Walter Emil Kaegi, Jr.

Some Thoughts on Byzantine Military Strategy

© Hellenic College Press, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1983

 

Page 6

Although his comparison imitated earlier Greek historians' exaltation of the uniqueness of wars in their own age, there is no reason to doubt that Procopios and his contemporaries believed that the Byzantine soldiers of his day were inferior to no one. The soldiers of Justinian benefited from their empire's control of the sea and from the cumulative military and diplomatic experience of the Graeco-Roman world. Devotion to military technique, to discipline within the ranks, to mastery and adaptation of new drills, to standardized commands, to breaking down the elements of the army into precise and uniform units, with routinized procedures, may seem normal and even dull, but those procedures distinguished Late Roman and early Byzantine armies from those of their opponents and helped to explain their effectiveness despite their frequent lack of numerical superiority. At the beginning of the reign of Justinian, there was no deficiency in the caliber of the soldiers themselves. Byzantine armies continued to change throughout the reign of Justinian, indeed throughout the entire sixth century, in order to adjust to new conditions of warfare.

A perusal of sixth-century sources reveals a contemporary appreciation for the importance of the role of timing in warfare, for the interdependence of one strategic move with another, and above all, a prudent respect for the unknown. Procopios claimed that General Belisarios had stated that, "it is natural for warfare to be subject to the unexpected." [6]

[6. Ibid. 3.15.25.]

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