12-08-2013, 05:15 PM
Keppie notes the same passage, but finds it unlikely that the men were really all former centurions:
Keppie - Legions and Veterans, p.102
Although it might be worth mentioning that Cicero, in the First Philippic, describes Antony massacring the centurions of three legions that refused to support him at Brundisium. Cicero gives the number of men slain at 300, indicating that there could have been 100 centurions in a legion at this date (quite how that works I don't know!), or men referred to as such... Caesar had demobilised a lot of men in Campania...
Keppie - Legions and Veterans, p.102
Although it might be worth mentioning that Cicero, in the First Philippic, describes Antony massacring the centurions of three legions that refused to support him at Brundisium. Cicero gives the number of men slain at 300, indicating that there could have been 100 centurions in a legion at this date (quite how that works I don't know!), or men referred to as such... Caesar had demobilised a lot of men in Campania...
Nathan Ross
