Caesar BG 2.20

[tonyodysseus]

The question of the relative responsibilities of legates and tribuni militum in the late republic has me rather confused. In this I believe I am not alone. An interesting relevant passage appears to be in Caesar's description of the beginning of the battle of the Sabis River in BG 2.20. Caesar has been blind-sided by an ambush and everything was hugger-mugger; "Caesar had to see to everything at once." (2.20.1, tr. Carolyn Hammond, Oxford World Classics). He says that he was saved by two things: (1) the outstanding state of training of the soldiers; and (2) and "quod ab opere singulisque legionibus singulos legatos Caesar discedere nisi munitis castris vetuerat", which might be translated as something like "that Caesar had forbidden each legate to leave off from the work and each legion unless the fortification of the camp had been completed." Singuli I find a bit of a confusing word; I guess it's a distributive adjective used for describing a group of things considered one by one. So C. is describing as a group the phenomenon of each legate and the legion he was supervising as a group Right? As I understand it, at this time the consensus about the status of legates is that they were a flexible body whom the imperator could choose to assign to a legion on a fairly ad hoc basis and un-assign just as casually, and the detail of supervising the fortification of the camp such as in this case might be such an ad hoc commission. Otherwise where would the idea that the legatus might leave the legion in certain circumstances? Would those circumstances be essentially limited to conferring with the imperator? My understanding is that the evolution of command structure during the republic is rather sketchily understood. I somehow have received the impression that the tribuni militum might have been of higher status in the early and mid-republic. Livy's status as an unimpeachable document for early republican history is somewhat controversial now and the consensus of his understanding of military things is not high. Can someone please shed some light on this? Thanks. Tony