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Where was the Roman Army in AD408?
#49
Quote:Bearing all of the above in mind, I find it hard to believe that the Notitia can possibly have been an accurate record of the military situation in the west at the time it was supposedly composed (or last updated...) Unless the field army of Italy, for one, was a sort of paper tiger - all those gloriously-titled 4th century palatine and comitaneses units actually worn down to a few hundred new recruits, conscripts or 'barbarian' soldiers - it's difficult to see how such a massive force could melt away for several years during Alaric's sojourn in Italy, only to reappear again some time later.

While we do know that at least some of the palatine auxilia units from the ND - the Cornuti Seniores, and the units of Batavi, Bracchiati and Heruli etc from Concordia - existed during this period, we have no way of knowing quite what sort of state they might have been in, or what kind of men might have served in them.

So 'tens of thousands' might be a stretch, when we consider that marching 6000 men down from Dalmatia provided a stronger and more disciplined force than relying on units much closer at hand.

There's a pretty solid argument in that it was tied up billeting towns and unable to be mobilized without effective leadership. We see the Roman army reappear again under Constantius III and Aetius when Italy wasn't under threat, but then redistributed across Italy again when the Vandals take Africa.
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RE: Where was the Roman Army in AD408? - by Flavivs Aetivs - 11-28-2017, 03:14 PM

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