Imperial Roman organisation

[D B Campbell]

On page 53 of your book you mention that some barracks had 12 pairs of rooms and one even 14. You speculated that it was possible that the extra space was allocated to the Principales (or junior officers) namely the signifer, optio and tesserarius (you did not mention the cornicen).

Tootling on the cornu was a function assigned to ordinary legionaries in return for immunity from fatigues. The cornicen was not a principalis and cannot be classified as a "junior officer" (a term I dislike). (As far as I am aware, it is not even clear whether each century was required to produce a cornicen, or whether they might be drawn disproportionately from one particular cohort, or whether they might simply have been drawn at random from the legion's manpower.)

This is of course exactly the point I was making and would imply that these Principales were supernumerary to the 80 men in the rank and file of a full strength century.

You've jumped a step! I see no reason to believe that the principales were supernumerary. Nor does the possibility that they might have been granted a little extra barrack space necessarily imply that their places were taken up by drafting in more men. If the current optio happened to have been promoted from your squad, it is equally likely (more likely, I would say) that your barrack room suddenly became a little less crowded. :wink:

In terms of tactical deployments Peter Connolly's diagram in "Greece and Rome at War" pages 217-218 show centurians immediately on the front right of their centuries, but not actually in the front rank, optios are at the rear and the tsserarius, signifer and cornicen are in front of each century. None of these posts are shown in the rank and file of the centuries. This is however a parade formation.

Sadly, no ancient source describes this for us. The diagram you refer to was Peter Connolly's opinion of how it might work. I do like these perfect chequerboard diagrams, but I'm afraid I don't believe that it worked that way in practice.

I also wonder about Hyginus description of a camp being prepared. ... Although a centurian had comparatively palatial accommodation in a barracks I wonder whether he would not have had just a normal sized tent in the field, with a second normal sized one for the 3 or 4 principles, leaving 8 tents for the rest of the century (less the two contubernium on guard).

Although Hyginus does not specify the size of the centurion's tent, he is pretty clear that it's only the centurion who benefits from the vacant two-tent-sized space, not the centurion and the principales. He is also pretty clear that "a full century has eighty soldiers" (plena centuria habet milites LXXX); the centurion was not a miles, but the principales were.