Late Roman Army Grade/Rank List under Anastasius

[Longovicium]

I tried some hypothesizing using the various grades and ranks

Ah, well done! You've clearly gone further into this than I have... It does become maddening, but oddly complusive.

Indeed - I even started an excel sheet and then promptly deleted it out of frustration. You start to make patterns up after a time and some wine!

This allows a theoretical double-strength century to be brigaded together. For the sake of this paper, I will call this double-century a maniple while acknowledging this is possibly an archaic term.

I started thinking along much the same lines with regard to the standard bearers (see below)...

Whilst his grade is that of a Flaviales, his rank is that of a Biarchus.

Not sure - biarchus, like centenarius and ducenarius, seems to be a rank used by guard units and cavalry (scholae and auxilia palatina), not legions. We no more need to start installing biarchi here than we need to start looking for Vegetius's decani!

Yes, you are right about the biarchus. I sort of forget this rank is specific (as far as we know) to the scholae and palatina. I used it some time ago as a caput stand-in and for some reason find it hard to unlearn it. Thanks for pointing that out to me.

1 x Centurion of Augustales grade  - 1 per Century

Interesting idea - the Augustale is certainly a high ranking soldier, drawing 6 annonae to the ordinarius's 8. But could we call him a 'centurion'? (which does slightly accord with Vegetius... although I did wonder whether these men might have been the old 'campidoctors'). Clearly the prestige of the 'centurion' had fallen drastically by this point, but having a larger number of lower-grade Alii might suggest the Augustales weren't so clearly demarked from the rest of the troops.

It is confusing to me. If the annonae per man is 1 as stated on the inscription then the lowest grade Augustales receives 4, half that of the Ordinarius. Or in other words, 4 x that of the munifices below him.

The lower-graded Flaviales have 2 steps in their career progression: the first or 'alii' grade receives 3 annona and the grade up 4. There are 200 in total of these lower 'Flaviales' grades in the Roman legion. 

The lower grades of the Veredarii, Vexillarii, Imaginiferi, Librarii, and so on, all receive only 2 annonae each, double that of the ungraded legionary.

To my mind, that places the Augustales and the Flaviales higher up the rank of grades than any of those below and perhaps hints at a move into the old centurional college, as it were.

But then again, perhaps I am looking for patterns after the fact!

A double-century or maniple contains 1 Signiferi and 1 Imaginiferi and 1 Optiones each.

Yep. The numbers of standard bearers would work with double centuries - one century (say) has a vexillarius and the other a signifer, with the linked pair having an imaginifer and an optio between them.

Trouble is, this would imply a hierarchy between the two centuries in the pair - priores and posteriores, as you put it. But all of our Ordinarii are on the same pay grade, and there doesn't seem to be any hierarchy between them. If we assume that the posterior century was commanded by a senior Augustale, we double the number of centuries.... Hmm.

I wonder then if the vexillarius (of the priores century) stands next to the Ordinarius by default of the tactical positioning? If these 2 centuries operate at a tactical level (as a maniple or numeri or whatever) then how would a command-level view be able to distinguish between them on the battlefield except by a unique standard? These stand is tactical positions and not as a hierarchy to do with pay or grade status perhaps? They are paid the same and thus stand as equivalents, I think. Thus the Ordinarius of the 'front' century and his colleague, the Ordinarius of the 'rear' century, are also equals. The difference is tactical.

This last figure needs the Clerici and Deputati to be subtracted 

Possibly. It did occur to me that, rather than subtracting the 'supernumeraries' from the century rolls, so to speak, we could make up the numbers with 'clerici and deputati' to arrive at a figure that could be divided by 20. Just adding 10 clerici to our overall figure would do this for a smaller legion, for example.

If we assume 459 munifices and 50 clerici and deputati, meanwhile, we arrive at a figure of exactly 1600 men in the ranks - of a total legion size of 1622 - giving 80 men to each century with every man below ordinarius grade carried on the rolls of the century.

Do your suggested figures still work with a smaller-sized century, or does it have to be 80 to fit all the different grades in?

Not sure - I will have to open up a bottle of wine and I am not anything other than madness lies down that path . . . 

You do realise that this is all feeding into my long-standing, and I might add printed, belief that the Late Roman legion size was 2000 men strong... ;-)

But what sort of legion are we talking about?

Prof Onur is a lot more cautious now, I believe, about identifying this as a palatine legion; it could indeed be limitanei...