INFANTRY VERSUS CAVALRY THE BYZANTINE RESPONSE
Eric McGEER
The Byzantines encountered many different nations on the battlefield during their long history. The surveys of foreign peoples in the military manuals amply illustrate the Byzantines' readiness not only to analyze the tactics and characteristics of their enemies, but also even to learn from them when necessary1. Their recognition of the need to study and to adapt themselves to the unfamiliar methods of warfare practised by their enemies pays witness to the intellectual and practical character of the Byzantine approach to war2.
The recorded observation of enemy skills and tactics was a feature which the Byzantines added to the long tradition of military science inherited from classical Antiquity3. The study of war was energetically renewed in tenth-century Byzantium, as the number of important manuscripts and texts dating from this period clearly demonstrates. This renewal of military science was largely in response to the increasing danger from the Arabs, whom the Byzantines had come to consider their most formidable
1. Cf. Book XI of the Strategikon of Maurice (ca. 600), entitled Περί των εκάστου έθνους έΟών τε και τάξεων, and Constitutio XVIII in the Tactica of Leo VI (ca. 900) : Περί μελέτης διαφόρων εθνικών τε και 'Ρωμαϊκών παρατάξεων.
2. Cf. the remarks of A.D. H. Bivar on the Byzantine reaction to the skills, equipment and tactics of their eastern enemies in the early period at the conclusion to his article Cavalry Equipment and Tactics on the Euphrates Frontier, DOP 25, 1972, p. 273-291.
3. For a review of classical and Byzantine military writings, see A. Dain, Les stratégistes byzantins, TM 2, 1967, p. 317-393.
Revue des Études byzantines 46, 1988, p. 135-145.