Late Roman Unit Sizes

[Nathan Ross]

Here is the number of references of targeteers taken from the Rolfe’s translation. ... Most of the above would apply to infantry, not cavalry.

All translations have their irritations - the Penguin version by Hamilton has been so heavily abridged that most of your references are missing from it! Nevertheless, if you check through them I think you'll find that most of the references are to officers - usually tribunes - of the scholae scutariorum. These were guards officers, and thus high ranking men, and it appears that on occasion they were given field commands that included troops other than the scutarii alone (30,1,11 for example).

The reference in 31,12,16 is to a sudden impetuous attack by sagittari et scutarii commanded by Cassio and Bacurius; the archers in this case, I think, would be mounted men, perhaps also guard - this article identifies them as the schola scutariorum sagittariorum - and it was a cavalry attack.

I have no idea why Rolfe keeps calling the Scutarii 'targeteers', the best translation would be 'shield-bearers' in my opinion.

A 'target' or 'targe' was a small round shield, used in combination with a sword - as described here. Why Rolfe thinks this is a decent translation for scutum is anybody's guess... :dizzy:

there is no mention of Legionary Lanciarii that I can think off apart from the Legion of that name.

The legionary lanciarii were perhaps an innovation of the Severan era - they turn up in Legio II Parthica, and are mentioned a few times during the third century. By the tetrarchy there seems to have been a corps of lanciarii attached to the imperial comitatus (Aurelius Gaius served with them, if I recall correctly). The notion that these lanciarii, detached from their original legions, later formed the palatine legion of the Lanciarii is tempting, but unproven. As you've said, late Roman unit titles were not perhaps as obvious as they might appear...!