03-03-2017, 10:14 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-05-2017, 11:42 PM by Nathan Ross.)
Cedrenus was an 11th-century Byzantine writer, and the phrase he uses in this passage is hippeon tagmata - 'units of cavalry'. Tagmata was a Byzantine military term, sometimes used inexactly to describe earlier formations like legions and numeri too. But it doesn't mean 'cohort', and we shouldn't assume that it always means 'legion' either.
This passage is the origin of the idea that Gallienus reformed the Roman army and added a new corps of cavalry - see Duncan Campbell's paper Coinage and Cavalry for an argument against this theory.
Clearly the Roman army did feature cavalry forces before Gallienus - both auxiliary alae and cohortes equitata, and legion cavalry. Post-Gallienus armies (or those few we have some idea about) do not seem to feature dramatically increased cavalry components. So it's not clear what Cedrenus means by this. It's perhaps a reference to the later Roman cavalry formations called vexillationes (maybe implying they were originally detached from some larger unit or other). These became the cavalry mainstay of the later Roman field armies, and seem to have first appeared around the mid to late 3rd century; perhaps Gallienus was indeed involved in their creation?
The numbers of a cavalry vexillatio are unknown. If we can base them on the apparent size of a unit of equites promoti in Egypt c.AD320 they may have been about 300 strong; officially they might perhaps have been about the strength of an old-style quingenary ala.
However, there does seem to be a large mounted component (of 275 veredarii) listed as part of the legion (or 'numerus legionum') of Perge, c.AD500. So perhaps that's connected in some way to Cedrenus's mysterious reference...
This passage is the origin of the idea that Gallienus reformed the Roman army and added a new corps of cavalry - see Duncan Campbell's paper Coinage and Cavalry for an argument against this theory.
Clearly the Roman army did feature cavalry forces before Gallienus - both auxiliary alae and cohortes equitata, and legion cavalry. Post-Gallienus armies (or those few we have some idea about) do not seem to feature dramatically increased cavalry components. So it's not clear what Cedrenus means by this. It's perhaps a reference to the later Roman cavalry formations called vexillationes (maybe implying they were originally detached from some larger unit or other). These became the cavalry mainstay of the later Roman field armies, and seem to have first appeared around the mid to late 3rd century; perhaps Gallienus was indeed involved in their creation?
The numbers of a cavalry vexillatio are unknown. If we can base them on the apparent size of a unit of equites promoti in Egypt c.AD320 they may have been about 300 strong; officially they might perhaps have been about the strength of an old-style quingenary ala.
However, there does seem to be a large mounted component (of 275 veredarii) listed as part of the legion (or 'numerus legionum') of Perge, c.AD500. So perhaps that's connected in some way to Cedrenus's mysterious reference...
Nathan Ross
