01-18-2013, 08:41 AM
[quote][quote="Renatus" post=328572]Nathan Ross writes:
[quote]a centurion of any grade may have lacked the authority to command a legionary cohort.[/quote]
(a view based on comments by popularis )[/quote]
That's why he used the word "may" because this is history forgotten.
[quote][quote="thomas aagaard" post=328580]While granting that several historians believe that the cohort was commanded by the pilus prior (he specifically mentions Brian Campbell, War and Society in Imperial Rome, 2002), Cowan maintains that there was no such commander in practice - the cohort functioned as 'a grouping of cooperative centuries'. His view is supported to some extent by the lack of any reference in literature or inscription to a dedicated cohort commander, or to a cohort standard before the 4th century (when Vegetius provides it with a draco). Absence of evidence, of course, is not evidence of absence, but it's curious that such a pivotal figure, if he existed, goes completely unmentioned![/quote]
I have long believed that centuries cooperated in command long before having read that litrature. But I have disregarded that belief because logical sense and the way an army is organized just tells me that pilus prior maintained a role of command in each cohort.
[quote]a centurion of any grade may have lacked the authority to command a legionary cohort.[/quote]
(a view based on comments by popularis )[/quote]
That's why he used the word "may" because this is history forgotten.
[quote][quote="thomas aagaard" post=328580]While granting that several historians believe that the cohort was commanded by the pilus prior (he specifically mentions Brian Campbell, War and Society in Imperial Rome, 2002), Cowan maintains that there was no such commander in practice - the cohort functioned as 'a grouping of cooperative centuries'. His view is supported to some extent by the lack of any reference in literature or inscription to a dedicated cohort commander, or to a cohort standard before the 4th century (when Vegetius provides it with a draco). Absence of evidence, of course, is not evidence of absence, but it's curious that such a pivotal figure, if he existed, goes completely unmentioned![/quote]
I have long believed that centuries cooperated in command long before having read that litrature. But I have disregarded that belief because logical sense and the way an army is organized just tells me that pilus prior maintained a role of command in each cohort.
