The Loeb translator cites this passage about troop organization (in particular the insistence that the perfect army contains exactly 16384 soldiers [Gmyrkin slipped]) as being the most obvious case of armchair generalship.
2) This whole system is designed on the Macedonian sarissa and the 16-man file (lochos). with units of two, four, and eight files, up to a unit, the syntagma, of 16 files, which is a square and can pivot in place. [The alleged point of the binary is so any unit can double its depth or its width at commandl, without inducing confusion. The real point is probably Platonic perfection.]
How deep are Lunar phalanges? I've seen published evidence for seven, eight, and ten, not sixteen.
3) I don't care for borrowing any ancient system exactly; the Lunars have always had a not-quite-Latin, not-quite-Greek spaghetti-Imperial-movie flavor to me, and I like it.
4) If we are going to glom on to Greek terms, I would use the straight decimal terms dekarch, hekatontarch, chiliarch, myriarch [with units dekarchy, etc.] for the Dara Happan system, and interpolate lochos/file/lochagos, taxis/taxiarch, syntagma/syntagmarch for Lunar innovations.
(Asclepiodotus has several supernumerary non-coms for each reigment: a signaler, a bugler, a runner, a rank-closer... The Lunars should (surely?) have seven of these.)
Paul MacLean Anderson
pmanderson_at_...
pmaclanderson_at_...
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>From: "Simon Miller" <simon.miller_at_...>
>Reply-To: whitewall_at_yahoogroups.com
>To: <whitewall_at_yahoogroups.com>
>Subject: FW: Re: Something completely different
>Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 18:53:21 +0100
>
>I found a description of Hellenistic (well Macedonian) military ranks;
>
>http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/orion/archives/1999b/msg00024.html
>
>Might be useful.
>
>Simon
>Simon.miller_at_...
>
>
>
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>
>'Weni, Widi, Wiki.' I came, I saw, I added to the story.
>
>The WhiteWallWiki can be found at:
>http://www.eparsnip.f2s.com/phpwiki/index.php?FrontPage
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