The Roman Art of War in Late Antiquity: The Strategikon of the Emperor Maurice

The Strategikon of the Emperor Maurice, written towards the end of the 6th century, is a key text in the history of late Roman and Byzantine warfare. It stands midway between the classical genre of tactica, dating back to the 4th century BC, and the subsequent Byzantine military corpus, which it profoundly influenced. Of unprecedented size and scope, the Strategikon discusses every aspect of contemporary land warfare, and includes ethnographic excursuses on the late Roman Empire’s varied enemies. It is a work of outstanding utility, whose author was able to combine, in a deliberately vernacular Greek, the precepts of earlier military texts with a practical military knowledge.

Volume I is a new English translation and detailed commentary on the work, incorporating the vast amount of research recently conducted on this period. Volume II provides studies on the text’s structure, composition, language, sources and literary antecedents.