"Roman Cohort size variation?" Topic

If you think of a basic wargames unit of Roman infantry as being a cohort, how many of you vary the size of the cohorts in your collection?

You quite often see a Roman wargames' army deployed on the tabletop with all cohorts being of equal size. I accept that we are not creating exact historical formations in our games, but IMHO it makes sense to vary the size of the cohorts to add more tactical choices and also to take into account some historical factors such as battlefield attrition etc and the effect this would have on cohort size.

Raglan

From 16 to 24 depending on the Rules and Opponents.

oldbob,

Why would the opponent make any difference to how many blokes you would put in your cohorts?

Raglan

Aside from the supersized first cohort, all cohorts were supposed to be the same strength.

We can assume they weren't, on campaign. But we also know that the Romans were fussy, OCD sort of people, so having one cohort of 478 and another of 246 may have bothered them more than, say, a British general of the Napoleonic era who had battalions of 300 men and 800 men. Then again, he couldn't easily transfer someone from the 42nd Highlanders to the 7th Royal Fusliers, whereas a Legionary commander probably could shift men from one cohort to another within the legion.

As to whether a wargamer would gain anything from having cohorts of varying strength --- I suspect that would become a figure-counting problem before it became an interesting tactical issue. "No, that cohort is not down to 50% strength, because it started with less -- or was that the one next to it?"

Anywhere from 12 figures to 24 figures depending on the rules of course. I generally go with around 16 but it really depends on the number of figures I have from this or that manufacturer. I generally do not mix in units. I have no problems with my base being 16 figures and some having 12 or others 24.

VR
James Mattes

I did this with some ECW 1/300 and it was fine. Trained bands (72 figs) twice the size of the smallest regiment.
It depends on how you want it to look.

PS All my Romans are equal figs.

If my opponent has large blocks of infantry, I will usually go with larger cohorts as long as I have more units than they do.Also I do very the size from cohort to cohort. The Romans legions did very in strength and size, also do we really know what and who made up the extra man power in the first cohort?

Raglan, I have 24 per cohort for Caesarians and 1 double cohort for myEIR. Also when a legion was on campiagn they from what a have read only took 8 cohorts and the rest were left to gaurd the camp. I game in 1 to 20 scale! Cheers Mike

I profess no expertise on Roman armies but do maintain an interest and have been researching some tertiary sources. My understanding was that there remains much doubt as to whether the Cohort was either a fixed association of assigned centuries or even the basic tactical formation – depending upon period. If not, then the centuries would have easily been redistributed prior to battle to keep tactical unit sizes standard if that was desireable. If it was the cohort, and at a 1:20 representative scale for a full strength cohort we are looking at 24 figures which is my starting point, shedding stands for campaign wastage. I think the double sized first cohort also disappeared after a time by the EIR period – remember reading that somewhere.

In my OCD world, every cohort is equal size (24) except one, which is smaller because I couldn't match the expertly painted shields.

Unit sizes would have varied wildly, historically, of course. I will be doing some large first cohorts, later, and have the option to field most of my auxiliaries as 24 man quingenary or 40 man milliary units.

Here's a thing, though; cavalry alae has a similar nominal strength to that of infantry cohorts. Mine are therefore 24 riders strong; do others do that?

It does make for a large, unwieldy unit, however…

Cheers, Simon

Simon, my cav. is also 24 strong! Cheers Mike

One (larger) century of the 1st cohort was made up of supernumiaries (about 600 c100AD). These would probably be the first chosen to stay in the camp during a battle – making the 1st cohort the smallest on the field.

Druzhina
Illustrations of Soldiers

@Lord Raglan, you have hit the nail on the head.

All units in a Roman army (Cohorts included as to your OP) did vary by size, however any good General will know that in theory it is paramount to get his units and ergo his army to a desired size (recruitment issues, sickness, previous engagements, other duties, transfers etc would always have an impact on actual strength and therefore theoretical strength not attained), or at least have confidence in that he had enough troops with which to deal with a situation. A Roman Cohort of the 1st Century AD would have ideally contained 6 centuriae each of 80 men (although Caesar metions "…followed by about 120 crack troops, volunteers from the same century" just throw a spanner in the works, in turn organised into 10 contubernia each of 8 men, therefore a desired and theorectical size 480.

However, we do know that units were often understrength and yet, conversely some cohorts were larger than others, for example for some period of time the during the 1st Cent AD the 1st Cohort contained in theory 800 men.

If your after realisim then have each cohort should be at different figure sizes, of course this is, if you follow one vein of thinking around cohorts being a tactical unit or if you subscribed to the century being the tactical unit, depending on the scale of the operation you are hpoing to wargame.

I, subscribe to the view that both were tactical units required and utilised for various reasons in different situations.

There was also at the very beginning of the 1st Century AD a unit of around 500 veterans as a distinct and separate unit.

@Druzhina – where has this been confirmed in the sources? Can you provide the link to the primary source if not secondary please? Many thanks.

Yes I've also not heard of that, Druzhina, would be interested to see sources…

I used to run mine at 20 figs under WRG 6th, figuring nothing was ever full strength…..

I'm I wrong about veterans, didn't they have about 20 years of service already, and special privileges to boot, meaning that orther legionnaire had do their daily duties besides their own. Which really made them semi-civilians and maybe not the best fighters?

My self I do use different size cohorts always on movement trays, very easy to keep track of.

His Honorable Lord Raglan has started me thinking again, never a good idea!

Not really my area, but I seem dimly to recall that someone (possibly Alan Bowman) suggested that 1st Tungrians (in the strength report from Vindolanda) might actually have been overstrength on paper, since it had over 750 men but only 6 centurions (instead of 10, as would be normal for a milliary auxiliary cohort). But then again, they weren't all in the same place (with about 300 men in both Vindolanda and Coria, and the rest scattered around in smaller groups), so in practice they would have had to deploy as a much smaller unit. Or this might be a milliary unit (as Goldsworthy thinks) that's nearly up to strength but for some presumably temporary reason with gaps in the centurion ranks.

A unit of 500 veterans appears in Tacitus Annals 3.21. Veterans as a separate unit also appear at 1.44. There is a gravestone from Scarbona (on the coast of Dalmatia) for a centurio veteranorum from the IIII Macedonica legion (raised by Caesar, disbanded by Vespasian).

I can hardly claim to be up to date on this, but I think that the evidence for milliary legion first cohorts (before Vegetius) is mainly from the very end of the first and the second centuries AD (essentially the layout of fortresses at Inchtuthil, Caerleon, Lambaesis and Neuss; and some 2nd-century inscriptions recording discharges by cohort).

*Edit* I see that some of that is now redundant. I didn't know about the new fragment of CIL 14507. I was right about not being up to date… Thanks, Gattamalata!

Thank you to everyone that have contributed to this discussion, TMP certainly habours a wealth of knowledge.

For the record I like the idea of adding some elements of "historical realism" to my wargame collections. As a result, I have decided to run my cohorts at varying size to represent recruitment issues, sickness, death, other duties, transfers etc. By doing this, it also prompts me to think more deeply about army deployment i.e. the 3rd cohort is under strength so I will not place them in the main battleline, they will hold the flank or guard the camp instead. When all the cohorts are the same strength, consideration of this kind is simply not required. I am not suggesting this is the best way to do it, although it does add another level of stimulation to my game.

Simon
I agree with you, my cavalry cohorts will be about equal size to the infantry.

Raglan

Gattamalata; thank you for taking the time to post this imformation. IMHO this is one reason why having Roman War Gaming armies are so much fun, all this evidence pointing is so many different directions. We'll never get it all sorted out, always something new and different and in the end we can always modify our armies the way we want, which most successful Roman commanders did anyway.

Hi Oldbob, I think you may be thinking of the immunes, who were excused the camp chires set by the Centurion, because they had a specialist skill.

I recall that veterans could be recalled to the colours, and formed an additional cohort or cohorts, over and above the ten.

Cheers, Simon

@Gattamalata Thank you for the links!

To be honest I don't always agree with some of the statements made on RAT etc however, there are a great number of historians on that board which makes for enlightening and informative(and at times very long) reading if one can avoid some of the more contentious debates. DBC and RC both know their subject well which can only be good news for rest of us. I welcome more from this pair (looking forward to Ross Cowan's Roman Legionary 69AD to 161AD out very soon if not this month?!) and hopefully more from Mr Goldsworthy…..

However, I'm still after the source for the supernumiaries…..

BigRedBat; aka "He who has the largest lead pile" besides Legion1950, Yes the immunes!!!

Come on oldbob, you are not far behind these boys.

Raglan

My source is
The Roman Army by John Wilkes.
Cambridge University Press, 1972.

It is not an academic work.

He has the 1st cohort with 5 centuries each of 80 men plus a centurion, 600 extra men (clerks and specialist trademen of the legion) not dividied into centuries, with the primus pilus being the 6th centurion of the 1st cohort.

Druzhina
Illustrations of Soldiers

Hi Druzhina, I've not seen any similar structures to that, and I'm thinking that research may have moved on, since then. I believe the specialists remained in their centuries, which is why they were so happy to become immunes, and thus avoid being tasked with fatigues by their centurion.

