Cavalry Cohorts

[Nathan Ross]

L.  Varady argued that the  cunei  had a strength  of  1.250 men.  He  based his theory on a passage by Zosimos who recalls that in the year 409 five tagmata from  Dalmatia  totaling 5.000 men were annihilated by Alaric.

And in the following line: "His identification of the five tagmata with the cunei has already been disproved by detailed study".

Can cunei be equated with tagmata? Do we know if the 5 tagmata are infantry or cavalry?

We don't, but they were probably infantry, or a mixture of both (they were being sent to defend the city of Rome, so infantry would be the obvious choice!).

The word tagmata itself has no importance here, I think - it was used by much later writers to describe earlier formations of various types and sizes.

If Lewin's final point about the possible reduced size of the cuneus equitum at Drobeta (210 to 300 men, based on barrack size) is accurate, then just possibly the cuneus might be the ancestor of the 200-400 man tagma described by Maurikios. But there is no certain link there either.

I do not see the term embolon (cuneus) anywhere in the text. So why is this unit called a cunei?

The Notitia Dignitatum lists two units in Egypt, the Cuneus Equitum Maurorum Scutariorum at Lico and the Cuneus Equitum Scutariorum at Hermopolis. The suggestion is that these two units were formed by a division of the older Numerus Equitum Maurorum Scutariorum mentioned in the papyri.

But, as Lewin says, we don't really know what the relation between these differently named unit types might be, or whether they had a different complement.