08-08-2014, 10:12 PM
Quote:antiochus post=358107 Wrote:Hypothetically, if in the Severan period a century was 100 men...
Rance even proposed that the later kentarch was a conflation of the Greek and Latin words for the same rank. Which would, thinking like you proposed, still give you 100 men.
I was rather hoping to avoid bringing the question of unit numbers into this particular topic!
But (just quickly) to reiterate my points above: it's possible that the terms centenarius and ducenarius are unrelated to the number of men commanded. Both terms formed part of the old equestrian honorific hierarchy, which was (apparently) adopted by the centurionate in the later third century.
If the ordinary centurion of a frontier legion (let's call him a centurio ordinarius, for the sake of argument!) ranked as vir egregius, the lowest rung of the ladder (which at least some did under Gallienus), then a centurion serving with a detachment in the field army might go up to the next rung, becoming centenarius. A man selected for the protectores and further high command would become ducenarius.
These terms were perhaps then adopted by the auxilia and scholae, who formed part of the field army anyway: a standard centurion-grade officer of one of these units was a centenarius, a higher grade one a ducenarius.
Vegetius was trying to describe the legion of a previous era, but he might have been deceived by these apparently decimal command titles into thinking that the basic unit numbered 100 men. Not an unreasonable assumption - and it may indeed be true - except for the fact that both centenarius and ducenarius had been used before to mean something else...
Nathan Ross