Cheers, Simon

Mr. Goldsworthy book "The Roman Army at War" does lay out imformation from different sources about the make up of the 1st. cohort. I do wish we could suck him into to this discussion.

@BigRedBat,

It does seem to be an attempt to fit in with some of the sources. e.g. a reason why the 1st cohort has twice as much camp space, 5 centuries; and a total of 60 centurions for the legion.

As can be seen above the other schemes have little evidence for them either. Perhaps different arrangements for specialists applied at different places and/or time.

Druzhina
Illustrations of Soldiers

Hi Druzhina,

Yes but off the top of my head, milliary auxiliary cohorts had the same structure and manpower as a legion's first cohort, and surely they can't have been packed with specialists. I've not heard of other recent similar views, I suspect opinion has moved on since he wrote that, in 1972.

Cheers, Simon

@BRB and Druzhina we know from inscriptions that the sepcialists came from within the "rankers". Caesar mentions as I clearly outlined above 120 men for a century. So we know that centuries could be more than 80, and on campaign less than 80. However, the only issue with the 1st Cohort being larger than the rest stems from a single written source – not encouraging but the only thing we have to go on.

Also, there is the odd unit of the veterans that were separate and distinct and certainly remarked upon at the beginning of the 1st Cent. AD. Could these have been from the 1st Cohort? The 1st Cohort was comprised of the best and most experienced troops (veterans?!), hence the position in the line of battle, 1st unit front rank, right of the line. Does make you wonder if the veterans that were in a distinct and separate unit move to being part of the line up and are integrated within to the 1st Cohort? Just my thoughts….

Hi MM,

We also know that the first cohort was larger, from some time late in the first century, from archaeological evidence from legionary camps, where the 5 double century barracks can be seen.

My understanding is that the veterans were recalled to the colours, as a distinct veteran cohort, so I wouldn't imagine that they formed part of the 1st cohort. Perhaps they might have been attached to it, though, or used as a reserve, or to guard the camp?

Cheers, Simon

There are a couple of inscriptions which refer to a praefectus veteranorum too, which might imply that veterans were organised in separate cohorts. The clearest is AE 1941, 105 (not 165 as in Goldsworthy The Roman Army at War, page 16 note 16). There are several more that refer to curatores veteranorum, and a vexillarius.

Keppie's 1973 article in Papers of the British School at Rome 41, pages 8-17 (Reprinted in 2000 in his Legions and Veterans collection) has a detailed discussion and references. His argument in short is that these cohorts were a product of Augustus' military reforms, but while they seem to have survived under Tiberius, they cannot be shown to have survived the reorganisation under Vespasian. He also points out that in normal circumstances (i.e. when the veterans were not operating independently from their legions) there is no evidence that they were kept in a separate unit, and (as Simon observed a few posts ago) it would have been easier to arrange their immunity from fatigue duties if they had been scattered across the regular centuries.

Wilkes' (jolly good) little book I think reflects an orthodox view on legion first cohorts from before the publications of the late sixties (especially Breeze in JRS 1969, and Dobson's introduction to his 1967 update of Domaszewski's old Die Rangordnung des römischen Heeres): research had in fact already moved on by the time it was published. This is not to criticise Wilkes, whom I admire: he is a fine archaeologist and historian. Books are often researched and substantially written significantly in advance of their appearance in print, and in any case there is not the same expectation of popular works like this that they reflect cutting-edge research that there would be of a scholarly publication (and even then things do get missed).

Thanks EB, that is very helpful.

There is a McBride reconstruction of a veteran cohort vexilla in one of the Osprey Legionary books (at Kalkreise), I recall copying it:-

Cheers, Simon

I'm trying to get my little senile brain around all this. So at different times and emperors origination of the 1st. chort and Legions was and could be different, I always assune that the legions origination was written in stone?

Hi Oldbob, yes although the I'm afraid that, conservative as the Romans were, the organisation of the legions changed, over time. It would be handy if someone HAD written the organisation in stone, as there are a few bits we aren't sure about! ;-) Cheers, Simon

Many thanks EB for the additional info. Webster gives the line up for battle by cohort and implies (from Vegetius) an indication of the cohort's relative importance, IIRC I think Goldsworthy touched on this as well. We must also add to the mix vexillations….which could have been drafted from and to as detachments….

To be honest in reference to the OP's question: yes cohorts should not be a regular sized unit (in theory yes, in reality no).

What I think is least likely is that the Romans, having decided that a certain ratio of officers to men in a fighting unit was desirable, should have a unit with half the desirable ratio of officers to men.

Druzhina
Illustrations of Soldiers