10-13-2020, 07:16 AM
After burning the midnight oil, and relentlessly thumping the calculator, the term “school” as in the Sixth School is associated with time. Just to make life confusing for us, the Romans have three saeculum calendars. One is based on the Pythagorean tones, which gets confused as a saeculum calendar as happened in 249 BC. The second is the saeculum calendar introduced during the reign of Augustus and the third is a corruption of the Augustus saeculum calendar.
The author of the Chronicon Paschale has used the third saeculum calendar, which heralds Rome’s end much sooner than the Augustus saeculum calendar. By removing the last age from the third saeculum calendar produces the years as given by the Chronicon Paschale for the Scholia. That is all I had to do, and I never thought I would get to the bottom of it.
The Chronicon Paschale is in continuity with the actions of the emperor Diocletian. In the past, when a saeculum expired, the Romans would take the stadia of the orbit of the planets of the next saeculum in advance. For example, at the end of the second saeculum, the Romans would add to the tribes, the number of stadia the cosmos would have travelled in the third saeculum, and then divided the stadia travelled by the 35 tribes, which was then converted from stadia to men. Near the end of the fourth age, Augustus was born, and came to power at the end of the fourth age. Augustus changed the system by not adding the stadia of the fifth age to the end of the fourth age. The tribes were increased only at the end of the fifth age. This system remained in place until Diocletian, who reverted to taking the stadia in advance. This is why one age seems to disappear, and caused me havoc until now.
To construct the Roman army and how it would be organised, Diocletian used the tribal system for the end of the sixth age, which is the last age. Diocletian then divided the number of iuniores in each tribe by three, which would give him the capacity to create 105 legions from 35 tribes. Diocletian then did this for the seniores in each tribe and then added them to the iuniores.
Parts of the old legion organisation were retained and others replaced. The next litmus test is to see how the size of a legion and its various organisations stood up against all the unit numbers as provided by Ammianus etc, including the various Christian chronicles. To do this, take the legion, deploy it, and then remove detachments. So far so good with all know infantry numbers. Many of the same military doctrines are still in play, thereby creating the differing numbers. Some numbers include the seniores, others do not.
Applying this same principle to the cavalry does not work. Hyginus’ treaty on the Roman camp during the principate shows that a new cavalry doctrine was introduced during the principate and governed the organisation of the Late Roman cavalry. To determine the size of a cavalry squadron, deploy the legion and then create cavalry lanes. Divide the size of the cavalry lanes by five feet per horse, to determine the frontage of the squadron, albeit with a two horse clearance, which in the past has been the golden rule. With cavalry squadron frontage acquired, then determine depth, generally Pythagorean ratio of 3 to 2 (the perfect fifth) between infantry and cavalry. When this has been determined, cross reference with known primary source cavalry numbers. If rounding is within point 001 percent, run naked down the street yelling “eureka.”
