Late Roman Unit Sizes

[Flavivs Aetivs]

According to Ross Cowan, double strength first cohorts, probably not as common, no longer existed in the late period.

Quite so. I think Evan's calculation was based on the standard notion of the 'traditional' legion of the middle Principiate.

I'm assuming he was pointing out that the legions of the Notitia era could not possibly have been this size, as the resulting armies would have been massive.

Talk about a late reply, yeah. I don't frequent here as often as I used to.

Yeah this was my point. And it was just a quick calculation, I didn't bother with officers (I didn't bother with officers in my Notitia calculation in my book actually. Probably should have but I considered them largely superfluous when considering the amount of sheer error in the Notitia and just estimating force counts for this period in general).

Arithmos is 640 men. When you tally up all the officers that didn't serve as line troops (Centenarii, etc.) it comes out to something like 668 so Zozimus' number is pretty much right.