Maurice's Strategikon: Handbook of Byzantine Military Strategy (Middle Ages)

This military handbook, attributed to the Byzantine emperor Maurice (582-602), is an invaluable source not only for early Byzantine history, but also for the history of the art of war.Intended as a guide for field commanders and campaigners, the Strategikon contains a wealth of information on practical aspects of Byzantine warfare: weaponry and armor, daily life on the march or in camp, clothing, food, medical care, and military law.It also offers detailed eyewitness accounts and ethnographic descriptions of the various peoples-Persians, Slavs, Lombards, and Avars-that the Byzantine armies would have encountered as enemies. George T. Dennis’s translation-the first complete translation of this important text into English-renders the Strategikon’s straightforward, practical Greek into accessible and engaging prose.A new foreword by Conor Whately updates the volume with a brief survey of advances in scholarly understanding of the Strategikon and its historical context in the decades since