The disks of the signum.

[Caratacus]

Do we really know what the disks on the signa mean?

I have read several interpretations.
-Since the maximum disks is 6, it could be the the number of the centurie

Actually, the tombstone Aurelius Alexandrus, Signifer of LEG II, has 7 phalarae on the depicted signa, so clearly they cannot represent the centuria..

I think that there may be an assumption here about the Roman army in general. Because so much of what they did has a 'modern' ring to it (carreer structure, rates of pay, tactical doctrine, etc. etc.), we often 'assume' that many other characteristics of a modern army obtain. We forget that the Roman army was an ancient army that ceased to exist some one and a half millenia ago!

One of our assumptions seems to be that they always did things in certain ways - so (for example) received wisdom is that there were 8 soldiers in a contubernium, 10 such units in a century, 6 centuria in a cohors, etc. But, do we know this always obtained for certain? Example: the exposed barrack blocks at Caerleon have more than 10 paired contubernia rooms (one has 12, another 14). We also know that the size of a legion (manpower) could vary and was increased at certain times.

It seems to me to be dangerous to assume that a cohort always had only six centuria in it. Consider the main purpose of the signum (as opposed to the aquila or imago). It must have functioned as a rallying point in battle. What could be simpler than to have the century number represented by the number of discs? This would be easy to see and there would be no requirement for any other detail to be there. If there was a case where a unit had seven centuries, rather than 6 or 5 or any other number, why not have 7 discs there for this case?

Caratacus
(Mike T)