Nameless city in Africa taken by Scipio

[Michael Collins]

That is good to hear!

Steven answered:
"It's psychological. You think you are finished and then another discovery. It's like the goal post keeps moving. So I changed my attitude and just accept it if more insights follow, and forget about pushing to get it finished. And last week it happened again. I had to go back to the beginning of the republic and change the cavalry doctrines. A few years ago I did something with Hyginus' cavalry descriptions and numbers. However, the result was a one off and I could not support this doctrine being prevalent anywhere else. At the beginning of last week, I was doing a revision of how the cavalry are arrayed on the battlefield, when a percentage of the cavalry are allocated to guarding the camp. Now I had the right numbers of cavalry allocated to guard the camp, but how the remainder of the cavalry were arrayed on the battlefield by wrong. I had an additional frontage of 30 horses. The doctrine they are using is the one I found some years back with Hyginus. It was not a one off. This has thrown new light on how Hyginus has come up with his numbers. He is combining the cavalry numbers for two cavalry doctrines when making his calculations. One of the changes I had missed, and because it was so subtle, was that the Romans changed the orientation of the cavalry century. This has to do with the legion's organisation being able to create cavalry lanes. The frontage of the lane must be in proportion to the frontage of the cavalry. This little piece of information helps to identify the size of the legion if unknown or the size of the cavalry squadron. I used this method to process all the cavalry sizes for the Late Roman army, and then created the legion based on the size of the cavalry lanes required. In true Roman fashion, they follow a formula.

This exposed cavalry doctrine can get tricky at times, and it looks like it is the same method applied to the seniores in the Late Roman Army, both infantry and cavalry. So it has a long history, and looks like it was introduced at during the return of the consulship in 362 BC, and very prominent during the Third Samnite War.

So it's been one long revision involving redoing most of the cavalry diagrams. But it has reveal a little more. For the battle of the Trebbia in 217 BC, Polybius has subtracted the correct number of cavalry left behind to guard both consul's camps. However, Polybius has subtracted the correct cavalry from the rounded cavalry total, and that is why he ends up with "about 4,000 cavalry."

So here I am again, going backwards in order to go forwards."

Steven,
If cavalry were made to pass through Roman infantry, the space through which they manoeuvred would have been roughly the same size as a deployed century right (allowing for sub-unit intervals)? Would they have used the same procedures as for a deploying maniple?