[Historiae] about Hastati, Principes, Triarii, Equites legionis and the Symmetrical System (3rd-6th cent. AD)

[BroskiDerpman]

Thanks for replying!

[druzhina345]

A Syrian or Byzantine Horse Archer, c.600AD on a textile


MIRROR SITE:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A Syrian or Byzantine Horse Archer, c.600AD on a textile

druzhina345
Illustrations of Soldiers

[BroskiDerpman]

Oh my, I almost forgot about AoD 2!

Keep up the good work as always!

[Sertorio]

It,s a pure joy to read your works and explanations Pompeus. However i have some questions regarding 3 AD.
You seem to imply that from this century onwards legions would deploy on a single line of 16 man deep ranks or so i am reading it according to the Stategikon. However Vegetius seems to recommend a double line of cohorts wich seems much in line with the deployment of the Marian and imperial age.
At Strasboug, Julian deployed its army in a double line, and in the plate showing Aurelian´s battle order though the legions are side by side it is possible the achieve that same double line following the dispositions of Vegetius about the internal deployment for battle for a legion.

So in your opinion was the 3 AD Roman Army, still following the practice of multiple lines of battle in existence since the "triplex acies" ?

Another question regarding Aurelian´s plate. The fact that the light skirmishers are behind the legions suggests that the full body of the legion was still heavy infantry. Is that correct ?

[Pompeius Magnus]

Hi Sertorio,

I will try to answer in accordance how I understand your question - if it's not answered please don't hesitate to ask again :-)

I differ clearly in the text between the time era of the 1st to 2nd century, late 2nd to 3rd century (the Ancient Legion of vegetius), the Legion of Vegetius somewhere at the end of the 4th century and the transition to the army-deployment as described in the Strategikon.
There are of course differences, however, it is more than one time clearly mentioned in the ancient source texts that the system of the "ancients" (means: the greek symmetrical system) was more common than believed.
And this "natural" development leads us directly to the Strategikon. Insofar the Strategikon is not explaining something new to us - moreover it describes something what can be observed the centuries before - something which become very "roman".

It is not clearly referred by Vegetius that a Centuria stood "per se" on battle field from left to right. It seems today more likely that the different Centuriae were deployed by files. The Centuriae stood side by side, from left to right, and not from forward to aft (however, research is still ongoing). This is indirectly suggested because Vegetius speaks about the contubernium (the tent-community) - and more important: all soldiers within the same Cohors were classified as Principes or Hastati. During the time of Marius there were Principes and Hastati within one and the same Cohors. That is quite different.
Vegetius describes the Cohortes 1-5, standing in the first row, and those are classified as Principes. The Cohortes 6-10 are classified as Hastati and standing in the second row/line. At another position he also speaks about Triarii - but it is not clear if those Triarii were independend Cohortes - or if it was just (my suspicion) the rear-guard. A kind of reserve - still mentioned as 3rd line in the Taktika of Leo VI (!) in the early 9th century.
So, the threefold system has of Hastati, Principes and Triarii has indeed survived, but it has changed significantly and was now fitting more suitable the symmetrical system. The ancient triplex acies was not valid anymore.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

...well. and another 160/180 years later the internal organization of the military regiments has changed once more. Now all units were referred as Numeri (singular Numerus). And the unit size was not equal anymore. A numerus X was 800 strong - another Numerus Y was just 256 strong.
However, that what has survived was the symmetrical system!
But let us check the details:
It seems that only the few remaining Legions kept their system of the old Centuries (centuria). The Cohortes were gone.
The general size (or better said the wished size) of a new deployed unit was 500.
There was just one regiment leader - the Tribune. The officer after him was the Campiductor (for new deployed units), for older units we find sometimes an officer with the name "Senator", and in some cases in greek sources we read about the kenturion or kentarchos (the centenarii). The units were not sub-divided by Cohortes anymore since the size, also for old Legions, was too small. But since the office of the Centurio has survived it seems likely that the Centuriae have survived. But that's all. The next smaller division was the lochos. The leader of a lochos was the lochagous. And translated to latin it means nothing else that "contubernium" - our old tent-community! In english we say "file" and "file-leader".

