Centurion Position in Battle

[Mark Hygate]

- I am utterly comfortable seeing the optio as a platoon/century sergeant, because I see it as an obvious parallel. But either way he is also synonymous with the Greek file-closer, although there is only one of him. I see him outside and to the rear of the 60-man formation, because he has to keep all the files closed up - is that a wrong assumption?

I really think we should try to get away from modern comparisons like this. The optio was the second in command of the century, or even shared command of the century as necessary. If you call him a platoon sgt it means different things to different people.

I'm sorry, whilst I do indeed fail to understand why the period of 2,000 years ago is somehow considered so completely different to now that parallels are meaningless, I will not draw such, otherwise seemingly accurate, conclusions again.

My excuse is simply that the British (and others) Platoon Sergeant of the Napoleonic era and just before (the next time in history we really have any organised army comparisons with the Romans) and even up to the present day has, practicably, an almost identical likely set of roles. To me that's just obvious. But, no more, I promise. If I slip - just tell me.