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
Results 1-5 of 13
... bows, the Alani drawing up a battle-line of heavy-armed [cavalry], and the Heruli of light-armed warriors.”15 Goths ... reflex bow, by the sixth century Byzantine troops were trained to fight with all of them. Man for man this made them ...
... reflex bow: “Shapely bows and 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 ...
... bow at an angle. Asymmetry is just a matter of preference, and we have no evidence that the Huns so preferred ... reflex bow, obtained by cutting a curved stave of wood that is reversed when strung; or the compound bow, made by binding ...
... reflex bows. Connoisseurs will detect more than one political undertone in his comment: “The idea that each . . . archer could make his own bow could have been conceived only by cabinet scholars who never held a composite bow in their ...
... reflex bow that the far-traveling Odysseus had left in his rustic palace of Ithaca when he sailed to Troy—the bow that none of Penelope's suitors could even string, the bow with which Odysseus began their execution: In his great cunning ...
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 |