Ancient Roman military maneuvers maniples (Manipulum)

[Robert Vermaat]

By the way. Why do you use word 'DEPONETE' ? ... its 3rd declination ... it should be rather 'DEPONITE'.

I would suggest that we need not look for any correct grammar here. At the risk of using modernisms, I'd say that an order given needs to be short, sharp and easily understandable. Modern army commands (at least in Dutch and English) are also not by definition grammatically correct. The soldier knows what to do, which is all that matters.
Also, commands can be quite archaic in language. For instance, the Dutch command 'geef acht!' means 'attention', but the words used went out of use about 150 years ago.

Therefore, when looking at the Ludus set of commands (great research chaps, btw), I would hesitate to use both 'clina' and 'clinate'.

Also, the Ludus Militis seems to favour the use of 'contum' and 'scutum' over the use of 'dextra' and 'sinistra', which are also used in the same source (Maurikios) for a change of direction (in the commands depone ad dextra / depone ad sinistra). Not meaning to criticise, why was this choice made? In my own opinion (which is just that), if you have both words use, why not choose the more simple one?