khaosworks: (Default)
[personal profile] khaosworks
What kind of day has it been:

11:33 Trivia question of the day: during the Roman Empire, how many soldiers in a century?

12:02 To rephrase so to avoid doubt: During the Roman Empire, how many soldiers made up the unit known as a centuria, or century?

12:03 For bonus points, name the basic military units and their numbers up to the legion level.

13:30 Kiss a wookie, kick a droid, fly the Falcon through an asteroid...

Automatically stabbed through your living brain by LoudTwitter

Date: 2009-01-13 04:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bardling.livejournal.com
Ah, but when during the Roman Empire?

...dating from Rome's Etruscan beginnings it meant the command of one hundred men. This number of men was the standard unit size to muster in times of war, however that exact number couldn't be guaranteed and sometimes there were as few as 80. Later, in the early years of Rome's expansion, a century contained 120 men. This was subsequently reduced to 100, and in the time of the Emperors it was reduced again to 80 men.
(from http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A35977611 - yes, you inspired me to check up on my initial instinctive response of "a hundred of course" by way of "hm. No, that's to easy, there must be a hitch to the question..."! ;)

Date: 2009-01-13 10:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khaosworks.livejournal.com
When one says "Roman Empire", it's as opposed to the Roman Republic, hence... the time of the Emperors.

Date: 2009-01-14 12:36 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kampongchicken.livejournal.com
I suppose the correct answer would be "LXXX"?

Date: 2009-01-13 04:39 pm (UTC)
ext_100364: (Default)
From: [identity profile] whuffle.livejournal.com
A centuria is, of course, 100 men. Though later this was revised to be 60 or 80 men broken into 10 contubernia with the remaining number to make up 100 men taken up by various non-combatantant admin posts.

Date: 2009-01-16 07:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] flowing-dancer.livejournal.com
Century - without looking, all I could say was 100 (C).

Kiss a wookie, kick a droid, fly the Falcon through an asteroid... - ROFL!

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