Any Book Recommendations for Sources on Roman Army Organization?

[Rob Miles]

Getting back on topic, my Milner Vegetius arrived this morning and it certainly is the business-- more footnotes than in an Arden edition of Hamlet. Going to be a pleasure to read. Recommended for anyone 4th century Imperial Rome. The introduction is vast and covers much of the authenticity of the work and its translations. Like many manuscripts that have come to us from antiquity, or even from 200 year ago, it has suffered from interpretations, vernacular and loss of form.

Going off topic, a great deal of our misconceptions about our own folk traditions, military history, etc., can be dated from the Victorian era. Through thorough "research" and scholarship, all kinds of myths and legends about our myths and legends were created. Nothing beats a good bit of original archaeology to sort the false prophets from the real McCoy, eh mister Spock?

[Patrick Waterson]

Continuing off-topic for a moment, archaeology tends to be an extremely interpretative discipline and at least in the Near East has a tendency to twist to conform to the prevailing fashion in chronology and/or social/economic thought.  As a result, whole cultures get misinterpreted or misplaced, e.g. Bietak's dig at Tell el-Daba, which he thinks is Hyksos Avaris but would actually seem to be the 12th-13th Dynasty city of Ramses where the Hebrews settled and bred.  As a result, excavators have been reimaging Hyksos as Canaanites rather than desert nomads and missing out on the Hebrew settlement.  This is but one example.

That said, pottery and strata are generally an archaeologist's best friends.  And it does seem that a good slice of Scottish 'tradition' did emerge from Victoria and Albert's afternoons at Balmoral ...

Getting back on topic, do feel free to start a thread on Vegetius and/or Late Roman military organisation any time: we might even be able to sort out such weighty matters as why the carroballistae had an eleven-man contubernium (was the eleventh man the driver?).

[Erpingham]

Continuing off-topic for a moment, archaeology tends to be an extremely interpretative discipline

As nicely illustrated by last night's Timewatch, which examined through clips of past BBC programmes how attitudes and interpretations change.  Worth it for Mortimer Wheeler comparing the fall of the Roman and British Empires, almost as if they were one and the same event.  Sort of semi on topic.

[Justin Swanton]

Ok, I've split off the rest of the thread under a new title here. Everyone happy with it?

[Jim Webster]

Ok, I've split off the rest of the thread under a new title here. Everyone happy with it?

seems fair enough   
Jim

[Dave Beatty]

Decent analysis of overall Roman army - Evans - Legions of Imperial Rome