Pseudocomitatenses were a class of regiment in the
Late Roman army
In modern scholarship, the "late" period of the Roman army begins with the accession of the Emperor Diocletian in AD 284, and ends in 480 with the death of Julius Nepos, being roughly coterminous with the Dominate. During the period 395–476, ...
. Although they were attached to the ''comitatus'' (higher-grade mobile armies), they enjoyed lower status and pay to the ''
comitatenses
The comitatenses and later the palatini were the units of the field armies of the late Roman Empire. They were the soldiers that replaced the legionaries, who had formed the backbone of the Roman military since the Marian reforms.
Organization ...
'', the regular regiments of the ''comitatus''. This is because their regiments had originally been classified as lower-grade ''
limitanei
The ''līmitāneī'' (Latin, also called ''rīpēnsēs''), meaning respectively "the soldiers in frontier districts" (from the Latin phrase līmēs, meaning a military district of a frontier province) or "the soldiers on the riverbank" (from the ...
'' ("border troops"), but at some point attached to a ''comitatus'' for a particular campaign and subsequently retained long-term. There is indication that at least some of the Pseudocomitatenses were former auxiliary cohorts.
[The Army Reforms of Diocletian and Constantine and Their Modifications up to the Time of the Notitia Dignitatum, Page 5]
See also
*
Late Roman army
In modern scholarship, the "late" period of the Roman army begins with the accession of the Emperor Diocletian in AD 284, and ends in 480 with the death of Julius Nepos, being roughly coterminous with the Dominate. During the period 395–476, ...
* ''
Notitia Dignitatum
The ''Notitia Dignitatum'' (Latin for "The List of Offices") is a document of the late Roman Empire that details the administrative organization of the Western and the Eastern Roman Empire. It is unique as one of very few surviving documents of ...
''
References
Late Roman military units
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