Late Roman Army Grade/Rank List under Anastasius

[Flavivs Aetivs]

So, at the minimum number of munifices (159, I would guess) we have a total full-strength legion of 1272 men, of whom 1240 are soldiers in the ranks, with each of the 20 ordinarii commanding 62 men (I'm trying not to call these command 'centuries', but it seems needlessly picky!)

This is more or less consistent with the reverse-engineered legion size from textual sources.

Then there's the problem of only having 10 optiones and 10 of each sort of standard bearer - how does that divide between 20 'centuries'?

The logical explanation is that it is like the Strategikon - i.e. the system was already transforming into Bandons with Standard Bearers for each Bandon, and presumably an Optio for each Bandon.

Also the problem that the rather random numbers of veredarii, bracchiati and torquati do not divide equally between our 20 ordinarii... (I tried taking the veredarii out - thinking they might be some sort of 'cavalry component' - but the resulting figure didn't divide by 20! Tried the same with the various musicians too, but that didn't seem to work either...)

No I think you have it right, just we're looking at actual strength, not paper strength. So just like how the variouus pay grades divide up into 62 men per century on average, this unit might be theoretically larger at 1600 man but is actually operating understrength.

I think Francis there has basically figured it out, analyzing his numbers. Except I'd call them Bandons, not Manipules.

Regarding what kind of Legion it was, Limitanei vs. Palatine vs. Comitatenses is defined by role (and pay/tax privledges) , not quality. Limitanei garrisoned, Comitatenses and Palatine legions campaigned.