10-10-2010, 03:19 PM
Quote:I came across "Cohors electorum" , I took that to be troops selected for a specific duty.Interesting. I don't think I've ever come across this. Can you remember the reference?
Of course, there is the well known career inscription of Gaius Nonius Caepianus (CIL XI, 393 = ILS 2739), who was entrusted with the role of praepositus numeri equitum electo[rum] ex Illyrico ("commander of the unit of horsemen selected from Illyricum"). The usual interpretation has Caepianus commanding a combined vexillation drawn from the cavalry units stationed in Illyricum. (There appears to have been a semi-permanent vexillatio equitum Illyricorum which released veterans in the early years of Hadrian, possibly suggesting that it might originally have been formed for service in Trajan's Dacian Wars. It seems still to have existed during the reign of Antoninus Pius.)
