The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine EmpireIn this book, the distinguished writer Edward N. Luttwak presents the grand strategy of the eastern Roman empire we know as Byzantine, which lasted more than twice as long as the more familiar western Roman empire, eight hundred years by the shortest definition. This extraordinary endurance is all the more remarkable because the Byzantine empire was favored neither by geography nor by military preponderance. Yet it was the western empire that dissolved during the fifth century. |
From inside the book
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... [arrows] having sharp bone, instead of their usual [metal] points, joined to the shafts with wonderful skill; then they gallop over the intervening spaces and fight hand to hand with swords, regardless of their own lives; and while the ...
... arrows are their delight, sure and terrible are their hands; firm is their confidence that their missiles will bring death, and their frenzy is trained to do wrongful deeds with blows that never go wrong.” Thus wrote Gaius Sollius ...
... arrow, rather than the mass of the limbs themselves. Both the wooden core and the matching horn plates are grooved to double the gluing surface; the glue joints are subject to shear rather than tension when the bow is drawn, increasing ...
... arrow through the iron. Then he went and stood on the threshold and poured out the swift arrows.21 The Ithaca provincials had tried to string the bow with brute strength, by forcing it to curve enough to receive the string—easy to do if ...
... arrows were exhausted, or if conditions were so wet that bows would be ruined. There is no question, however, that mounted archery could be taught and learned, given plenty of time and much effort: the Byzantine mounted lancers and ...
Contents
1 | |
The Myth and the Methods
| 95 |
III The Byzantine Art of War
| 235 |
Grand Strategy and the Byzantine Operational Code
| 409 |
Was Strategy Feasible in Byzantine Times? | 421 |
Emperors from Constantine I to Constantine XI
| 423 |
Glossary
| 427 |
Notes
| 433 |
Works Cited
| 473 |
Index of Names
| 491 |
General Index
| 495 |