Evolving as it did with ancient Greek warfare from that of tribal Greece to that of the Greek city-states, the lochos varied in size and organisation over time and from city state to city state, ranging in size from a single file to about 640 men.
The best surviving description of the lochos is that by Xenophon in his Anabasis, however this must be taken as being illustrative of a particular time and place, that of 5th century BC Sparta, rather than being truly representative.
Should the line perform a pyknosis (that is, close its ranks by placement of half the lochos in the interval between the original lochoi), then the epistates of the lochagos would become the promachos protostates of the newly employed file.
In the Byzantine army, the lochos was used as a term for a section-sized military unit, while contubernium designated the files of a tagma.
[4] The term lochos, along with the associated rank of lochagos and its derivatives, has been revived in the modern Greek military for a company-sized command.