Late Roman Army Grade/Rank List under Anastasius

[Nathan Ross]

Taking this obsession on to the nth degree, I've been trying to work out an arrangement of the subunits in the legion/numerus, rather as Francis did in this post.

It's very tricky, of course, as we have all sorts of peculiar numbers for the different grades - 20/30/70 Augustales, 60/140 Flaviales (I haven't even dared think about the semissales and duplares!). If we assume a division of the main infantry strength into 10 subunits, or 'ordines', then these grades should somehow break down by tens - but how can this be done?

The only way I can make it roughly work is by taking the smallest possible legion size - 159 munifices. If we take the Veredarii alone to be the cavalry, and add the vexillarii and the two bucinators (cavalry hornblowers, according to Lydus) and the three mensores to their number (pure speculation - I would think 'surveyers' might need horses, but more importantly I need them to make up a round number!), then the remaining men minus ordinarii and tribunes would total 960.

Divided by the ten infantry ordines this gives an 'ordo' size of 96 men.

The twelve Augustales, of three different grades, could therefore be file leaders, front rank fighters (Vegetius's antesignani) and caputs contubernii (perhaps also campidoctores: V's campigeni), each leading a file/contubernium of 8 men.

The first file, headed by one of the two senior Augustales, also contains the signifer and the six senior Flaviales. The rest of the front rank is made up of Augustales Alii, with the second senior Augustale taking the right front position. The two righthand files are completed by the fourteen Flaviales Alii in two groups of seven. This way every file is led by a man senior to those beneath him. The optio, imaginifer and hornblower are added to the other files (perhaps in those led by the 5-annona Augustales Alii), and the rest of the array is composed of the various duplares, semissales and munifices.

It's complex, but it does actually appear to work. I can determine no similar arrangement with any other figure than 159 munifices, incidentally!

Here's what it looks like (using a modified version of Gary Breuggeman's graphic again):

   

With the two files of Flaviales Alii removed, this would look very much like the old 80-man legion century of the Principiate. Which may suggest that at some point the basic century was enlarged by the addition of various senior soldier/NCO grades, as Vegetius says: the Flaviales and Augustales were 'added to the legions'.

The cavalry is not quite as neat, unfortunately - we have 290 of them, led by ten ordinarii. I suppose light cavalry would be less likely to have a regular 'formation', but if we take the vexillarius out of the main body the rest do at least break down as 4x7. Not perfect, and it would be better to have the five senior Veredarii as file leaders. But this is what it looks like:

   

That's the whole legion at least, with a full strength of 1272 including officers, not including an unknown number of supernumerary clerics, craftsmen, medical personnel, etc.

So this might be something like the arrangement of this very odd 'Perge Legion' - and perhaps unique to it. On the other hand the reality might have been something completely different!