A misunderstanding concerning Hyginus

The sources for the study of the Roman imperial army are many and varied. Snippets of information culled from unlikely places, facts unwittingly preserved by ancient historians, biographers, or even poets. The inscriptional evidence, of course, though it is patchy, increases in variety through the later first century to reach a peak during the time of the Severans and falls off sharply thereafter.

But two written texts stand out as indispensable. And I find it curious that they have attracted so little attention and discussion.

They are Arrian’s Ektaxis (a new edition and translation of which I published in 2022, accompanied by a lengthy commentary) and the Liber de munitionibus castrorum attributed to one Hyginus (a new edition and translation of which I published in 2018).

(As a side note, I am wryly amused to see that both books fall short of an Amazon 5-star rating because one disgruntled purchaser of Hyginus tetchily complained, laconically, that “Left-hand page is in Latin”, while a purchaser of Arrian whined that “the commentary is peppered with Greek, German, French, Italian and Latin, which really disrupted my reading and concentrating, although in almost every case the author gives an English translation” — which only goes to show that, even when we provide pearls, apparently not everyone likes pearls.)

A curt message

On a not entirely separate note, I recently received an unsolicited communication from a stranger, who began, rather abruptly, “Duncan Campbell ...”, as if to catch my attention in a noisy room. Rather than introducing himself or explaining his involvement with Roman studies, both of which certainly used to be standard forms of initiating polite conversation, he brusquely continued, “I have a question about two of your translations concerning Hyginus”. Fair enough.

And straight to the point: “Hyginus 30. Devito has MDC (1,600). Campbell has MD (1,500). Why have you arrived at 1,500 and Devito 1,600. It is because both of you are using different editions?”

Asked and answered, you might think.

Incidentally, the “Devito” to whom my charming interlocutor refers is J.G. DeVoto, a classics professor (I think) at Chicago’s Loyola University in the 1990s, who seems to have been behind the translation of Hyginus that appeared in 1994.

(Doubt only arises because the volume in question includes both Polybius and Hyginus, “Translated and Edited by M.C.J. Miller and J.G. DeVoto”, and the Polybius is explicitly credited to Miller, which only leaves the Hyginus.)

The Liber de munitionibus castrorum of Hyginus (or Pseudo-Hyginus, as some would prefer, to hammer home the point that he is not the Trajanic surveying author of the same name, as if that makes any difference) is a tricky text, known to us via a single manuscript, which inevitably requires careful handling. You can see a portion of the page containing chapter 30 illustrated here. It reads:

Legiones III vexilla|ri MDC. cohors prae|toria IIII. aequites | praetores .CCCC ae|quitatum in singuli | in ped CCCCL. alae mi|liariae .IIII. quingena|riae .V. ma^uri aequites | DC. pannoni beridari | etc.

It is quite clear that the manuscript reads vexillari(i) MDC, which means “1,600 vexillation-soldiers”, but the number is peculiar. Anyone using my edition of Hyginus will see, from the apparatus criticus (at the foot of p. 48), that I have accepted the suggestion of Radboud Schele (in his 1660 publication Hygini Gromatici, et Polybii Megalopolitani, De castris Romanis, Quae exstant, pictured here), who decided to change this to “vexillarii mille quingenti” (i.e. 1,500).

Although Schele gave no reason for his emendation, the first modern editor, Ludwig Lange, Professor of Classical Philology at Prague, made a compelling case (compelling, in my opinion) in his edition of 1848. He explained that “we see that, in the army of Hyginus, 500 vexillation-soldiers were added to each legion”, since his model army (quoted above) contained three legions. (The principle is demonstrated by the army of Vitellius in AD 69, which comprised four legions and vexillations from four others.) As for how the mistake occurred, the extra C could easily have crept into the manuscript on account of the fact that the subsequent word begins with the same letter, a phenomenon known as “dittography”, when the copyist mistakenly repeats a letter.

Lange’s version wasn’t even noted in the “official” Teubner edition of 1879. Nor was it adopted by Alfred von Domaszewski, in his well-known edition of 1887 (pictured here at pp. 48–49, where Domaszewski discusses the vexillarii), though he noted the other emendations required in this short passage: “cohors praetoria” should clearly be cohortes praetoriae, “aequites praetores” should be equites praetoriani, and “aequitatum in singuli in ped” are obviously the equites singulares imperatoris.

Somewhat surprisingly, given Domaszewski’s standing as a pre-eminent Roman scholar, he had misunderstood the significance of the vexillarii as “vexillation-soldiers”. To him, they were non-combatant baggage carriers, so 1,600 seemed a reasonable number and thus didn’t require emendation. It is worth noting that, even when the French scholar Maurice Lenoir produced his edition of the text in 1979, despite recognizing their combat role, he saw no problem with the peculiar figure of 1,600 vexillarii, although legionary vexillations are normally numbered in multiples of 500. In short, I stand by the figure of 1,500.

Be that as it may. It is perhaps worth noting here that DeVoto’s translation, mentioned earlier (and still apparently favoured by some English-speaking readers), is more than a little problematic. Firstly, it is not at all clear where DeVoto obtained his Latin text, though it seems mostly to be Lenoir’s. This may seem an airily esoteric point, but — where Hyginus is concerned — it is critical that the source text be identified. The short passage quoted above gives a flavour of the poor condition in which the text has been transmitted to us, and various editors (there have been at least five) have made their own corrections and rejected others.

And secondly, DeVoto’s translation doesn’t always match the Latin text. As an example, in the short passage mentioned above, where Hyginus enumerates his ideal army — it begins at the bottom of a lefthand column, pictured above, and continues at the top of the righthand column, pictured here —, the list includes, amongst the various military units, cohortes equitatae miliariae II, quingenariae IIII; cohortes peditatae miliariae III, quingenariae III.

Four different types of cohorts, twelve in total.

Here is DeVoto’s translation: “Two 1000-man mounted cohorts, three 500-man ones”. See if you can see where he went wrong.