Where did they keep the mules in garrison?

[D B Campbell]

I sense another marathon bludgeoning match in the offing, so I shall simply make two observations:

Question, is there any consensus about how many animals single legion had?

People are free to speculate, of course. But in truth, we have absolutely no idea how many mules a single legion might have.

...You are right, Duncan, but it is all to easy to trot out the "universal cliche" when applied to the subject of ancient military matters of ; "Ah, but we don't/can't know for certain, because we simply don't have the hard/corroborating information".

Better to state the truth from the outset, than to wander all around the houses with your "educated guesstimates" which end up "giving some idea" that might be "fairly safe" ... when your "minimum/normal" figure could be wildly wrong. As I said, "we have absolutely no idea". Far from being a "universal cliche", it is an accurate statement of current scholarship.

Even taking a hypothetical "legion at war", Jonathan Roth believes that each tent-party required two mules ...

That is simply incorrect, ... blah blah blah

My copy of Roth (yours may be different?) says just that. On pp. 77-78, he envisages an army in the field for over a week (hence my "legion at war") and points out that each tent-party would then require two mules. That seems to be quite an important detail, as it immediately doubles your "educationally guesstimated" total.

However, your contention may well be right, ...

:roll: