cohors I Itururaeorum miliaria equitata sagittaria

[dwkay57]

I am reading Duncan B Campbell's "Deploying a Roman Army - the Ektaxis kat Alanon of Arrian" and the above is one of several units with a similar title implying that they were archers and had a mounted contingent too.

Does current informed opinion consider that both the infantry and cavalry portions would be solely bow armed or just some of them or have a mix? The author doesn't discuss a likely proposal.

At one stage, rulesets had provision for 1/4 of Roman auxiliaries to be armed with slings as wells spears, but that concept seems to have disappeared. But if that was the case, could it be the same (but probably unlikely) for bow armed auxiliaries?

[DBS]

Given their ethnicity, or at least original ethnicity, it would seem quite likely that they would be wholly or largely archers.  After all, the Romans did not lack for melee armed cohortes, so one would think that there would be some utility in playing to an ethnic strength that also filled a niche role.

[Ian61]

Showing my ignorance here but

Given their ethnicity, or at least original ethnicity,....

Not a place I was immediately familiar with. Are they from somewhere called Iturea?   
From Wikipedia - "Iturea (Ancient Greek: Ἰτουραία, Itouraía) is the Greek name of a Levantine region north of Galilee during the Late Hellenistic and early Roman periods."
That would make sense of your comment about familiarity with firing bows from horseback.

[Duncan Head]

Well, Arrian does explicitly mention the Ituraean foot-archers in the formation - "The ninth rank behind them should be the foot archers, those of the Numidians, Cyrenaicans, Bosporans and Ityraeans" - and there is no mention of any other non-archer Ituraean foot. The Ituraean cavalry are not explicitly mentioned, but there are some horse-archers among Arrian's cavalry - "the horse archers among them must form close to the battle line in order to shoot over it" and the three cohortes sagittariorum equitatae do seem the most likely source. But I don't think we really know if every man was an archer in this or other similar units.

(Quotations from Sander van Dorst's online translation - my copy of Campbell is in the post!)

For those who'd like to find out more about the Ituraeans there are Wright's "Ituraean Coinage in Context" and Ajlouni's "History of the Ituraean Arabs" available online.

[dwkay57]

Thanks for responses chaps.

Ituraean foot and horse archers do feature in my Herodian Jewish army but as light types, in accordance with the suggestions of Samuel Rocca (The Army of Herod the Great). One of the plates in David Nicolle's "Rome's Enemies(5) The Desert Frontier" shows a Herodian (Idumaean) horse archer, who is quite heavily armoured.

Rocca does mention at least 4 cohors Ituraeorum (some sag. some eq. some not) serving with the Roman army and they probably evolved into the more or less standard Roman auxiliaries with appropriate armour and equipment. Campbell in his book carries out some analysis to try to clarify which of these might form part of Arrian's force.

[dwkay57]

Of course what it means is that I just have to add a unit to mimic these to my already too large (even at 6mm) Roman army ........

[Duncan Head]

Does current informed opinion consider that both the infantry and cavalry portions would be solely bow armed or just some of them or have a mix? The author doesn't discuss a likely proposal.

But I don't think we really know if every man was an archer in this or other similar units.

Looking at Campbell now, I see something I hadn't noticed in Arrian before. At 14.2 we have 100 of the Cyreneans who are infantry but not apparently archers - the archers of the Cyrenean cohort are mentioned separately at 18.2. So this is the first direct evidence I have come across that an archer cohort - in this case, Coh. III Augusta Cyrenaica equitata - was not composed of 100% bowmen. Is it relevant that, although the cohort included numerous archers, it does not seem to have used the title sagittaria?

Because Arrian mentions "those of the Cyreneans who are present", Campbell thinks that only part of the cohort was included in the army. This makes it impossible to turn 100 non-archer infantry and an unspecified number of archers into a proportion of the unit. If we assume half the cohort  - just a guess, but the cavalry were combined with the cavalry of the Ituraeans to form one lochos whereas other cohortes equitatae provided a whole lochos - then the whole cohort might have included about 280 foot-archers and 200 other infantry.

Hmm. Speculative, but interesting.

[DBS]

Even amongst ethnicities with a reputation for specific weapon skills, I suppose there will always be some poor souls who just do not have the aptitude, especially for missile weapons such as the sling or the bow.  Poor eyesight, in the days before glasses, must have been an issue for example.  So one hypothesis might be that, if reluctant to reject potential recruits for having two left hands or short-sightedness, you put them in a role where they can get up close and personal, and at the end of the day, probably easier to teach them spear or sword work to a higher degree than the hand-eye coordination needed for a ranged missile weapon.

Alternatively, or combined with the above, you take the view that a proportion of melee armed chaps will always be useful, especially for garrison patrolling and dealing with any hairy oiks who rush the archers' beaten zone.

I realise your numbers are highly speculative, but your guesstimate would work out as pretty close to four centuries of archers, two of others (presumed melee).

[dwkay57]

Campbell does suggest that a lot of units were present only in part, especially just the cavalry elements of the equitata cohorts. At one point he does observe that there appears to be no certainty as to what proportion of a sag. cohort may have been equipped with bows.

I guess it means that there is a fair degree of flexibility in trying to represent auxiliary units, if you are working at that level of abstraction.

[dwkay57]

On page 154 of his book, Campbell lists several other cohorts that had similar titles to the Cohors I Iturareorum:

cohors I Bosporanorum sagittariorum equitata
cohors I Numidarum sagittariorum equitata
cohors III Augusta Cyrenacia sagittariorum equitata
cohors III Ulpia Petaeorum miliaria sagittariorum equitata

and formed part (or were there in parts) of Arrian's force. So perhaps this type of unit wasn't so rare, in this part of the empire at this time and may have made use of local weapon skills and to deal with local threats.