EUREKA - Roman army troops

[Sean Manning]

Sean wrote:
But respectfully, Steven, the bit about creating distinctions among the soldiers is a small point in a passage about adding more officers and drilling the men. Its interesting, but Josephus doesn't appear to have believed it was crucial.

How can you speak for Josephus? The Roman class system is extremely important. Look at the Servian organisation. The class system defines what armour you wear, which determines how you fight. It is a soldier’s identity, and it determines how the Romans organise the legion. Alter the class structure and you change the organisation of the legion. There is a period in Roman history called the Struggle of the Orders, which is about the class struggle.

I assume that Josephus was a good writer who could emphasize things he thought were important. Its true that social classes were important in Roman society, but Josephus spends most of this passage talking about other things, and only mentions his ???????? / diaforas / differences once. Now, maybe he's being subtle, or expects readers to know that social class is an essential part of Roman army organization, or doesn't understand how important this is, or has had his words mangled by copyists, but that would be up to you to argue. You keep telling us that you want to let the sources speak for themselves.