The contubernia was a tent-community, that is a group of soldiers, sleeping in the same tent. The number varies between 8-10 (in Vegetius) up to 8-16 men (in the Strategikon).

In the lower example (see spoiler) you see a small Numerus with round about 256 men. A Centurion is not existing in our small regiment. But we find the Tribune and the second officer behind him, the Campiductor. The Strategikon describes very well the following formation when the unit has arrived the battle field and was deployed as a "module" - a "part" - a "brick" - that is the greek Tagma. And many regiments were deployed side by side in a single row - like our old cohortes - deployed as Tagmatas. That what has suvived was the deployment of the files.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As said, please ask if something is not clear enough. I also make mistakes, but I have researched several deployments of Arrianus, Aurelianus, and the Strategikon - and you always get the number of 1024 files (+/-1). The exception is just Vegetius where we get round about 580 files, but Vegetius is also just writing about the inner order of one Legion only.

concerning Aurelian´s plate:
Legion = always heavy infantry. That's the question.
At least they were the standard line infantry of the roman army - the "core" so to speak. I'm not a weapon or armament specialist. Insofar the question should be answered by someone else regarding the equippment of the roman army during the time of Aurelianus. I'm quite sure that Aurelianus took the best troops to his campaign. Legions from the Danube area, Illyria, Pannonia, Noricum had many contact to the barbarians from north of the Danube river. It seems likely to me that at least those 4 Legions were a kind of "elite". But that's more speculation than a fact.

Let me say that the egyptian and syrian Papyri in the early-to-mid 6th century are still just listing soldiers with graeco-roman names (e.g. Aurelianos), barbarian names are quite non-existent in the lists. That shows ones more that the Legion, or the Numerus, was still an homogenous element of Romans or Rhomäer.

[demagogos nicator]

Of course all factions are researched equially, however, in some cases it is historically difficult to find more than 3 different troop-types for some factions. I just tell this because some people are probably disappointed to find 5 different troops for Thuringi. Actually most germanic factions (the core group) had just few troops and many military services were "outsourced" to other germanic tribes. But as said said, the research is handled with care for all factions and all unit names are evidenced by at least on primary source.

Beter few historicly accurate and realisticly modeled/textured units with appropriate description containing historical background of the unit than many fantasy or repetitive units with immersion breaking vanila descriptions barely matching to the unit Cant wait to see the fruits of your effort and estabilish my own kingdom on the ruins of the Empire playing as Franks or one of the Gothic tribes. And still hoping that the remianing slot will be used for some Slavic faction

EDIT: I just found out that I am replying on almost a year old post

[Sertorio]

Pompeus,I have taken too long to thank you for your extensive reply. I could ask no better. And yes i am still strugling with Vegetius in that same point. First he presents the Legions composed of 5 cohortes of Principes and five cohorts of hastati, and then he speaks about Triari in reserve.
So from where are those Triari. We can explore a few ideas.
Either the skirmishers and Triari are independent cohorts or they are taken from the 550 cohort of Vegetius...or Vegetius is mixing information from different eras.
I prefer the second though the third is highly possible.
Another point, Vegetius is describing the deployment of the legion of 6 thousand men in a time we believe a legion would be 1 thousand two hundred man strong.
I would expect he would describe how to deploy an army with several smaller legions instead.
About Aurelian i cannot find details of the Palmyra campaign in Zosimus so here might i read more details?
Again thank you for your reply.

[Pompeius Magnus]

Another point, Vegetius is describing the deployment of the legion of 6 thousand men in a time we believe a legion would be 1 thousand two hundred man strong.

One must be careful here. Vegetius is clearly describing his so called ancient legion.

