/quote]
[quote]That is your opinion and you are entitled to it but please state it as such and not as a fact.[/quote]
How have I said that as a fact? It's how you interpret it in a factual way or in fictional way.
I don't see how I have claimed it to be a fact, where in my wording, I used "logical sense" and fact that it would make sense if pilus prior remained in command.
Oh, and this is an opinion btw!
Cohort commander? - Renatus - 01-18-2013
Quote:How have I said that as a fact?How about this, just as an example?
Quote:The pilus prior was in command of each cohort and was an elected centurion right underneath primus pilus during battle.
Cohort commander? - Frank - 01-18-2013
Well, i guess we clarified, that your statement about the role of the pilus prior is a personal opinion based on honest conclusions of several historians. But additionally I would like to ask you about some more details and sources about this statement:
Quote: But take this into consideration, the first cohort wasn't the first flank to engage and they only had one javelin unit. And they were 8 centuries of triari which actually served as a personal guard to the tribune (e.g. Legatus Augusti pro praetore, Legatus legionis, Tribuni angusticlavii).
Afaik, the first cohort was a millaria of 10 cohorts (5 double-cohorts) and not 8. And I was not aware, that the 1st cohort had just 1 javelin unit (centuria?). Sounds a bit like late empire to me.
Regarding the body guards or better "for special deployment", I know just of the Pedites Singulares and Equites Singulares, which were a vexillatio of several auxilia/ala at the headquarter of a provinical governor. The size of the Numerus Singulares was not fixed. It could be 500-1000 or even more men.
Singulares are also known for pure Legati Legionis (not governor) as an extension of their central staff used for several purposes. As Breeze showed very precisely based on the epigraphic sources, there is no evidence, that the staff of an high officer, wether the singulares, nor the librarii and others belonged solely to the first cohort. The only hint I know for the 1st cohort comes from Vegetius, who says, that the 1st cohort fights on the right wing of the first battleline which is the most important part of an ancient battleline.
So where your opinion about the 1st cohort comes from?
Cohort commander? - Thomas Aagaard - 01-18-2013
Quote:I have long believed that centuries cooperated in command long before having read that litrature. But I have disregarded that belief because logical sense and the way an army is organized just tells me that pilus prior maintained a role of command in each cohort.Just because something is logical to us in the 21st century don't mean that it was logical to the Romans 2000 years ago.
For one thing, religion have a clear influence on what is logical.