Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

312 11. the army, c. 420,602
of his new Thracian recruits in 544, and in the 570s both Justinian and
Maurice acquired reputations as disciplinarians after having to cope with
significant influxes of new troops. 100 But accusations of declining standards
are a familiar theme in Roman, indeed in all, military history, and criticism
needs to be assessed in the light of the armies’ performance in the field.
The main causes of poor morale and indiscipline in the sixth century
were, unsurprisingly, lack of pay or supplies and military defeat. The army
was such a complex and expensive institution to support that the existence
of some problems was inevitable, especially at times of financial stringency.
Armies serving in areas that could not locally support the troops
were particularly liable to suffer, hence the difficulties in the expeditionary
armies in Africa and Italy when counter-offensives prevented the organized
exploitation of local resources, and in the Balkans, an area renowned for
impoverishment but with a large military establishment. Mutineers were
treated with the same mixture of exemplary harshness and general pardon
as in previous centuries: soldiers had always been too valuable to squander
if they could be cowed into obedience. There is no evidence that Roman
traditions in this respect had been forgotten in the sixth-century army,
whether because of difficulties over manpower or creeping ‘barbarization’
of the military. 101
Eastern armies fulfilled their defensive functions through to the end of
the sixth century. It seems unlikely that the late Roman army was ever organized
in accordance with some grand ‘scientific’ strategy for protecting the
empire: frontiers did not operate as rigid exclusion zones, and field armies
tended to be marshalled after the appearance of a threat (as in 540) rather
than maintained, at much greater cost, in a state of permanent readiness.
But the protection of the empire was not as amateurish as might be concluded
either from the lack of good maps and regular intelligence about
threatening neighbours, or from the absence of discussions of strategic
matters in Graeco-Roman literature, especially in the tradition of military
handbooks. Generations of observation and experience ensured that
Roman armies, officers and emperors, part of whose duty it was to protect
the empire, were aware of the likely origin, nature and direction of
threats. 102 Most military forces – obviously, Hunnic or Avar cavalry or a
Persian grand army under the king’s command, but also a Slav war-band
when accompanied by wagons – were constrained to move along recognized
routes where travel was easy and supplies available.
The Romans organized their defences as particular needs emerged.
Problems of campaigning on the eastern front stimulated the construction
of Dara by Anastasius, and after the loss of Dara in 573 the same logic
100 Procop. Wars iii.12.8–22; viii.33.2–3; Theophylact iii.12.7; Menander fr. 23.3.
101 Maurice, Strat. i.6.19–22; Whitby (1995) sec. 6, contra Kaegi (1981) 72.
102 Contrasting views in Luttwak (1976), Isaac, Limits of Empire ch. ix and Lee (1993) esp. ch. 4.
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