11-01-2016, 06:08 PM
(11-01-2016, 02:41 PM)FlavivsĀ Aetivs Wrote: All Auxilia Palatina units in the Notitia are labelled Numeri
Are you sure? As far as I'm aware the latin text of the ND does not give any specific unit label for them - it just calls them auxilia palatina.
However, the list of units of the provincial field armies is headed Qui numeri ex praedictis per infrascriptas provincias habeantur - 'which of the aforementioned units (numeri) are stationed in the following provinces': the list that follows includes both palatine and comitatensis legiones, palatine auxilia and, in a separate list, vexillationes of equites.
There are units called numeri in the ND, almost all stationed in Britain as limitanei, but they appear to be old-style formations; similar troops on other frontiers appear in a unit called an auxilium, confusingly!
So if numerus could officially refer to all three types of legion, and auxilia, and equites, besides being a name for a type of limitanei unit, I think we must assume that it could not have connoted a fixed number of men.
Perhaps it was precisely because the late Roman army included so many different types of units, of differing sizes, that this inexact word was adopted to refer to them all.
Nathan Ross