Vegetius\' description of a Roman Legion

[Sean Manning]

If you read Vegetius, its pretty clear that he made some mistakes (eg. he thinks velites were cavalry; Veg. 3.23 "Velites autem erant iuuenes leui armatura et corpore alacri, qui ex equis optime missibilia dirigebant") and didn't understand that the Roman army had changed drastically over time (or at least minimized this to support his rhetorical image of one good old way and one bad modern way). The way he used sources from Cato the Elder to Emperor Hadrian without hinting at problems attests to that! So while his legion could be an accurate rendition of an organization we don't know about, it would be hard to prove, and even harder to assign it a particular date.