Late Roman Unit Sizes

[ValentinianVictrix]

I was hoping the Perge Fragment information would have been published by now so that I could used them as a reference in my book but too late now.

I know Fatih Onur has given various talks and lectures on the fragments but I do not believe the full translation has been published yet. Unless Francis knows any different as he was the person who alerted me to their existance.

I have argued that the size of the Late Roman field army legions were approximately 2000 men strong, and 2400 would not sound out of place either.

I'm not sure where the 1200 man Late Roman legion figure comes from, Coello does warn against taking his work as an exact guide to establishing the size of Late Roman infantry and cavalry units.

The 1200 man Legion comes from Earlier in this thread in reference to the Illyrian Legion; the 800 number from Ammianus where he records 5 legions numbering 4000 men. The 1000 number from... somewhere I can't remember, maybe Zozimus.

On the Bright Side, I learned the Roman word for Hunnic Foederati was Unnigardae (Lit: Unnic Guard) from Coello's work

Hopefully the Perge Tablets will be published in time for my work on the Battle of Chalons. I have to cover the Roman army (still...) and it would be amazing.

I think your find it was Zosimus who I quoted as the source for the 5 units totalling 6000 men. An why think they were legions, why not Auxilia units?. I have argued that the 1200 man number is too low because there are several references within Ammianus where detatchments of 300 and 500 men from each legion were made. If the legion was only 1200 men strong then both of these figures would have seriously weakened their strength. If the Legion was between 200-3000 men strong then those figures would have had a much lesser effect on the parent legions strength.