Centurion Position in Battle

[Nathan Ross]

your assumption of the centurion + 80 is therefore p-Hyginus based?

He seems one of the least unreliable of our narrators. At least he was writing about his own time, while Varro and Vegetius were clearly not. But I'm agnostic on the issue - I'm sure the numbers in a century fluctuated wildly over the centuries. 80 seems a reasonable official figure for the principiate.

All these guys were on the payroll of a century... But where did they sleep?.

This is another question, really, and I seem to recall there being a debate about it before. Besides the men you mention, there were also the equites legionis on the rolls of the century - about two men in each, in fact. Did they keep their horses in barracks too?

But it's a good point - there were plenty of men on the century's strength who had other tasks; they may not have been present in barrack or camp tents, and perhaps not in the battle formation either. Yet another known unknown to throw out our calculations!