I am reading De Bello Civili at the moment and naturally it is full of both legions and cohorts, etc. The thing is, I don’t really know what makes up a legion and what a cohort. How many men are in each? How many equites, peditus or sagitarii? And how many cohorts form a legion?
I hope these links help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohort_(military_unit)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_legion
Salve Kasper,
In a very resume way a cohort is 6 centuries of 80 fighting man, with a total of 480 fighting man. A Cohort was the small tactical unit in the battle field.
A Legion is 10 cohorts, i.e. 4800 fighting man plus auxiliary cavalry and other auxiliary small units. In principle the legion was the small strategic unit (i.e. with the ability to make war by it self), but usually a Consul army would have at least 4 legions.
In the time of Caesar the number of legion went sky up and the General start to use legions as tactical unit commanded by legati. I don’t recall exactly but I think that at Pharsalos Caesar had 7 legions and Pompeius had 11.
Hope this helps.
Andrus.
The books of Peter Connolly about the Roman Army have a lot of informations about the Army.
It contains informations about the size of a legion, its development, fighting tactics, weapons etc.
They’re full of information and illustrated, too, so it’s easy to imagine the details.
Thank you all!!