08-17-2016, 12:20 AM
At the risk of jumping the gun a bit, I've been looking over the figures given on tablet C of the Perge inscription and trying to work out some possible numbers for the complete legion. (I know there's a translation of Prof Onur's book due out some time soonish, but it seems that we have all the raw data in the inscription that concerns this question already).
Here's the full list of ranks/grades and numbers, given on p.123 of Onur's recent monograph (the full text and Greek original is on pp61-63):
Annoyingly, of course, we don't have the complete figure for the ordinary soldiers or munifices ('servicemen' in Milner's helpful translation of Vegetius), nor the number of 'clerici ve deputati', so any estimates are going to be speculative!
However, if we assume that the ordinarii are basically old-style centurions, then we could try and calculate the legion size by multiplications of their number - at a 'Hyginian' 80 men per century, the 20 ordinarii will give us a legion of c.1600 men. We could perhaps imagine a 'Vegetian' century of 100 men, and assume the top plausible limit as c.2000 men.
The complete surviving roster minus officers (tribuni and ordinarii) is 1150 men (I'm assuming that most of the rest - Augustales, Flaviales, Veredarii etc were just different pay grades of soldier). The problem with this might be that no number ending with 50 is divisible by 20, so either the ordinarii commanded different sized bodies of men (unlikely, as they're all on the same pay grade!), or some of the men listed on the roster were not included within the commands of the ordinarii.
Ten of the men listed on the roster are what might be called 'legion staff' - the librarii, mensores, beneficiarii and the praeco. If we remove those ten men from the total of 'soldiers' we're left with 1140, which does actually divide by 20.
So, at the minimum number of munifices (159, I would guess) we have a total full-strength legion of 1272 men, of whom 1240 are soldiers in the ranks, with each of the 20 ordinarii commanding 62 men (I'm trying not to call these command 'centuries', but it seems needlessly picky!)
We could then increase the numbers of munifices by increments of 100, increasing both 'century' size and legion accordingly.
e.g. if we assume there are 559 munifices, we would have 1640 soldiers in 20 'centuries' of 82 men each, and a total legion size of 1672 men.
Of course, all this leaves out the poor 'clerici ve deputati', although if we're removing the 'office staff' from the 'century' then they should probably be left out too.
Then there's the problem of only having 10 optiones and 10 of each sort of standard bearer - how does that divide between 20 'centuries'?
Also the problem that the rather random numbers of veredarii, bracchiati and torquati do not divide equally between our 20 ordinarii... (I tried taking the veredarii out - thinking they might be some sort of 'cavalry component' - but the resulting figure didn't divide by 20! Tried the same with the various musicians too, but that didn't seem to work either...)
So I could have this all wrong!
Does anyone else have any better ideas?![[Image: wink.png]](http://cdn.romanarmytalk.com/rat/images/icons/wink.png)
Here's the full list of ranks/grades and numbers, given on p.123 of Onur's recent monograph (the full text and Greek original is on pp61-63):
Annoyingly, of course, we don't have the complete figure for the ordinary soldiers or munifices ('servicemen' in Milner's helpful translation of Vegetius), nor the number of 'clerici ve deputati', so any estimates are going to be speculative!
However, if we assume that the ordinarii are basically old-style centurions, then we could try and calculate the legion size by multiplications of their number - at a 'Hyginian' 80 men per century, the 20 ordinarii will give us a legion of c.1600 men. We could perhaps imagine a 'Vegetian' century of 100 men, and assume the top plausible limit as c.2000 men.
The complete surviving roster minus officers (tribuni and ordinarii) is 1150 men (I'm assuming that most of the rest - Augustales, Flaviales, Veredarii etc were just different pay grades of soldier). The problem with this might be that no number ending with 50 is divisible by 20, so either the ordinarii commanded different sized bodies of men (unlikely, as they're all on the same pay grade!), or some of the men listed on the roster were not included within the commands of the ordinarii.
Ten of the men listed on the roster are what might be called 'legion staff' - the librarii, mensores, beneficiarii and the praeco. If we remove those ten men from the total of 'soldiers' we're left with 1140, which does actually divide by 20.
So, at the minimum number of munifices (159, I would guess) we have a total full-strength legion of 1272 men, of whom 1240 are soldiers in the ranks, with each of the 20 ordinarii commanding 62 men (I'm trying not to call these command 'centuries', but it seems needlessly picky!)
We could then increase the numbers of munifices by increments of 100, increasing both 'century' size and legion accordingly.
e.g. if we assume there are 559 munifices, we would have 1640 soldiers in 20 'centuries' of 82 men each, and a total legion size of 1672 men.
Of course, all this leaves out the poor 'clerici ve deputati', although if we're removing the 'office staff' from the 'century' then they should probably be left out too.
Then there's the problem of only having 10 optiones and 10 of each sort of standard bearer - how does that divide between 20 'centuries'?
Also the problem that the rather random numbers of veredarii, bracchiati and torquati do not divide equally between our 20 ordinarii... (I tried taking the veredarii out - thinking they might be some sort of 'cavalry component' - but the resulting figure didn't divide by 20! Tried the same with the various musicians too, but that didn't seem to work either...)
So I could have this all wrong!
Does anyone else have any better ideas?
Nathan Ross
