09-12-2012, 10:03 PM
It's an open question.
I tend to agree with Treadgold about the paper strengths, with certain specific disagreements [He counts one unit of sagitarii twice, because it appears in Illyricum and Thracia. I count it once. He counts twenty-one legiones comitatenses in Thrace. I suspect that the break between legiones and pseudocomitatenses has been dropped. And so on.]
It works out to about 100,000 palatini and comitatenses in the east, though many if not most units were understrength and 60,000 to 80,000 might be more true. The western armies are on the same order of magnitude as the eastern ones.
I have lately been trying to reconstruct the army structure of the Tetrarchy and the post-Tetrarchan civil wars. It is incredibly frustrating.
I understand that early modern European armies often had a policy of preferentially recruiting from potential enemy territory. I think this might apply here.
I tend to agree with Treadgold about the paper strengths, with certain specific disagreements [He counts one unit of sagitarii twice, because it appears in Illyricum and Thracia. I count it once. He counts twenty-one legiones comitatenses in Thrace. I suspect that the break between legiones and pseudocomitatenses has been dropped. And so on.]
It works out to about 100,000 palatini and comitatenses in the east, though many if not most units were understrength and 60,000 to 80,000 might be more true. The western armies are on the same order of magnitude as the eastern ones.
I have lately been trying to reconstruct the army structure of the Tetrarchy and the post-Tetrarchan civil wars. It is incredibly frustrating.
I understand that early modern European armies often had a policy of preferentially recruiting from potential enemy territory. I think this might apply here.
