Zodiac and Late Roman Army Organisation

[ValentinianVictrix]

Thanks to the help of several people I can say that the sizes of units I quoted in Zosimus in around 400AD are in fact totally useless in working out unit sizes as the units referred to are just called 'Tagma' in the original Greek, which by the way rather undermines a small part of Coello's work as it may be the case he was working from the Latin translation rather than the original Greek.

In relation to Coello's references to Zosimus, I assume that you are referring to p.29 in the Tempus Reparatum volume and/or p.71 in his thesis. His brief quotations are taken from Ridley's translation. It would appear that, in translating tagmata in the two passages cited (Zos. 5.45.1 and 6.8.2), Ridley divided the number of men by the number of units and, where the result in the first case came to 1200, translated it as 'legions' and, in the second case where the result was 666, as 'cohorts'. Plainly, if one tried to use these figures as evidence for the size of these types units, one would be begging the question and Coello does not do that. However, his comment about Zosimus (inter alia) on p.60 of the Tempus Reparatum volume and p.159 of his thesis (if that is what you had in mind) is certainly questionable.

You are correct Micheal, as always. I did find the thesis questionable in parts although it is a useful place to start.