Centurion Position in Battle

[Nathan Ross]

Therfore I guess that the strength of every century in a battle was different.

Yes, Brueggeman's suggested 'battlefield formations' (linked above) allow for this, by taking men off the rear of the formation to act as stretcher-bearers, artillerymen etc, or just as absentees for whatever reason.

But I tend to think that the rather geometric rank and file formations that we see in diagrams and computer simulations are probably pretty far from reality anyway. Preserving such regular spacings might have been possible on a parade ground, but in battle, with men throwing javelins and being pushed back and forth by the enemy, it would surely have been impossible.

So we might better imagine the front two or three ranks, perhaps, as keeping a regular formation, but the ranks behind being more varied in number, and perhaps resembling a bit more of a mob. All the more reason, in such case, to put the centurion at the front!

that kind of sleeping arrangements are fairly common in a military context.

Some sort of 'hot bunking' arrangement has been suggested before for barrack accommodation, I think. In the case of Hyginus and his tents though, he claims that each 8-man contubernium had their own tent, but there were only eight tents for the ten contubernia. The two vacancies were made up of the 16 men on sentry duty.

But that would mean that every time the sentries changed, the 16 men would have to turn the next shift out of their tents, who in turn would have to turn the next shift out of theirs, and so on. Over the course of a night, assuming four watches, over half the century would have to get up and move themselves and their stuff to a different tent!

I don't know, maybe it worked like this, or maybe Hyginus was confused, or something... :neutral: