Roman regiments of the VIth century.

[Michael Kerr]

I think Stategikon is a good source on how soldiers & their horses should be attired for battle or campaigns, armour & weapons as well as tactics & training used to fight various enemies in 6th century. Edward Luttwak in his book Grand Strategy of Byzantine Empire covers a chapter on Stategikon & he described Strategikon below. :-)

The Strategikon of Maurikios is the most complete Byzantine field manual in spite of its brevity. The author modestly claims limited combat experience but it is obvious that he is a competent military officer describing the training and tactics that could allow one man to defeat three, the author himself used one word where other writers might have used three. It was certainly the most useful of all books for Byzantine military chiefs down the centuries, and is not entirely useless even now. Behind a veil of sometimes sanctimonious Christian ceremoniousness, the Byzantines were very Roman in their sheer practicality, nowhere more so than in the Strategikon, which begins by invoking “our Lady, the immaculate, ever-virgin, Mother of God, Mary”before immediately turning to the training of the individual soldier, the right starting point for any serious field manual then as now.

Regards
Michael Kerr