05-30-2017, 08:14 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-30-2017, 09:12 PM by Nathan Ross.)
(05-30-2017, 04:02 PM)Timus Wrote: Do we have any descriptions of centurions conducting business in their tents (or quarters in permanent camp) ?
As far as I know there's no direct evidence for admin or dedicated admin staff below cohort or legion level. There's a note from Bu Njem (95) from a decurion to one of his horsemen (auxiliary) telling him to go and pick up a tessera at some place or other.
Other than that, the signifer of the century presumably attended to the admin tasks, and would have passed his notes on unit strength, pay etc upwards. But centurions were supposedly literate men, and it's not too far of a stretch to assume they had various tasks relating to written work, or even leisure - Martialis (11.3) imagines a centurion reading poetry on campaign, 'beneath the martial standards... in the Getic frost'!
(refs from Michael J Taylor, 'Records on bark, sherd and papryus': Ancient Warfare Special 2010)
(05-24-2017, 01:13 PM)Marcel Frederik Schwarze Wrote: There ist also another very good conclusion of Stefan Zehetner about the inscription CIL VIII 18065, which mentions more than 6 centurions in several cohorts and just 5 centurios in coh. IX...
...although there was surely a standardized size for new deployed troops, it might not always be possible to keep it in practice.
This seems quite plausible. I suppose the extra centurions in the cohorts with seven or eight may have been supernumerarii, but surely one of them would have been sent to coh.IX to make up the numbers! Unless, perhaps, one century of that cohort had been sent elsewhere...
(05-24-2017, 11:09 AM)Marcel Frederik Schwarze Wrote: some indication that a veteran vexilla was also fixed part to some cohorts during the time in question, forming its own centuria. (CIL V 4903: vexillarius / veter(anorum) leg(ionis) IIII )...probably commanded by a centurio in the rank of a traditional named triarius.
Do you mean that the veterans formed a century within the first cohort? There are a few inscriptions to men apparently leading all or part of the vexilla veteranorum, but the ranks appear varied:
CIL 03, 02817 - (centurio) vete/ranorum / leg(ionis) IIII Mac(edonicae)
CIL 10, 03369 - (centurio) veteran(us)
CIL 05, 07005 - curator veteranorum / leg(ionis) IIII Macedonic[a]e
CIL 05, 05832 - veteranus sign[ifer] / aquilifer leg(ionis) V / curator vete[ran(orum)]
AE 1941, 105 and AE 1995, 392 - praef(ectus) veteranorum
AE 1926, 00082 - pr]aef(ecto) veteran(orum) / [ leg(ionis) 3] XII
AE 2000, 555 - praef(ecto) ve[ter(anorum?)] / [v]eterani v[exilli(?)]
These all look quite early, and the only dateable ones, I think, are Tiberian. The last three seem to have been a grade in the pre-Claudian equestrian cursus, suggesting a veteran unit of around cohort size, perhaps.
Nathan Ross
