Legionary Officers and NCOs - Late Roman Army (284 - 565 AD)

[Spurius Papirius Cursor]

Hi all

I've been digging around and come up with an interesting source online:

Treadgold, Warren. Byzantium and its Army, 284 - 1081. Stanford University Press, 1998. 87-88,96.

I'm now using it with Robert's list above to try to visualise (a muster formation of) a Diocletian legion of about 300AD. I've quoted/paraphrased a couple of sections from Treadgold below that seemed most relevant to me:

DIOCLETIAN’S REGIMENTS

… Diocletian … kept most of (the old Roman legionary) command structure as it had been. … Legions, cohorts, and alae continued to have officers called tribunes, centurions, and decurions as late as the sixth century. … Diocletian’s new legions of 1,000 men would therefore have had two cohorts, each actually of 480 infantry plus officers … . Note 1

(Treadgold then discusses ranks listed in Maurice’s Strategikon).Notes 2 & 3.

The official establishment of an infantry regiment of the old type therefore seems to have consisted of the following 501 men, not necessarily in quite this order of rank:

1 tribune
1 vicarius
1 primicerius
1 adjutor
6 centurions (commanding 80 men each)
1 campidoctor
1 actuarius
1 optio
1 surgeon
2 heralds
2 draconarii
1 cape bearer
1 trumpeter
1 drummer
60 decurions (commanding 8 men each including themselves)
420 common soldiers

NOTES:
1. See Watson, Roman Soldier, 22 (for cohorts) and 24-25 (for alae). On many points of military organizaton up to the seventh century, Grosse, Römische Militärgeschichte, though partly outdated, still supplies useful references to the sources.
2. Jones, Later Roman Empire, 626 (for actuarii and optiones). 634 (for centurions and decurions) and 674-75 (for the other officers).
3. Maurice, Strategicon, I.3, 1.5, III.1, and XII.7.

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