Late Roman Army Grade/Rank List under Anastasius

[Flavivs Aetivs]

On superficial examination, the Strategicon only proves that bandum and numerus, must be evaluated (more or less) synonymous. However, a closer examination shows a differentiation between both termini. Here the bandum with its comites - there the numerus with its tribuni. Here the cavalry - there the infantry. And indeed, I'm able to prove it epigraphically and literary.

I was not implying the Numerus (Arithmos in Greek) was subdivided into Bandons (uh... Banda? Bandoi? Not sure). By the time of Maurikios however, the Bandon is an individual infantry regiment, is it not? I don't quite remember.

The case here is very individual. And the regiment appears to have a very different biography and career. This can be seen also on the basis of many given military honors (augustalis & flaviales), the permanent high rate of cavalry with its own standards, standards of infantry, the officers etc.
Therefore one must consider here the concept of promotion and degradation of whole regiments.
All this unit proves is the plurality of the Roman army at this time. A grievance which Mauricius (Strat.12B) attempts to deal with by harmonizing those troops at least on battle field.

I think this is the real answer - that we're looking at the Late Roman army the wrong way and something I've long suspected. That there was not standardization of the army from the 3rd-6th centuries, but the whole period was an era of constant transofrmation from one standardized system (the Principate Legions and Auxilia of the 1st and 2nd Centuries AD) to another (the Army of the Strategikon).

Anyway, we have strong indication that all numeri followed "nearly" the same concept of tactical strenght and numer of officers - independently if the unit was deployed in egypt or in syria. A kind of "new-legion" was now the regular roman regiment. There was no other designation anymore.
Therefore we cannot compare the time of 400 with that of 500 regarding this topic. What we can say is that a certain evolvement has been begun in the late 4th and early 5th century by calling units generically "numerus" - leading in the result that just old(!) troops kept a kind of epithetos at least up to the early 7th century.

An interesting concept, although we have *some* evidence for a standardized size of unit called a Numerus.

That's one of the reasons I still hold with the theory that a biarchus was a caput contubernii (Maurikios' dekarch).

I had always theorized the Biarchus to be Maurikios' Pentarch (commander of 50 men as bi-arch means commander of half implying half a century?).

Even units which had a - let's say a proper name before - were simply renamed after the place where they were garissoned now. The 6th century is bit complicated concerning this issue.
When a new unit was deployed at the time of the notitia dignitatum it was technically still a legio, auxilia or something else. When a unit was deployed at the beginning of the reign of Justinian - it was officially a numerus (+name of the city or of the ruling emperor; numerus Iustinianus + many others). In a broader sense, this has already been made earlier (e.g. Constantiniani, Theodosiaci etc).
Anyway, we have strong indication that all numeri followed "nearly" the same concept of tactical strenght and numer of officers - independently if the unit was deployed in egypt or in syria. A kind of "new-legion" was now the regular roman regiment. There was no other designation anymore.
Therefore we cannot compare the time of 400 with that of 500 regarding this topic. What we can say is that a certain evolvement has been begun in the late 4th and early 5th century by calling units generically "numerus" - leading in the result that just old(!) troops kept a kind of epithetos at least up to the early 7th century.

I can largely agree with this, although I should mention the Theodosiaci and the Victores as well as V Macedonica both survived into the 7th Century (the former two units were part of the Invasion of Italy in 935).