Veg. Liber II (7)
[...]
Antiqua ordinatione legionis exposita, principalium militum et, ut proprio uerbo utar, principiorum nomina ac dignitates secundum praesentes matriculas indicabo.[...]

I have analyzed some 2 years ago the language of Vegetius including his sentence-grammar and sentence-building. His writings are non-consistent. I can clearly see that he is sometimes not sure about that what he writes (like in the case of the Triarii) and then he becomes vague and he jumps between the times and everything becomes quite wishy-washy.
But in my upper shown source he writes very stable and clear. Explicit he say (see above Veg II 7) that he don't want speak about his own time. Now he want deal with another subject (or explain another subject).

The complete wording and naming concerning weaponry, armaments and the names of officers are completely matching the time of the 3rd century - and with some exceptions that of the 4th century also - at least the ealry third of the 4th century.

The camp-description of Hyginus (see Hygini Gromatici liber de munitionibus castrorum) is completely based upon the old maniples. Some people put the author of the camp-description into the 2nd century. Some people even put Hyginus into the first century - which is according my research out of the question. Other people claim that this camp order/camp system was still valid until Gallienus in the ealry 3rd century.
However, the maniples are not decribed anymore by Vegetius - but he describes very detailed the cohortal system. That means one can set the "ancient legion" of Vegetius in the time-frame after Hyginus - and that would also explain why the names of weapons and officers (names given by Vegetius) are indeed matching the post-Gallienus time frame. And here - during the 3rd century - we might suggest that the Legions were still numbering 6100 men (in the best case of course - that this was not the case in the reality is well known).
(!) We also know that Diocletian has still deployed Full-assembled Legions - since we are able to multiply several legionary detachments of certain Legions as listed in the Notitia Dignitatum (e.g. III. Diocletiana, I Iovia and II Herculia).

So, it seems meanwhile more likely that the numerical reduction of the Legions came stepwise during the 4th century and wasn't the result of an ad-hoc reform.
The tax register of Beersheba as well as the recently found slabs of Perge (both 6th century) are suggesting that even (or at least) until the reign of Anastasius units with 2000 men have survived.

New deployed regiments of the mid-to-late 5th century and 6th century in general were numbering round about 500 men, according all sources.
And yes, according the theory of Robert Grosse (Militärgeschichte page 34) the old Legions were normally divided by 6 - since 6 tribunes accompanied the Legions - and it is also evidenced that the Tribune was the new regiment-leader of all new deployed Numeri and all older Legions.
6100 divided by 6 makes round about 1016 soldiers. So here you see the nominal strenght of a legionary-vexillation. Anyway, this number was of course only reached if the full strength was 6100. We can however say that many Legions, in reality, were not exeeding 4000/4500 men. And now it becomes explainable why some Legions of the sixth century have no more than 600-800 men (according written evidence of egyptian Papyri; and this will be published with sources in my new book).
It is also possible that some Legions, for any reasons, were just subdivided by 2 or 3 only. This is possible according Seeck if the the so called "Full-Legion" had no more than 2000 or 3000 soldiers. And indeed, such divisions are clearly indicated in the Notitia Dignitatum where you see that some Legions have no paired Legion.

edit:
that reminds me that I have still not accomlished my research concernig Legions which were "degraded" from the comitatenses to limitanei. This topic is still quite unknown since most people are just focused on the Pseudo-Comitatenses, forgetting that a number of Legions were "degraded" from the field armies to the Limitanei. A quite interesting topic.

About Aurelian i cannot find details of the Palmyra campaign in Zosimus so here might i read more details?
Again thank you for your reply.

Zosimus I 52,3 lists the events including a toop list. Just few numbers regarding the strength are given. But if you read Zosimus completely you will find on certain other locations in the book exact numers for his τέλος - and that makes it possible to calculate a very realistic number of the comlete army. I will provide soon a list regarding the army of Aurelianus with its original greek terms.