Cohort commander?

[Steven James]

Duncan wrote:

Rightly or wrongly, Dionysius seems to assume that there's a hierarchy of centurions, so that the centurio prior takes precedence over his manipular colleagues (cf. IX.10.2 for the primus pilus as "commander of the 60 centuries"). In this way, the centurio prior of the triarii could be said (by a first century writer) to be the commander of the cohort (though it is surely debateable whether anyone in the early-middle Republic would have thought in anything other than manipular terms).

 

I’m of the school that centuries made maniples and maniples made cohorts for all periods of Rome’s history. However, I believe Dionysius’ reference to sixty centuries does not belong to the battle of Veii in 480 BC.

 

Duncan wrote:

The Lucius Siccius you refer to is usually known as Lucius Siccius Dentatus, and his speech, "quoted" by Dionysius, is usually thought to be Dionysius' own invention.

 

Why would Dionysius want to invent a character? When a primary source mentions the word cohort, my first question is which cohort are they referring to. The answer becomes clear when Dentatus was made a military tribune in 454 BC. He’s in command of a cohort of ten centuries. However, he has risen through the ranks to become a military tribune, which appears to me to contradict Livy’s statement that senators commanded cohorts. If Dentatus achieved senatorial status somewhere in his career, then everything would fall into place.