[split] Distances between files and ranks

[Renatus]

Michael wrote:

Did he say where the bit about each tribune commanding five centurions comes from?
 
In the Teubner text of Arrian's "Art of Tactics"

I assume that this refers to Paragraph 10. In the foreword to his translation, DeVoto says that the first part of Arrian’s work (paragraphs 1-32.2) is ’essentially an idealized reconstruction of a Hellenistic army in which Macedonian principles of organization predominate’. The relevance of this to the second-century Roman army is unclear. However, turning to numbers, Arrian deals with what DeVoto calls a ’basic unit’ of 16 men and says that eight such units, totalling 128 men, was led by a taxiarchos. This in some way relates to a 100-man unit led by a hekontarchos. In an endnote to this section, DeVoto suggests that this probably refers to the traditional Roman century and its centurion. Perhaps Arrian was suggesting that the two units were numerically approximately equivalent. Later, he states that a 1000-man unit of 1024 men or 64 basic units was commanded by a chiliarchos. However, if a chiliarchos is a tribune and a hekontarchos is a centurion, this would mean that a tribune commanded 10 centurions, not five.

In relation to the Roman legion itself, we have one tribunus laticlavius and five tribuni angusticlavii. We also have a first cohort of five (or possibly six) centuries and nine cohorts of six centuries each. This gives us 59 (or 60) centurions. If each tribune commanded five centurions, i.e., 30, this would leave 29 (or 30) centurions unaccounted for.

All-in-all, I find DeVoto’s reasoning difficult to comprehend.