Late Roman Legion size based on the Perge Inscription

[Nathan Ross]

the 275 Veredarii appear to be the Legion's cavalry; being able to operate as turmae as well as in their files would allow some flexibility in creating detachments for scouting, screening and delivering messages.

I suppose we could have the veredarii integrated into the centuries, as the old equites legionis seem to have been during the principiate. But again we have the problem that the full number does not divide by the number of centuries, which the other estimates from earlier history do - Josephus's 120 legion cavalry give us 2 horsemen per century in the legion. Vegetius (II.6) gives 66 horsemen per cohort, and 132 in the first cohort. But 275 Veredarii cannot be divided by either ten (my version) or twenty (your version) centuries.

Adding an extra five men (3 mensores, 2 bucinators?) to the number of the veredarii alii gives us 230 of them, which together with the 50 veredarii allows a far neater spit into ten groups of 28 men, plus two or three 'officers' each giving us ten turmae of 30 or 31 each.

Milner's note on p.36 has Vegetius 'artificially conceive' the size of the cavalry component by adding two 32-man turmae and two decurions. So the original turma would presumably be 33 men, including decurion. Whether this has any grounding in fact is another matter!

Another (perhaps more 'Vegetian'?) way of doing it might be to divide the 225 veredarii alii into nine turmae of 25 men each, then to have the veredarii all in one 'double strength' turma of 50 men. Again, that would be for a 10-way split.

EDIT - looking more into the mess of the Vegetian 'antique legion' system, it appears that he is dividing each of his cohorts into 5 centuries - giving 111 men per century in a normal cohort and 221 in the first cohort; both figures include the centurion. And that is presumably the origin of his idea that a century contains 110 men. However, his cavalry components do not match up: neither 66 troopers for the normal cohort or 132 for the first cohort are divisible by the number of centuries!

So there might be some support there for a cavalry component that does not divide equally between the number of centuries. But I'm inclined to think it is just shoddy calculation by Vegetius (apparently some manuscripts have tried to 'correct' his figures?). Where that leaves my 110-man 'century' I don't know...