Late Roman Army Grade/Rank List under Anastasius

[Nathan Ross]

This could in fact support Onur’s argument that these are candidates who are waiting for a free space among the (few) troopers or maybe have received riding lessons to be able to replace them if  they become casualties.

I'm afraid I would have to agree with Marcel on this one! It seems unlikely that 225 men would be paid extra as candidates to fill 50 places - unless there was an incredibly high attrition rate among the Veredarii - which in turn would seem unlikely as they surely would have served as scouts/couriers if there were only 50 of them, rather than fighting cavalry.

The "Vexillarii" are unlikely to be cavalry standard bears in view of the fact that they receive only 2 annona... I would assume that both the vexillum and the imago were used only for church parades and the like

Yes, it is troubling that the Vexillarii are only paid the same as the Veredarii Alii - following the pattern of the other standard bearers they should receive at least double the pay of the men they're leading!

Is there any evidence from elsewhere of certain standards or images only being used for parades? It sounds feasible, but 'vexillum' seems too common a word in Roman military terminology to be referring only to a specialised item like that.

However, discounting the Vexillarius from our 'cavalry' doesn't greatly alter the structure of the entire unit, I think, as we still have our remaining standard bearers in sets of ten. If the twenty Ordinarii are all leading infantry units, we'd have to imagine some alternative arrangement of standards, or a doubling of ordines behind certain signa, perhaps. I did try, somewhere above, to imagine that half the infantry ordines had a 'cavalry complement' added, but it wasn't a very happy solution!