Barracks for 120 cavalry of a legion

[Paullus Scipio]

RE Cavalry troopers scattered among infantry barracks. It would not be much of a problem. Certain Buccinator or Cornicen calls would likely have been used to rally the men when needed. During routine days in garrison no doubt a duty roster would be used to ensure that a sufficient number of riders and horses were available for routine tasks like messenger duty. In the field or on campaign it would be certain that the 120 horsemen would be detached from the centuries to act as a single unit but this would not be necessary in the home fortress.

Agreed. Simply because their accommodation is dispersed doesn't mean that they wandered aimlessly around the fortress every day. The tabularium equitum (legionis) (record office of the legionary cavalry) at Lambaesis (fortunately, a mass of inscriptional evidence survives from this fortress) was perhaps the kind of place where daily orders could be posted and tabs could be kept on each cavalryman's activities.

I don't believe it helps the debate here to suggest that "soldiers wandered aimlessly around". That is simply a 'straw man' argument , and not relevant. Soldiers had many daily tasks and duties, then as now, as the various surviving documents testify, and as I posted above, so we need not consider that further.

In fact as you yourself draw attention to, with reference to surviving Roman records from Lambaesis ( and even more from Egypt), Roman soldiers were frequently split up and sent on various duties. I think the scale of the task is once again being underestimated. Cerainly, 'daily orders' could not be posted at Headquarters, with thousands of men converging on HQ to see what they should be doing, half of them or more illiterate, and walking miles/kilometres to get there. Even if ONLY the centurions and NCO's gathered at HQ we are still talking roughly 200 men.....and when the senior officer (Decurion?) gets his orders, he STILL needs to have all his men in one place - such as the cavalry record office - to transmit those orders, and there's still the problem of them getting there from all over the camp. At the end of the day, even in modern military organisations, orders to the troops must be transmitted orally.....

Valentinian Victrix wrote:-

However, when we were on land bases our messes contained ship mates from a variety of branches. If we were needed then a tannoy would call us to our stations.The Romans would of course not have had tannoy's but would have had musical signal systems where different notes or calls would summond various branches of their army to arms.

I think the scale of the problem is still being underestimated. You are talking of a few hundred men, and here we have an entire town equivalent, and thousands of troops plus servants. Tannoys can be placed, and heard simultaneously, in every barracks, but trumpets can not. If every century had three or four different trumpet calls per day for muster, mess call etc, that would be roughly 200 different calls being played per day ! Who could learn to distinguish that many, especially recruits/tirones? And if a particular call related to the Legionary cavalry, and they were scattered through the camp, it would have to be sounded in many streets and avenues, presumably competing with others.... Result? Cacophony. Any trumpet or musical system is of necessity a simple one, and would not be a practical solution in a Roman Legionary fortress, were the unit to be spread throughout the fortress. Not so simple as tannoys.....

If such a thing were practical, a trooper hearing it on the far side of the camp would still have to run/walk several kilometres to 'muster'.

Even if they had a standing order to report at such-and-such a place, at say, dawn plus one hour, it would be extremely inconvenient to have them march many miles/kilometres each from all over the camp - and those nearest would have time for 'brekky' while those furthest would not...... and if the Legate suddenly decided he needed a cavalry escort, or wanted to send a patrol to investigate a report, assembling the men would not be as easy as if they were based in one place.....there would be problems,and more problems!

Much simpler to have them all in one locality......and for the same reasons that the Praetorians in Rome were gathered in one camp, not billeted throughout the city.