Byzantine Weapons and Warfare

[Paullus Scipio]

Coming back to the menavlion/kontarion discussion, Robert Vermaat and I were having an interesting discussion about shafted weapons on the 'Spear or Pilum?' thread. Now my interests don't extend to everything, and my main focus in things Roman is from the beginning to early Imperial times. You'll recall I referred earlier to Arrian's "Order of battle against the Alans", but I didn't make the connection to the fact that Arrian translates 'pilum' as 'kontos' ( though Robert V. differs).Other writers in Greek follow suit.

This makes me wonder what clues there are in Byzantine writings to exactly what a 'kontos' is....could it be a 'pilum/spiculum' type weapon?
Could the usage of 'kontos' for 'pila' have survived that long, and if so, how does that affect how we view menavlion?