Late Roman Army Grade/Rank List under Anastasius

[Nathan Ross]

Thanks Marcel - a wealth of very valuable and interesting information there!

cavalry&veredarii

I was aware of the mention in Hyginus, but not of the inscriptions you cited - very good, and I'm now far more convinced that the veredarii were indeed horsemen! Perhaps originally, as you suggest, a sort of 'barbarian' or irregular light horseman or hunter, but later apparently standardised in some way...

a cavalry unit as well - administratively attached to the corresponding centuria.

Yes, this seems likely.

I still think it cannot be a coincidence that the numbers listed on Slab C add up so neatly. If you add all of the various 'soldier' grades (including the veredarii), the standard bearers and optiones, the musicians and the surviving number of munifices you arrive at 1140. That this apparently random selection of numbers should total a figure that divides exactly by 20 seems telling.

If you remove the 275 veredarii, the resulting figure does not divide by 20. Increasing the munifices by increments of 100 only enlarges the subunit size.

We might assume quite reasonably, then, that all the 'soldiers' were part of the 20 subunits ('centuries') led by the ordinarii. The only question then would be how these subunits might have been organised.

Biarchus and Circitor are recorded in infantry as well as cavalry units.

Are any of these infantry units clearly legions, or are they auxilia?

I would like to hear the opinion of all readers why a unit (true legion, ancient numerus or cohors miliaria equitata) has a need of 10 imaginifer.

If we follow the idea that the veredarii were carried on the century rolls, and they were led by the 10 vexillarii, then we seem to be looking at two different sorts of century within the legion. One group would be 'led' by the signifers (the senior standard bearers) and the other group by the imaginifers (the junior standard bearers), with the attached cavalry units being led by the vexillarii.

Here's how it might work, (with a bit of 'creative license'!):

Ordinarii 1-10 lead traditonal infantry centuries, consisting of 80 men, a signifer and an optio (the latter being perhaps admin guy for the 'double century') - total 82 men per century.

Ordinarii 11-19 lead 55 infantrymen, with an imaginifer, and 25 Veredarii Alii horsemen, with a vexillarius - total 82 men

Ordinarius 20 leads 50 senior Veredarii, with a vexillarius, and 30 infantry with an imaginifer (these 30 perhaps including the musicians and other 'specialists'), - total 82 men.

The musicians would take up a 2 - 4 - 8 position in the array as I suggested before, allowing them to relay orders from the tribune at the front to the men at the rear.

The legion 'on parade' might look a bit like this:

   

Total number (plus officers and 'staff', at 559 munifices and a nominal 8 clerici) would be 1680, of which 1640 are fighting men in the ranks. I went for a larger century size to balance out the number of horsemen!

If this (or something like it) is the case, then I really don't think we're looking at a Legio Palatina here (I don't know of any suggestions that they had integral cavalry 'hunters', and seem to have been smaller overall).

Instead this looks rather like the remains of a (Diocletianic?) frontier legion, perhaps taken into the pseudocomitatensis, or a limitanei unit perhaps formed on the remains of an old cohors equitata; this is probably what you were suggesting above, Marcel.