The Stratēgikon of the Emperor Maurice

Towards the end of his life the Byzantine Emperor Maurice (reigned 582-602 CE) composed, or perhaps commissioned, a detailed handbook of military strategy entitled the Stratēgikon. Maurice by this time had already made significant reforms to the structure, equipment, and techniques of the East Roman (i.e. Byzantine) army; plus, he had many years of practical field experience fighting a wide variety of opponents of the Empire, particularly in the Balkans, Pannonia, and on the Persian border. Many military reforms had been made earlier by his predecessor Justinian (reigned 527-65), including a substantial increase in the proportion of cavalry to infantry (the latter of which had been at the heart of the famous Roman legions for centuries). Maurice similarly recognized the necessity to expand the use of cavalry, both in numbers and in terms of the variety of mounted manoeuvres and weaponry employed, from horseback archery and javelin-throwing to heavily armed mass charges with lances and swords. This pressure to transform more of the East Roman army into mounted soldiers came directly from the fact that the Empire’s enemies were highly skilled horsemen. Some, like the Avars of the Eurasian steppe who established an empire centred on the Pannonian Plain in the late 560s (more or less exactly where the Huns had previously created their short-lived European empire in the mid-5^th century), were nomadic equestrian peoples whose entire societies were based on the horse. Others, like the Persians, had been building up their heavy cavalry. It is of special relevance to this module that the Avars used stirrups at this time and that stirrup use was also spreading into the Sasanid Persian Empire and other regions in contact with steppe peoples.^[1]

In the Stratēgikon stirrups occur in two sections: Book I, section 2 which consists of a list of the weapons and other equipment required for cavalrymen; and Book II, section 8, which is about the duties and equipment of army field medics. It is important to note that Book I, section 2 includes five explicit mentions of the types of equipment that the Avars use, so that it is quite clear that a number of items of military kit have recently been borrowed from them, presumably because they are either entirely new to the Byzantines or else just better versions of things that they already use. Although the paragraph that includes the stirrups does not actually specify that they are a borrowing, the paragraphs immediately preceding and following both do list Avar items:^[2] horse neck-armour and roomy tunics for cavalry soldiers, the latter explicitly ordered to be cut according to the Avar design. Interestingly, the author several times explains the choice of Avar-style kit on the grounds of its combination of practicality and handsome appearance.^[3] The tassels listed here are decorations; this is clear from the introductory part of Book I, section 2, which states that ornaments such as these serve to boost confidence and make soldiers look more intimidating to the enemy. It is also significant that the word used in Greek is skala, which applies to any kind of step, from staircases to ladders, indicating that no technical word for “stirrup” exists in the author’s vocabulary.^[4]

The extracts presented here have been translated specifically for the Ancient & Medieval Open Textbook by Aleksandar Jovanović. For a published version of the whole work, see the English translation by George Dennis, as cited.