Facultatea de Istorie - Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza

NOTE BIBLIOGRAFICE / NOTIZIE BIBLIOGRAFICHE 331
It used to be one of the components of the triptych implied in imperial succession
(along with the senate and the people). We should also mention that, since
„partitio imperii” (395) and till the fall of Constantinople (1453), 65 emperors
were done away with through revolts the army was involved with.
Wearen Treadgold seems to be an authentic expert of byzantine army, to
which he dedicated a monographic work (Byzantium and Its Army, 284-1081,
Stanford, 1997). In this synthesis, the soldier is a pillar, vital for the life of the
Eastern Empire. Byzantium’s times of glory, like those during Justinian I,
Heraclius, Tzimiskes and Vasile II’s reigns, were under the sign of military force.
That is the reason for which it was said that „the Byzantine Empire would had
resisted without Fotios, Psellos, or Theodor Metochites, but not without the Byzantine
soldiers” (P. Schreiner). The American savant’s text is accompanied by cartographic
pictures of armed forces, which suggest a real structure of resistance of the
state. Thus, in 395, the Eastern Empire had over 200,000 soldiers arranged in a
semi–ellipse beginning in Western Moesia and ending in Egypt and Lebanon (p.
115). In 565, when the universalistic idea became geopolitics’ reality through
Justinian I and his generals’ ability, and the unity of the Roman Empire, centered
on the unity of Mediterranean Sea, has been given back, the military force of
Byzantium numbered at that time over 150,000 soldiers, disposed under the form
of an ellipse, from South-Eastern Spain, through North-East/East/South-West till
North-Western Africa (Numidia and Mauritania). In cartographic representation (p.
252), Byzantium looks like a camp under military protection. The relation textimage
is perfect. Some other two maps reveal the situation of the army within the
territory during 775 (the end of the warrior emperor Constantine V’s reign, during
whose time the frontier troops became the base of the army) and 840 (p. 452),
during the basileus Theofilus Amoriunus’ time, when the army was reformed, the
defensive system was consolidated, which „prepared the Empire to take over the
initiative in fighting against Arabs” (p. 453).
The finances represent another forte-point of Warren Treadgold’s
synthesis. During the most part of his existence, Byzantium had great financial
resources. It also had a powerful currency, the nomisma (the medieval dollar, as R.
Lopez named it) and a well organized fiscal system. The state’s tresury gathered
much, but spent much also. The construction of civil, military and clerical edifices,
the supplies for the capital, the expenses of imperial court (which cultivated luxury
as a form of greatness), maintaining the forms of protecting the power, the salaries
of office workers, the payment of stipends, and especially the expenses for the
army, required for great sums of money. The great Byzantine historian Warren
Treadgold resorted to „numerical estimates”, as „they are less misleading than the
standard generalizations about economic decline and disappearing cities” (p. 12).
Through five tables he evaluated the state’s budget in different times of the
Byzantine millennium: under Diocletian (around 300) and Marcianus (450-457),
under Anastasius (around 518) and Justinian I (540 and 565), and during the 7 th and