Late Roman Army Grade/Rank List under Anastasius

[Nathan Ross]

I remember an Egyptian papyrus of the 6th century in which a soldier of a frontier unit asked his commander to leave him in the city - and not take him to the long campaign (with Belisarius?) because his mother is sick and needs his help.

I think there's something similar in the Abbinaeus archive as well - a new recruit asking to be assigned to a local unit rather than being sent abroad? (in those days, garrison units must have stayed in one place more often!)

Concerning biarchi et circitores... the Catarienses were peudocomitatenses.

Ah yes, I'd assumed that was another auxila numerus, but you could be right!

As for biarchi, the earliest one seems to be AE 1922, 00072, a biarchus of the sacro palatio, who fell in battle at Calchedon - Speidel's suggestion that this was a trooper of Licinius's horse guard who died at Chrysopolis in 324 seems persuasive.

There are also biarchi serving in the fabricae, I notice, although otherwise they appear to be restricted to the cavalry equites, scholae and auxilia - why the latter should have adopted what seems to be cavalry ranks I don't know.

Attached to this post there's another schematic of a possible deployment. The number is matching so far slab c regaring our flaviales as file-closers, the augustales as front-rankers + file leaders.

Very nice! The positioning of Augustales and Flaviales in this way would make sense. Although you only appear to have 18 subunits commanded by ordinarii, I notice...