(03-22-2024, 07:21 PM)Nathan Ross Wrote: Milner's note on p.36 has Vegetius 'artificially conceive' the size of the cavalry component by adding two 32-man turmae and two decurions. So the original turma would presumably be 33 men, including decurion. Whether this has any grounding in fact is another matter!
Another (perhaps more 'Vegetian'?) way of doing it might be to divide the 225 veredarii alii into nine turmae of 25 men each, then to have the veredarii all in one 'double strength' turma of 50 men. Again, that would be for a 10-way split.
EDIT - looking more into the mess of the Vegetian 'antique legion' system, it appears that he is dividing each of his cohorts into 5 centuries - giving 111 men per century in a normal cohort and 221 in the first cohort; both figures include the centurion. And that is presumably the origin of his idea that a century contains 110 men. However, his cavalry components do not match up: neither 66 troopers for the normal cohort or 132 for the first cohort are divisible by the number of centuries!
So there might be some support there for a cavalry component that does not divide equally between the number of centuries. But I'm inclined to think it is just shoddy calculation by Vegetius (apparently some manuscripts have tried to 'correct' his figures?). Where that leaves my 110-man 'century' I don't know...
Jonathan Roth's 1994 article in Historia, "The Size and Organization of the Imperial Roman Legion," argues that Vegetius was likely playing fast-and-loose with the numbers for the Legion, along with perhaps confusing some early Republic, late Republic and Principate figures, to make his point: that the Legions had been allowed to decline in size and strength and that this trend should be reversed rather than raising new Auxilia regiments and employing more barbarians.
Roth also argues that the discrepancy between the 4800 and 6000 figures given for the Legion can be resolved by looking at the latter figure as including Calones (ie military slaves). Based on Pseudo-Hyginus' description of the Century containing 80 milites and the Cohort containing 600 homines, alongside Maurice's suggestion of having 1 slave per 3-4 soldiers, he assigns 1 to each Contubernia, 1 to each of the 120 Equites Legionis, and 1 to each Centurion, with an additional 420 to fulfill other duties throughout the legion. 780 plus 420 is 1200, which gets us from 4800 to 6000; it also equates to 2 calones per contubernium, which gives each century 80 milites and 20 calones for 100 men in a century excluding supernumeraries like the Centurion and Optio. Factoring in a double-strength First Cohort results in a legion of 5280 milites and 1320 calones, or 6600 homines in total, which accounts for the 6600 figure mentioned by Lydus.
As for the Veredarii not evenly dividing among the centuries, the 280-strong regiment I suggested (5 clerici et deputati, 50 Veredarii, 225 Veredarii Alii) can still be divided into 5 56-man Turmae, which is enough for 1 to support each 320-man cohort. Assuming that I'm correct about the Legions being split into thirds under Constantine, possibly along their Manipular lines, it could be that a cavalry unit was added to at least some of the Legions (perhaps those whose Equites had not been used by Gallienus to create new Promoti units) to give them some added striking power and improved communications and intelligence-gathering capabilities to offset their smaller size?
