Evolution of the manipular legion

[drsrob]

Rob wrote:
At that early time there were as yet no cohorts
 
The belief there was no cohorts in the early period is just an academic belief that is unfounded, but everyone runs with it. If academia cannot even determine the size and organisation of a legion for this period, then how can they dispute there was no cohort? This methodology does not make sense to me, and academia need to change its way of thinking.

Primary sources not the problem. Academia is the problem.

"Academia"? Is that some secret organisation?

Primary sources are never the problem, lack of them is, however. Livy is not a primary source, it's a work of literature and at best only a secondary source. All the literary works we use as sources today were written centuries after the events of the early republic. It would therefore be a mistake to even assume they knew how the earliest military had been organised.

Livy knows the difference between a maniple [and a cohort] so has not confuse[d] the Greek translation of cohort as meaning maniple.

Even if Livy knew the difference, what he knew is the difference in his own time, which is irrelevant. 
He cannot have known what the original Latin text had said, because it came to him through histories written in Greek. He (or his source) chose one of the two possible translations of a Greek word and we do not know on what basis  the choice was made. If I were to speculate I'd say he chose 'cohort' because for a maniple the statement would be largely self-evident and if Livy made the choice I'd think it fitted his story better that something irregular had been done.