"The Size of the Roman Army at Mons Graupius 83 AD" Topic

link

Not a link to an article, but to a site where I'd have to download something.
Sorry, but that and "The Trojan" and joining date of 2024…

No offense, and it all could be clean and legit through and through, but I'm not gonna download anything with that combo of flags attached.

Academia.edu seems legit and has lots of scholarly articles available. They will constantly fill your inbox with suggestions for new articles and ask you if you are the author of other articles if you give them your email address.

It's all legit. The link takes you straight to the paper.

Didn't for me.

Or me!

I don't understand what is going wrong. I'll give the link again, but other than that I have no idea. Sorry

link

Both links work well for me. Thank you for the link

x42

The second link does work for me now. The writer seems to be ignorant of the fact that the terms Hastati and Princeps had ceased in the Marian reforms (107 BC), which makes me question the accuracy of the rest of the article…

Herkbird wrote: "The writer seems to be ignorant of the fact that the terms Hastati and Princeps had ceased in the Marian reforms (107 BC)"

According to papyri records of men serving during the principate, we find these records:

11 EDCS-22300520: 2nd cohort, century of hastatus prior, age 40, service 21 years. EDCS-64500240: 10th(?) cohort, century of hastatus prior, age 43, service 25 years. CIL 14, 00229: century of princeps prior, age 45. AE 1993, 01581: 5th cohort, century of princeps prior, age 30, service 12 years. AE 2009 +00057: century of princeps posterior, age 21. CIL 03, 00187: ninth century princeps posterior, lived 54 years, served 22 years. EDCS-64500243: 8th cohort, century of pilus prior, age 50, service 26 years. CIL 14, 02291: 8th cohort, century of pilus prior, age 31. EDCS-34300294: 4th cohort, century of pilus posterior, age 30, service 8 years. EDCS-47400392: 1st cohort, century of pilus posterior, age 30, service 11 years.

OK, now that is interesting! I never knew after the Marian adoption of the Cohort that the names of the Republican maniples were continued as small unit titles.
We live and we learn…

We know that in the in the pre Marian Roman army the Hastati and the Princeps of the Legion were each made up of 10 maniples with each maniple made up of two centuries. While the century implies a 100 men in actual practice they were typically made up of 60. When then Marian reforms went through the Legion was reorganized around 10 Cohorts with each Cohort made up of 6 centuries. I am curious about what are we to imagine the terms "hastatus" and "princeps" within the century referring to in the reformed Legion?

As to the terms hastati, princeps and pilani, I believe they still remained in use so as to identify the battle lines of the legion when deployed. There are also two tombstone inscriptions that refer to the antesignani, one in 70 AD (AE 1978, 471) and the other in 172 AD (IGLS 2132).

As to the so-called Marian reforms, in 107-105 BC, Plutarch (Marius 9) and Sallust (The War with Jugurtha 86) declared that the consul Gaius Marius accepted poor men into the army as volunteers. Marius reasons for levying these men were because of a lack of good men for the army, or because Gaius Marius wanted to win the favour of the poorer classes. Plutarch writes that the senate did not disapprove of Marius levying the poor for the military.

According to Valerius Maximus (2 3), Gaius Marius also wanted to abolish the military levy by property class because he believed it was an arrogant mode of selection.

Julius Exsuperantius (1-9) accredits Gaius Marius with conscripting as soldiers, the capite censi (Class VI), who had no property. Julius Exsuperantius believed that Gaius Marius, being a lowborn, his sole purpose was to destroy the nobles, and proclaimed himself as the enemy of their power.

That is all we have on the so-called Marian reforms. No evidence of abandoning the maniple for the cohort, or any other military reform. It is nothing more than an unfounded academic belief that still is given oxygen. All the evidence points towards Marius accepting the capite censi being enrolled in the legions.

What gets me about many academics is there are references to maniples and cohorts going back from Marius to the reign of Tarquin Superbus (534 BC to 509 BC), and yet academics dismiss them as being anachronistic. And I mean dismiss them without proving it. That is what gets me annoyed. What the academics have grossly failed to understand is that a Roman legion has a number of organisations within it, both horizontal and vertical. The problem is the ancient historians just call all of them by the name cohort. And that is why you find in the ancient source's cohorts of varying sizes. By the principate, they are starting to get called by their proper name, like numeri.

In his description of the Roman legion of 340 BC, Livy allocated 15 maniples to the hastati and 15 maniples to the princeps. Also, in his digression of the organisation of the legion of 340 BC, Livy writes that the hastati withdrew between the intervals of the ordines of the princeps. After the hastati had passed through the princeps, the princeps closed their ordines thereby closing the intervals."

At the battle of Rusellae in 302 BC, Livy reports ordines were left between the Roman infantry wide enough for the Roman cavalry to charge through.

At the battle of Cynoscephalae in 197 BC, the Roman light infantry is reported as retreating between the ordines.

Livy also mentions that the centurion Spurius Ligustinus commanded the tenth ordo of hastati.

So, for 340 BC, in his description of the legion, Livy mentions maniples and ordines, so he knows there is a difference between a maniple and ordo. And what conclusion does academia make of it; an ordo is a maniple. With that kind or rational, it is not hard to understand why academia is in a rut when it comes to the organisation of the Roman legion.

Sadly, many wargamers unquestionably follow academics. They must be right, because everyone says the same thing.

According to Adrian Goldsworthy, the terms "hastatus" and "princeps" refer to the titles of the centurions who populated the various centuries and cohorts. That would explain the long service dates in Trojan's list. It would also explain other terminology like "pilus prior". I am not sure one can infer anything beyond this.

I've been working on these titles with other historians, and all agree the titles are referring to soldiers. If the dedicants were centurions themselves they wouldn't be "of" the century but commanding it. From the ages given in the soldier inscriptions, they don't have the operational age brackets as found in the republican legion.

With a legion having 60 centuries, each century had to have an identification. In most inscriptions, the identification of the century is always with the centurion' rank, which means the centurion identified the century and the soldiers that made up the century. Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that the soldier also were titles hastatus, princeps or pilani. Having these titles for the soldiers would greatly help them when deploying. Maybe Goldsworthy overlooked that concept.