This page created 13 September 2014, and last modified: 13 September 2014

The Augustenses is listed as the 19th of 20 legiones comitatenses under the command of the Magister Militum per Thracias. Its shield pattern in various manuscripts is as shown below:

The pattern is relatively simple, having a blue boss (white in B) encircled by a yellow band. The main field is red, and edged with a blue band and then a green rim (faded to yellow in M, and white in W).

Although the Augustenses is the second-last of the units listed under the command of the Magister Militum per Thracias, it is only the the third-last illustrated as such, since the the Valentinianenses, the last unit listed, is followed on the illustrations page by the Gratianenses, whose omission from the Magister's list is perhaps inadvertent, since, as Jones says (page 348), the Gratianenses would appear to be one of three related units: the Augustenses (referring to the eastern Augustus, Valens), the Valentinianenses (after his elder brother Valentinian I, the western Augustus), and the Gratianenses (after Valentinian I's son Gratian, the Caesar), raised and serving together; it is always a possibility, however the units were merely "rebranded" with new names rather than being newly raised. The shield patterns of the three units, despite their related names and being in the same command, are not at all similar, as a comparison of the following patterns taken from the Parisian manuscript shows:

Thus one should be wary of expecting every clearly "related" unit to have a related shield pattern.

Although the number of units named after Valentinian I in the Notitia is not huge (less than a dozen), they certainly outnumber those named after his brother Valens, who appears to have just a single unit directly named after him: the Tertii sagittarii Valentis (but see my discussion of the Sagittarii dominici). Of course, it is possible other units may be indirectly named after him in the manner of the Augustenses; other units in the Notitia bearing the same name include a limitanei unit under the Dux Mauritania, but this is likely a detachment of the Tertio Augustani, one of the legiones comitatenses under the Comes Africae, and thus named after the original emperor Augustus; and an auxiliary unit under the Dux Pannoniae secundae, which might possibly be the origin of the similarly-named Augustei, a unit of auxilia palatina listed in the western Magister Peditum's infantry roster, but not apparently assigned to any field command.

Since all the infantry units listed under the Magister Militum per Thracias come under the legend "Legiones comitatenses", one would expect the Augustenses to also be a legionary unit; however, this would make the Thracian field force unique in being the only one without any auxilia palatina units (or pseudocomitenses auxilia units for that matter). However, all may not be what it seems. In the Magister Militum per Orientem's list, the two auxilia palatina units there are not actually listed are such, and the pseudocomitatenses units are also enumerated differently in most manuscripts from what is actually listed; a similar situation may apply to the Magister Militum per Thracias.

In particular, it may be that the Augustenses, the Valentinianenses, and the Gratianenses were actually auxilia units: their names to me resemble those of auxilia (especially auxilia palatina) units more than they do legionary units. A further indication of auxiliary status is the twin-headed (pseudo-) zoomorphic device of the Valentinianenses, which, counting both headless and non-headless variants, is carried by 15 units, none of which are legionary, save (perhaps), the Valentinianenses. Perhaps these three units, raised together, were added as an illustrated block at the end of the list for simplicity rather than being inserted in the usual place for auxilia palatina (i.e. before the legiones comintatenses). Alternatively, they may simply had not been given auxilia palatina status, and instead have been pseudocomitatenses auxiliary units, in which case they would be correctly positioned, and the only problem would be the relatively minor one of a line labelling them as such being missing, which would have the added bonus of making the textual omission of the Gratianenses perhaps less surprising.

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