Sub-Roman Britain (Cavalry etc)

[Robert Vermaat]

Ah good old Geoffrey :lol: Always great for a laugh. Now, back to buisness. After delving back to Ecdicius again I figured that he and his nineteen men were just the "named companions". Now all this is hypothetical so prove me wrong if you must, but wouldn't they have two retainers each? And they would also be noblemen. Now supposing that this is correct you've got sixty men now just from the companions and their bodyguards but if you take into account the fact that each man had four servants and supposing they all had horses that would mean that Ecdicius' personal warband would number, gasp, three hundred men. Now likely only the first sixty men would have had lances and good quality armour but is it possible that all the others had a leather jerkin, a shield, sword, and javelins? Or am I just using circumstantial evidence?

Not bad, Nicholas. :wink:

It could be that number, after all we know that Ecdicius was from influential stock and rose to magister militum under Nepos might have had access to some manpower. His force could (hypothetically speaking) indeed number into the hundreds, but I have great doubts that they had access to swords, cavalry lances or good quality armour. You must remember that it was not legal to carry weapons for civilians, and although private retainers existed (buccellarii), these would not be compartable to anything the army could field. I'm not yet prepared to hypothesize about how Ecdicius could have bribed officials to get such stuff, which was produced in a monopoly by the army for the army.

I don't think that the 'others' in Ecdicius' force were noblemen. This was not late 6th c. Britain but late 5th c. Gaul, and we have no reason whatsover to suggest that something like a heroic nobility had formed in Gaul.

So what I would suggest is a force of private retainers, perhaps a few dozen riders but also more on foot, perhaps for the best part armed with shield, spears, some swords maybe. And maybe he had done what was done before him by anyone trying to achieve something military in 5th c. Gaul - he could have hired a batch of mercenaries.

Alans in Ecdicius' army, anyone?