EUREKA - Roman army troops

[antiochus]

Mr Campbell wrote:
It's the bit about Josephus placing his own army under the command of dekadarchs, hekatontarchs, and chiliarchs, "in the Roman manner". Which proves what?

The reference to Josephus and my omission of providing the text, which you have done, was an exercise in determining what people, like yourself, fail to notice. You are correct in citing that Josephus placed his “own army under the command of dekadarchs, hekatontarchs, and chiliarchs,” but you failed to mention the most important component, and that is Josephus first “distributed the soldiers into various classes.” The Roman army is all about class structure. Most academics think this system belongs to bygone days.

Walbank once wrote an article “Naval Triarii” about Polybius naming the fourth squadron Triarii. Walbank believes Polybius has picked up a nickname for the fourth squadron. It is no such thing. Polybius tells us a legion consisted of four classes, and funny enough, the Roman fleet is divided into...four squadrons. Therefore, each squadron contains one of the four classes. At the time of the First Punic war, class segregation still existed, which meant the infra classem are not merged with the classis, that comes later. Now Dionysius uses the term antesignani in some of his battle accounts of the Servian army, which has been judged as anachronistic. Vegetius uses such terms as principes and hastati, signifying to academia, Vegetius is employing sources from an early period. However, such terms merely designate the class. There’s a reference somewhere in Tacitus about Parthian (???) envoys at Rome asking about the class system and how it works. The Historian Augustus has passing comments to the classes. It’s all about the class system, dekadarchs, hekatontarchs, and chiliarchs are of a secondary nature.