Late Roman Unit Sizes

[Mark Hygate]

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As I say, none of this means that centuries necessarily vanished (some sort of 100-man subunit was apparently still in use in the Byzantine army), and I'd love to see some unequivocal evidence for the continuation of the traditional centurial structure (and the cohort structure in the 'new' units of legiones and auxilia), but we should be wary of assuming that things stayed the same... Our base of evidence for later unit structure is very small and scrappy, often contradictory, and insufficient to construct a definite picture.

Surely that would be counter-intuitive?

Without 'unequivocal evidence for a change in the traditional centurial structure', then it would perhaps be better to assume no change.

All military tactical usage and therefore organisational structure change is done for a reason and, certainly normally, makes sense. For pretty much a 1000 years+ the general nature of arms and armour didn't change - so why would the structures?

I am, I must admit, much more content with the idea that the Roman military system probably didn't change that much over 8 centuries. All we see are different snapshots and are probably better served theorizing a more reasonable static base. It's what I've been doing and I'll have to see if any think it hangs together.