Byzantine Weapons and Warfare

[Peter Raftos]

Steve,
Same edition as mine. So it should be easy to find. It is in The Anonymous Byzantine Treatise on Strategey Section 16 Armament.

Try the top and bottom paragraphs of page 55 in that edition. The top reference is to a garment (himation) at least a finger thick under armour - a kabadion? The other reference to the padded garment under armour is at the bottom of the page (you'll find the Greek word peristithidia at the top of page 56.

While this document was originally written in the 6th Century and its language may simply reflect an archaic or earlier description of the kabadion, it was also read in the 10th and 11th Centuries. A complete collection of all military manuals was copied for use under the direction of Emperor Constantine VII sometime before 959. The Anonymous is found on folios 104-130 of this compilation - now called codex Mediceo-Laurntianus graecus 55,4. A later compilation of military manuals dated to 1020 - codex Vaticanus graecus 1164 has a mutilated version of The Anonymous. Other versions exist from the middle Byzantine period - Parisinus graecus 2442 dated to 1020 also and codex Neapolitanus graecus 284 and dated to the third or fourth decade of the 11th C. These compilations were popular and intended to be read widely.

Cheers