in Roman antiquity, a body of foot which consisted of ten cohorts.

The exact number contained in a legion, was fixed by Romulus at three thousand; though Plutarch affirms sires us, that after the reception of the Sabines into Rome, he encreased it to six thousand. The common number afterwards, in the first times of the free state, was four thousand; but in the war with Hannibal, it arose to five thousand; and after this it is probable that it sunk again to four thousand, or four thousand two hundred, which was the number in the time of Polybius.