Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

314 11. the army, c. 420,602
further demands, as happened with the Huns in the 440s and the Avars in
the 570s and 580s. Selective patronage of tribes or war-bands had to be
accompanied by visible strength in the vicinity of the frontier, so that invasion
of Roman territory did not become an easy option for those under
threat in their own lands.
‘I know that war is a great evil, and worse than evils’ is part of the preamble
to a discussion on strategy that should probably be dated to
Justinian’s reign, but attention to the army was an essential part of an
emperor’s work, as the deranged Justin advised Tiberius at the latter’s proclamation
as Caesar. 108 The army had always been the most expensive
element within the Roman empire, but without an efficient military system
an emperor would quickly be seen to be naked, as occurred in the west in
the early fifth century. Even in the wealthier east, constant attention and
adaptation were required to maintain arrangements for recruitment, supply
and training without the distortions that inevitably crept in as customary
practice became petrified or abused. ‘A general must not have to confess,
“I did not expect it”’ is one of the maxims in Maurice’s Strategikon, a work
that itself demonstrates the close attention that was devoted to military
organization. 109
In the sixth century the eastern empire had managed, not without
difficulty, to maintain its basic integrity and even regain territory in the
western Mediterranean. Luck played its part, as with the departure to
Sardinia of the Vandal fleet in 533 or the Persian civil war of 590–1, but the
Roman army remained an effective fighting force. In the seventh century
civil war, the traditional threat to imperial prosperity, shattered the balance:
in 602 and 610 coups at Constantinople distracted the armies on the eastern
frontier and permitted the Persians to make significant gains, while in 641
a further bout of imperial strife helped the Arabs to consolidate their
control over newly-won territories. During these decades, however, a succession
of Roman armies was raised and manoeuvred by emperors and
their commanders. The result was often defeat, but the sheer ability of the
Roman military machine to function through a series of catastrophes
greater than anything experienced since the Hannibalic War of the third
century b.c. is impressive. By the mid seventh century, however, the permanent
loss of the major revenue-producing provinces of Egypt and Syria
necessitated a fundamental change in the nature of military organization,
and the impoverished empire had to exploit its greatest remaining asset,
land, in order to fund its defence forces. The result was the theme system
of territorial organization which defined the nature of the middle
Byzantine army. 110
108 Anon. Peri Strat. 4.9; Theophylact iii.11.11. 109 Maurice, Strat. viii.1.26.
110 Cf. ch. 7 (Barnish, Lee, Whitby), pp. 203–6 above, and ch. 17 (Whitby), pp. 494,5 below.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008