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Maniples? How long did they exist
#16
Maniples are the new term for a Contubernium, if you read the thread Pompeius made. I think they were a unit not in the legions, but a way of division in the 500-man quingenary units of the Palantines and some Limitanei.
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#17
Evan wrote:
Maniples are the new term for a Contubernium, if you read the thread Pompeius made. I think they were a unit not in the legions, but a way of division in the 500-man quingenary units of the Palantines and some Limitanei.


The Historiae Augustae mentions legions during Probus reign, one legion being numbered the 10th legion. I am comfortable with the legion for this period being organised into maniples.
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#18
Doesn't contubernium mean "tent mates"? I thought that was a term for the 8 men assigned to a papilio, but I don't know when that was adopted. For some reason, I had the idea that a maniple was 40 men, or half a century.

Some also say, not to throw a wrench in the machine, that the word century comes from the word translated census, from the verb meaning to count population, rather than from the word meaning "a hundred." Several words in Latin can be from different roots, look the same, but mean utterly different things. But I'm not an expert at the language. My High School Latin was way back in the middle of the 20th Century (meaning a hundred years, not 80, heh.)
M. Demetrius Abicio
(David Wills)

Saepe veritas est dura.
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#19
What I can state with absolute certainty is that in the later Byzantine years the word retained its meaning as mess/tentmates and was usually considered half a (regular) file in size, I also know that in Excerpta Polyaeni the word is used as a synonym to "syskenos", which again would be a tentmate.

edit : Steven is right. I did not make clear that I was adding to the post before mine. I meant the contubernion, which was a term used in Greek military texts. A contubernion had no universal size, it is given as an8 man and as a 5 man subunit, always half of a lochos, which at the time was almost always a "regular" file unit. A "syskenos" in Greek is (exact translation) "one who shares his tent"
Macedon
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#20
Macedon wrote:
What I can state with absolute certainty is that in the later Byzantine years the word retained its meaning as mess/tentmates and was usually considered half a (regular) file in size, I also know that in Excerpta Polyaeni the word is used as a synonym to "syskenos", which again would be a tentmate.


Are you claiming a maniple is a contubernium? Or are you claiming a contubernium “retained it meaning as mess/tentmates”?
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#21
Quote:Macedon wrote:
What I can state with absolute certainty is that in the later Byzantine years the word retained its meaning as mess/tentmates and was usually considered half a (regular) file in size, I also know that in Excerpta Polyaeni the word is used as a synonym to "syskenos", which again would be a tentmate.


Are you claiming a maniple is a contubernium? Or are you claiming a contubernium “retained it meaning as mess/tentmates”?

Without having yet had time to peruse that other thread - I would certainly be arguing that a contubernium was a contuberniun - the building block of a century - formed of 8 men - who shared a tent - is a basic infantry squad - all the way to even now..... Smile
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#22
Quote:Are you claiming a maniple is a contubernium? Or are you claiming a contubernium “retained it meaning as mess/tentmates”?

He's claiming that during the late antiquity ( see Vegetius, for instance ) the word maniple was a synonym of contubernium, but we don' t know if this involve the (real) maniple disappeared, repleced by the numerus...
Francesco Guidi
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#23
the Manipulus did not disappear but I don't think the double-century was removed either, and came back in the late era. 5-7 Numerii would be much easier to control than 10-14 centuries in a battle in the late roman era.
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#24
Quote:Maniples are the new term for a Contubernium.

It's the other way round, according to Vegetius (II.13): "The 10-man section (contubernium) used to be called a maniple because they fought in groups (manus) joined together."

Vegetius is drawing on much earlier sources, including the republican Cato the Elder. It's very possible he's just confused here, and 'maniple' never meant a section of ten men!

There's no connection that I'm aware of between numerus and maniple either. Numerus was a long-standing military term referring to a force of variable size, no more exact than our word 'unit'.


Quote:The Historiae Augustae mentions legions during Probus reign, one legion being numbered the 10th legion. I am comfortable with the legion for this period being organised into maniples.

The HA is quite fascinating, but also very dubious and of unknown date. A couple of otherwise unknown and possibly fictional legions are mentioned (in the sections on Aurelian and Probus) and the military terminology many well be vague too. The Life of Probus has tribunes addressing troops in maniples, which suggests a larger group, while the Life of Pescennius Niger has a reference to decem commanipulones, which actually does suggest that a 'maniple' comprised ten men...

Ammianus also used 'maniples' in several places. This might seem definitive, but infortunately he also claims that the Persian army was organised into maniples, which suggests he was a bit vaguer about his usage than we might like! But the HA Life of Probus also mentions a Persarum manu ('company of Persians'), so hmm perhaps Ammianus is right after all!

So a maniple might have been a group of ten men in the later army, or it might have been a general term meaning a group ('manus') smaller than a cohort, perhaps. Or it might have been a sort of unofficial word for any group of soldiers. I don't think we can be any clearer than that, based on some very unclear sources!
Nathan Ross
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#25
Nathan Ross wrote:
So a maniple might have been a group of ten men in the later army, or it might have been a general term meaning a group ('manus') smaller than a cohort, perhaps. Or it might have been a sort of unofficial word for any group of soldiers. I don't think we can be any clearer than that, based on some very unclear sources!

There is enough empirical data in the primary sources to sort fact from fiction. Smile I have found references to maniples from Tacitus in association with the Praetorian Guard and the auxiliary infantry. Thanks to Tacitus I can reconstruct the organisation of the Praetorians and the auxiliary infantry. Armed with such information I have applied this to the battle of Mons Graupius to see how the Roman army numbers stand up. His infantry figure of 8000 men is rounded; his cavalry figure of 3000 men is accurate and is the maximum and backs up my research of how a cohort equitata milliary is organised. Agricola has followed the standard ratios of cavalry to infantry for both legion and auxiliary infantry. The end result is I can follow Tacitus battle description but the outlook is different to most historians.

Tacitus writes that the Romans began the battle with a missile phase, and then Agricola ordered in the Batavians and others to fight with the sword. However, because I have the auxiliary infantry organised into maniples the missile phase was also conducted by the Batavians and the others. The missile phase involved the first line of maniples from each auxiliary cohort equitata milliary conducting missile phase, then the remaining maniples undertook close combat. The battle becomes very clear and concise with the application of the auxiliary infantry organised into maniples. So I owe a depth of gratitude to Tacitus.

Steven
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