Strategikon: Teasing out and its Details

The winds have died for my Crusader Era write ups. I'll wait till the winds blow back at them again. Meanwhile.

The translation problems are plenty in the strategikon and history of wars I to VI. Its hard to understand what is being said when the writers don't have paragraph breaks because they trying to save space.

If you look at the History of Wars I to VI, you will notice that it was written in huge blocks of paragraphs. Imagine how it looked like in old parchment or vellum, where the scribes had to compress everything being said. Conversations were not broken up to lines and ideas were not separated by paragraphs, things we take for granted in our medium rich era.

The History of Wars V: The Gothic War part I is a great example of a military campaign for Gamers. I highly recommend reading it. Although, bringing up a richness of detail to the drab writing may require a ton of prior reading about everything else medieval and ancient.

What I can do to fill this blog up with my commentary regarding the History of Wars. Particularly interesting Game-Related pedantry regarding what is going on in the chapters. I've teased carefully

1 Stade = 185m
1 Centenaria = 5lbs of Gold or 7200 Nomismata or 360 Justinian era Solidi or $100,000 in GURPS 2004 dollars. You will notice inconsistencies often, using 1-3C, 6-7C, 9-10C terms. Remember that that scribes had to rewrite these books in different eras when the quality suffered and new leaders came into power with their own generals. So there will be an inconsitency in the terms.

1 bowshot is 300m

I was going back and forth with Strategikon and History of Wars and there was a lot of things that finally made sense to me.

The significant commanders named are typically Tribunes, Counts or Taxiarchs (or in the Latin Comitatus or Company Commander). It is implicit that these guys have with them 300-400 troops or horsemen. So the names mentioned, Constantinus, Bessas, Peranius, Valentius, Magnus, Innocentus, Herodian, Paulus, Demetrius, and Ursicinus are Tributes and their Bands (Banda/Tagma/Cohorts) are assumed to be with them.

Each Tribune has his own entourage. He has with him a number of Hekatonarchs or Captains for every 100 men he has. One of these captains are his second in command and has is own Banner, in case the Tribune falls. The 2nd in command is called an Illarch.

Each Band or Company has 300-400 men. For Cavalry 20% is heavy cavalry, 20% well-equipped horse archers or medium cavalry, and 60% inferior heavy cavalry or light cavalry.

The entourage is composed of the Illarch, the Hekatonarchs, the Cape Bearer (Orderly/Batman or Personal Servant/Steward and counts as the Quartermaster), 2 Scouts (consider them light elements and Intelligence Officer), surveyors (with the baggage, they count as an engineer elements), 2 heralds (public relations officers), 1 servant for every 4 soldiers, 1 mule for every 10 soldiers, 1 baggage guard soldier for every 4 mules, 2 extra horses for every horseman, 1 grooms for every 4 horses.

By my calculations a Bandon (cavalry) of 400 would have: 300 servants, 40 mules, 800 horses, and 40 non combat personel.

GURPS mass combat:
8 Merc. Fine Horse Archer elements $576 (TS 32)
8 Merc. Good Horse Archer elements $432 (TS 24)
8 Merc. Horse Archer elements $288 (TS 16)
16 Merc. Light Cavalry Elements $480k (TS 32)
$1,776k (TS 104)
$888k for TS1776 baggage

For a Tagma (infantry) of 400, that would just be 100 servants, 40 mules, and 40 non-combat personnel. Romans have a ratio of 2/3 heavy infantry to 1/3 medium infantry or bowmen

12 Bowmen elements $96 (TS 24)
8 Good Heavy Infantry elements $96 (TS 42)
18 Heavy Infantry elements $144 (TS 64)
2 light infantry elements $16 (TS 4)
2 Engineers $12 (TS 1)
$364k (TS 135)
$182k for TS364 baggage

Interesting tidbit, Theodatus asked for a bribe of an estate that would be worth 12 centenaria a year. This equates to 1 cenenaria a month or $100,000 a month. At TL 3 it would appear a wealth multiplier of x140 or 50% greater than Filthy rich. If it was GOLD and not "earnings" then converting the earnings would generate a loss of 90% and one would assume a x1,500 wealth multiplier. This makes it more likely he mean, "earnings" and not gold. At x1,500 that would be as wealthy as a Baron with his own armies.