Late Roman Unit Sizes

[Nathan Ross]

Onur feels that it may be a Palatine one... legions at between 1400-1700 strong around 500AD is not part of the accepted paradigm...

As far as I can tell (from reading back through other threads and the English summary of Onur's book) the 'palatine' identification comes solely from the text being apparently addressed to a magister (militum?).

But as the magister could well be in overall command of all the troops in their region, it seems perfectly likely that the soldiers of a limitanei unit would address themselves to him, rather than just the local dux. Of course, it could equally (I think) have been the magister officiorum being addressed, the guy who compiled the notitia dignitatum, and therefore had direct overview of troops numbers etc.

If this was a legion of the limitanei there would be no problems in its being c1500 strong, or even greater. The chances of a palatine legion being present in Pamphylia, and recording their numbers on the wall of a provincial town, seems slightly harder to credit, I think.

people can post stuff on FB that... they would not be able to get away with on this forum.

Quite true!