10-22-2017, 02:34 PM
Nathan wrote:
When regular auxiliary units first appear under Augustus, they are organised in centuries and cohorts, not maniples.
Yet Tacitus (Annals 12 56) mentions maniples of the Praetorian Guard. The question as to why the auxiliaries were not organised into maniples had caused me years of angst, and this meant revising my research and re-examining the information. My mistake was I followed the doctrine, as Polybius tells us, of three maniples made a cohort. Caesar provided the answer with his grading list of centurions, primi ordines, superiores ordines, inferiores ordines and infimi ordines. What this means is a cohort was now made up of ordines. This does not mean that maniples was made redundant, but did continued in the legion organisation and the praetorian guards. After that, it was a matter of comparing the praetorian and legion organisation with the auxiliary troops to find the answer as to why the auxiliaries did not have maniples. Basically, the Romans did a major reform of the centurion ranking and bought it in line with the ordo system. It was a great find as I had given up on ever understanding how Caesar’s five ordo rankings worked. And all I had to do on my legion diagram was change a maniple to an ordo and an ordo to a maniple.
When regular auxiliary units first appear under Augustus, they are organised in centuries and cohorts, not maniples.
Yet Tacitus (Annals 12 56) mentions maniples of the Praetorian Guard. The question as to why the auxiliaries were not organised into maniples had caused me years of angst, and this meant revising my research and re-examining the information. My mistake was I followed the doctrine, as Polybius tells us, of three maniples made a cohort. Caesar provided the answer with his grading list of centurions, primi ordines, superiores ordines, inferiores ordines and infimi ordines. What this means is a cohort was now made up of ordines. This does not mean that maniples was made redundant, but did continued in the legion organisation and the praetorian guards. After that, it was a matter of comparing the praetorian and legion organisation with the auxiliary troops to find the answer as to why the auxiliaries did not have maniples. Basically, the Romans did a major reform of the centurion ranking and bought it in line with the ordo system. It was a great find as I had given up on ever understanding how Caesar’s five ordo rankings worked. And all I had to do on my legion diagram was change a maniple to an ordo and an ordo to a maniple.
