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+--- Thread: quality of Byzantine army (/showthread.php?tid=14762)
quality of Byzantine army - eugene - 03-09-2009
May be this theme is not relevant to ancient history, but nevertheless i will ask this questions. It was a common place in medieval Western chronicles tha byzantinians were cowards and, more generally, bad soldiers. How reliable was this opinion? Are there some exaggerations? Or, may be, there was a big influence of anti-Byzantine bias?
Re: quality of Byzantine army - kuura - 03-09-2009
Quote:May be this theme is not relevant to ancient history, but nevertheless i will ask this questions. It was a common place in medieval Western chronicles tha byzantinians were cowards and, more generally, bad soldiers. How reliable was this opinion? Are there some exaggerations? Or, may be, there was a big influence of anti-Byzantine bias?
Quite a large topic to cover, but for their empire to have survived up to 1453 or 1461 if you count Trebizond, they must have been doing something right :roll:
Re: quality of Byzantine army - hoplite14gr - 03-09-2009
It has been written that the Byzantine army was a victim of his own success.
To cut a long story short with good administration and stable finances even the militias (well trained and well led) performed well.
Kind regards
Re: quality of Byzantine army - Ioannes_Ahenobarbus - 03-09-2009
Eugene,
Thank you for your question. The general answer to your question is that many Western chroniclers did force a lot of anti-Greek/Byzantine bias upon their reader (such as practically every chronicle of the Crusades). In fact, the term 'Greek' (the Latin form) was largely used in a pejorative sense until the 19th century (the famous quote being '...the perfidious Greeks...'), whereas Hellene (the Greek form) was used with a positive connotation. Much of the stereotype also stems from Imperial policy (if one can call it that) from approximately the 11th-13th centuries that typically played Latins/Franks/Westerners against Muslims/Orientals, i.e., barbarian against barbarian, whilst still advancing a Byzantine-first agenda. In short, Western chronicles portray the Byzantines in a way that humans very often portray the 'other,' which is to say negatively.
P.S. - I am using contemporary modern terminology that they would probably not have used.