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This book presents a new history of the leadership, organization, and disposition of the field armies of the east Roman empire between Julian (361–363) and Herakleios (610–641). To date, scholars studying this topic have privileged a poorly understood document, the Notitia dignitatum, and imposed it on the entire period from 395 to 630. This study, by contrast, gathers all of the available narrative, legal, papyrological, and epigraphic evidence to demonstrate empirically that the Notitia system emerged only in the 440s and that it was already mutating by the late fifth century before being fundamentally reformed during Justinian's wars of reconquest. This realization calls for a new, revised history of the eastern armies. Every facet of military policy must be reassessed, often with broad implications for the period. The volume provides a new military narrative for the period 361–630 and appendices revising the prosopography of high-ranking generals and arguing for a later Notitia.

Summary

There were several Latin and Greek terms that roughly correlated with our concept of ‘court’, including aula, palatium, and (from the late third century) comitatus. Roman authors were also capable of making generalizations about their court as an entity, many of them moralizing and negative, but some of them panegyrical. This conceptual framework regarding the court was partly inherited from the Hellenistic world. This chapter presents a selection of literary and epigraphic sources that illustrate the Romans’ conception of their own court as a distinct entity.

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The Field Armies of the East Roman Empire, 361–630

1 - Conceptualizing the Roman Court

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2 results

The Field Armies of the East Roman Empire, 361–630

1 - Conceptualizing the Roman Court

Summary