A question about late Roman infantry...

[sonic]

Here the exact passage of Procopius, De Bello Gothico, book V.
Translation here:
http://bulfinch.englishatheist.org/Procopius/Book5.htm


Now other Roman soldiers, also, had been stationed at the frontiers of Gaul to serve as guards. And these soldiers, having no means of returning to Rome, and at the same time being unwilling to yield to their enemy who were Arians, gave themselves, together with their military standards and the land which they had long been guarding for the Romans, to the Arborychi and Germans; and they handed down to their offspring all the customs of their fathers, which were thus preserved, and this people has held them in sufficient reverence to guard them even up to my time. For even at the present day they are clearly recognized as belonging to the legions to which they were assigned when they served in ancient times, and they always carry their own standards when they enter battle, and always follow the customs of their fathers. And they preserve the dress of the Romans in every particular, even as regards their shoes.

The Arborychi are the Armoricans, ie the Romano-Gallics leaving in the vast region between Seine and Loire, settled at this time by Britons. The Arians are the Wisigoths, the Germans are the Franks.
Léon Fleuriot in Les Origines de la Bretagne identifies those 'Roman soldiers' with Briton units. We know that the Britons played a very important role in Vth century Gaul, that they did fight the Wisigoths of Euric under Riothamus.
They remained very proud of their roman inheritage until very late, and in the late VIth century we know they cut their hair short in the roman fashion, and used tablets to free slaves in the roman way.

The Life of St Dalmas records a legio britannica in 533 near Orleans. Of course it could be simply an "army", but there is a possibility it was a real legion in the late roman fashion.

Léon region in Brittany was known in the early middle ages as pagus Legionensis, this is the place were they was the roman forts of Brest and Coz-Yaudet, part of the tractus armoricani. In a small castrum not far from here two golden coins have been found, one of Julius Nepos and the other from Zenon, possibly the pay of Roman soldiers in the last decades of the Vth century...

I won't say Procopius description only refers to Britons, but it is likely for me it does include them.

Good quote and explanation!! Have a laudes.