Walter Emil Kaegi, Jr.

Some Thoughts on Byzantine Military Strategy

© Hellenic College Press, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1983

 

Page 12

"In private his friends asked ... why he had been confident that he would overcome them [the Ostrogoths] decisively in the war. And he said that in engaging with them, at the first with only a few men, he had noticed just what was the difference between the two armies, so that if he should fight his battles with them in a force which was in strength proportionate to theirs, the multitudes of the enemy could inflict no injury upon the Romans [=Byzantines] by reasons of the smallness of their numbers. And the difference was this, that practically all the Romans and their allies, the Huns, are good mounted bowmen, but not a man among the Goths has had practice ill this branch, for their horsemen are accustomed to use only spears and swords, while their bowmen enter battle on foot and under the cover of heavy-armed men. So the horsemen, unless the engagement is at close quarters, have no means of defending themselves against opponents who use the bow, and, therefore, can easily be reached by the arrows and destroyed; and as for the footsoldiers, they can never be strong enough to make sallies against men on horseback. It was for these reasons, Belisarios declared, that the barbarians had been de feated by the Romans in these last engagements." [12]

[12. Procopios,Bella 6.27.25-29.]

The technique for waging a war of attrition and deception and ruses is explained in another major Byzantine strategic treatise which has survived, the Strategikon of Maurice, probably written between 580 and 635, even though there is controversy about the identity of the author. This treatise embodies Byzantine military wisdom and practice at the beginning of the seventh century and serves as the basis for all subsequent extant major Byzantine military writings, including the often cited Taktika of Emperor Leo VI, written ca. 900. [13]

[13. The standard edition, henceforth cited as Strategikon ; is Das Strategikon des Maurikios, ed. George T. Dennis and German trans. E. Gamillscheg (Vienna, 1981), and the Dennis English trans. published by University of Pennsylvania Press.]

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