07-01-2014, 06:51 PM
@ Bryan.
About numbers at Pharsalus, you may or may not be aware of Gary Brueggeman very thorough work on the topic.
http://www.romanarmy.info/pharsalus2_arm...rmies.html
Anyway he has Caesar's cohorts at 5-6 deep. I don't agree with all his hypothesis, but some of the bias would be equal for both side, so 5-6 sounds like a good number I guess.
My personal hypothesis is that the 9th and 8th were so understrength at that point that they could no longer form deep enough while maintaining a decent frontage , hence the whole ordering them to support each other, which I interpret (purely personal once again) as those 2 legions halving the frontage of their centuries and sharing their reserves among other things.
Also, Caesar says two things contradictory: that he took one cohort from each legion to form his 4th line and that this line was 6 cohors strong, despite having 8 legions. It's possible (my personal opinion) that the 8th and the 9th were not asked to provide an extra cohort.
About numbers at Pharsalus, you may or may not be aware of Gary Brueggeman very thorough work on the topic.
http://www.romanarmy.info/pharsalus2_arm...rmies.html
Anyway he has Caesar's cohorts at 5-6 deep. I don't agree with all his hypothesis, but some of the bias would be equal for both side, so 5-6 sounds like a good number I guess.
My personal hypothesis is that the 9th and 8th were so understrength at that point that they could no longer form deep enough while maintaining a decent frontage , hence the whole ordering them to support each other, which I interpret (purely personal once again) as those 2 legions halving the frontage of their centuries and sharing their reserves among other things.
Also, Caesar says two things contradictory: that he took one cohort from each legion to form his 4th line and that this line was 6 cohors strong, despite having 8 legions. It's possible (my personal opinion) that the 8th and the 9th were not asked to provide an extra cohort.
Timothee.
