[split] Distances between files and ranks

[Nathan Ross]

Nathan wrote:

...we have to assume that the sources mean what they say, and not that they made mistakes, altered numbers or fudged things, just to suit our own theories.
 
You mean like your example of the Perge document. Really, Nathan, you are contradicting yourself.

Nope, not at all. The discussion of the Perge inscription involved all the numbers on the list, did not leave any out, did not change any and did not assume that any of them were mistakes or needed to be amended or corrected in any way.

You've mentioned this several times before. If you had read through that previous thread fully and in detail, I think you would see that the two approaches are not at all comparable.

Show me proof the figure of 30 ranks has not been rounded from 28 ranks.

How would anyone 'prove' such a thing? The only evidence we have for it is Frontinus saying that there were three lines, ten deep each. If he did not mean exactly what he wrote, why did he write it?

Even if it was 30 ranks and the camp guard were additional, Pompey’s legionaries would increase from 45,000 men to 48,000 men... However, I have worked with Caesar’s figure of 45,000 men and followed Roman military doctrine going back to the early republic...

Frontinus does not tell us how wide the formation was, or how many men it totalled - only that those men were in three lines each ten deep. You have mentioned often enough that the estimates of army numbers differ in ancient sources, so using evidence from one writer to make accurate calculations of the numbers in another writer is not a sure method.

But I do not believe there was a 'Roman military doctrine going back to the early republic' that would determine things like numbers of men sent to guard camps.