Imperial Roman organisation

[Rod MacArthur]

The Centurion and Principales had battle positions outside the formation of the century and it makes no military sense to include them in the calculation of the ideal number of men required for a block 10 files wide and 8 ranks deep.

Your conclusion doesn't necessarily follow from your premiss. (Even if you subscribe to the idea of "ideal numbers" -- which I don't. If not even the famously regimented Spartan battle-line could manage same-depth files, what chance did the Romans have? :wink: )

In all armies, whether ancient Ptolomeic, Roman, Napoleonic or modern, there were authorised establishments (ie the number of men and structure which were ideally desired) and actual field strengths, which were inevitably less.

The fact that the Spartans could not manage same depth files in their field formations is irrelevant. I am sure that the Romans would have had the same problem in the field. That does not however prevent them having an ideal full strength structure of centuries of 80 men and all military logic would put those soldiers whose role was to act as a command group, (Centurion, Signifer and Cornicen) outside that as also would be the role of the Optio and Tessarius as supernumeraries at the rear of the century, as shown in virtually all diagrams of Roman Legions by such acknowledged (admittedly secondary) experts such as Adrian Goldsworthy and Peter Connolly.

It makes no military sense to set up a theoretical "perfect" organisation deliberately containing gaps in the rank and file structure by counting the Principales amongst the full strength 80 men of each century. Such gaps will occur anyway with attrition from a great many causes, but there is no point starting with them. I doubt if even Cornicens were so counted but I will explore that in a separate post.

Rod