Late Roman Unit Sizes

[Nathan Ross]

I will take a closer look regarding the retinue of Crocus.

You can read Speidel's paper here. I notice he discusses the 'emesenorum iudaeorum' inscription and dismisses the reading - rather convincingly I have to say! However, if the Regii dated back to Constantius I I would have thought they would be further up the hierarchy of units. There were surely other 'kings' they could have been named after - even if we needed an actual king. Many auxilia units seem to have had rather 'symbolic' titles.

I think that most of the aux. pal. during the military service of Ammianus were still composed by foreigers

Yes - many of the Concordia inscriptions record men in aux units with 'barbarian' names. Although (as I think I've said before) our only recorded origin for an auxilia soldier claims the man was born in Singidunum!

But we should return to the topic of unit sizes, perhaps...

Ammianus calles the Iovii and Victores a legion.

Is there any support in 5th-6th C sources for this 'doubling' of units? It seems very common in the 4th century, especially with auxilia numeri.

If we follow the idea that the 'numerus legionum' (if you'll pardon the anachronism) might originally have been based on a two-cohort legion vexillation, as we see in the tetrarchic II Herculia inscription from Mauretania, and other places, might a 'numerus auxilium' have originally have been half the size, i.e. around the strength of an old cohort, and this is why they seem so often to operate in pairs?

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300 men is clearly a rounded figure.

Not necessarily - if the writers wanted to say four centuries or half a cohort or whatever then they surely could have done so?

three hundred men in light order — it was his normal practice that this number of men in each of his legions should be in light order — from the legion

300 does seem quite common. But I notice that Ammianus has Julian also equipping '300 light armed men' - this might mean that it was a common practice, or perhaps that Julian (with his interest in military antiquarianism) had read Caesar and was deliberately emulating him!