Byzantine Military Rhetoric in the Ninth Century

A Translation of the Anonymi Byzantini Rhetorica Militaris

Georgios Theotokis, Dimitrios Sidiropoulos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000390025
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

Byzantine Military Rhetoric in the Ninth Century is the first English translation of the ninth-century Anonymi Byzantini Rhetorica Militaris. This influential text offers a valuable insight into the warrior ethic of the period, the role of religion in the justification of war, and the view of other military cultures by the Byzantine elite. It also played a crucial role in the compilation of the tenth-century Taktika and Constantine VII's harangues during a period of intense military activity for the Byzantine Empire on its eastern borders. Including a detailed commentary and critical introduction to the author and the structure of the text, this book will appeal to all those interested in Byzantine political ideology and military history.

Introduction

Part A: the author and the work

Syrianos magistros and the compendium of Anonymus Byzantinus

Syrianos magistros has been attributed as the author of a comprehensive treatise that was published as three separate works broadly covering all aspects of warfare [τακτικά, δημηγορίαι, ναυμαχικά]:¹ the On Strategy (De re strategica),² which began with some general observations about the body politic before quickly turning to the topic that really interested the author and “which is really the most important branch of the entire science of government,” strategy; the Rhetorica militaris, which is a comprehensive general’s guidebook on how to compose and deliver rhetorical speeches for the exhortation of the troops before and up to the point of battle and, finally, the Naumachiae,³ which covers various topics related to strategy and tactics at sea. Historians have proposed that the compendium may also have included a section on siege warfare no longer extant.⁴

1In the On Strategy, the author explains that: “There are two kinds of war, at sea and on land. The tactics appropriate to each must be examined separately…. To avoid confusion, then, we shall discuss each form of warfare by itself, taking land warfare first” [On Strategy, ch. 14]. Bearing in mind that naval warfare and the fleet are not dealt with in the On Strategy, we can only assume that the section promised by the author is the Naumachiae. On top of that, at the beginning of the Rhetorica Militaris, the author claims he wishes to examine the “oral” or “verbal” part, as opposed to the “practical” part, of the political science he has already examined in detail: Rhetorica Militaris, I. 1.

2G. T. Dennis, Three Byzantine Military Treatises, CFHB: 25 [Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1985/2008 (repr.)], 10–135.

3A. Dain, Naumachica (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1943), 43–55; (English translation), J. H. Pryor and E. M. Jeffreys, The Age of the ΔΡΟΜΩΝ: The Byzantine Navy ca. 500–1204 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 455–81; (Greek translation), I. Ch. Demetroukas, Ναυμαχικά Λέοντος Στ΄, Μαυρικίου, Συριανού Μαγίστρου, Βασιλείου Πατρικίου, Νικηφόρου Ουρανού [Naumachica of Leo VI, Maurice, Syrianos Magister, Basil Patrikios, Nikephoros Ouranos] (Athens: Kanake, 2005), 111–43; (Italian translation), F. Corazzini, Scritto sulla Tattica Navale di Anonimo Greco (Livorno: Vannini, 1883).

4Philip Rance, “The Reception of Aineias’ Poliorketika in Byzantine Military Literature,” in: Maria Pretzler and Nick Barley (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Aineias Tacticus (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 290–374 [here: 318, n. 82]; P. Rance, “Tactics and Tactica in the Sixth Century: Tradition and Originality” (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, 1994), 59–61.

The assertion of the common authorship of the On Strategy and the Rhetorica Militaris goes as far back as the seventeenth century, when the German philologist, geographer and historian from Hamburg, Lukas Holste (1596–2 February 1661), first suggested it in a manuscript notation, adding that the first work (i.e. On Strategy) represented the πρακτικόν μέρος (i.e. the “practical” part) and the second (i.e. Rhetorica Militaris) accounted for the λογικόν μέρος (i.e. the “logical” or “verbal” part) of the De Orationibus Militaribus Tractatus.⁵ Yet it was because of the editorial and translation work of two great scholars of the nineteenth century, Hermann Köchly and Wilhelm Rüstow – the first editors of both manuals – that Holste’s idea took hold.⁶ Furthermore, it was Köchly and Rüstow who coined the term Anonymus Byzantinus. Finally, the “common paternity” of all three works of the compendium of the so-called Anonymus Byzantinus was supported a quarter of a century later by Karl Konrad Müller, who, in 1882, also attributed the Naumachiae to the same author as the aforementioned two, in his edition of the Greek text under the title De proelio navali.⁷

5Imma Eramo, “On Syrianus Magister’s Military Compendium,” Classica et Christiana 7 (2012), 97–116 [here: 97–8]; A. Dain, “Luc Holste et la ‘Collection Romaine’ des Tacticiens grecs,” Revue des Études Anciennes 71 (1969), 338–53.

6On Strategy was published in H. Köchly and W. Rüstow, Griechische Kriegsschriftsteller, vol. II (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1853–1855), Part 2 [‘Der Byzantiner Anonymus Kriegswissenschaft’]. Köchly’s textual connection between the On Strategy and the Rhetorica Militaris is on pages 14–21, with the full Greek text and German translation on pages 42–209. For the Rhetorica Militaris edition: H. Köchly (ed.), Anonymi Byzantini rhetorica militaris nunc primum edita (Zürich, 1855–1856).

7K. K. Müller, Eine griechische Schrift über Seekrieg (Würzburg, 1882), with Müller’s suggestion of the common authorship on pages 46–9.

Nevertheless, it would take another century for the three texts to be treated as one. That was because of a misunderstanding by one of the most influential codicologists of the twentieth century, Alphonse Dain.⁸ In 1943, Dain strongly supported the textual independence of the On Strategy from the other two works, thus influencing leading scholars of the next generation, like George Dennis, to publish an English translation of the latter treatise, in 1985, as an independent piece of Byzantine military literature of the sixth century. Therefore, it is thanks to the authoritative study by Constantine Zuckerman in 1990 that historians have come to accept beyond reasonable doubt not only the “common paternity” but also Syrianus’ authorship of all three of the aforementioned works.⁹

8Dain (1943), especially pages 9–10 and 44.

9C. Zuckerman, “The Military Compendium of Syrianus Magister,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 40 (1990), 209–24.

Zuckerman’s theory of the “common paternity” of the compendium relies primarily on the thematic and stylistic parallels between the three works. For Zuckerman, Anonymus applied the same tactical and rhetorical devices when it comes to writing about land and naval warfare, thus dismissing the word-for-word reiteration for the Naumachiae, which could have implied that the author of the naval treatise – if different from Anonymus – would have drawn and adapted his material from the On Strategy or the Rhetorica Militaris. Zuckerman identified several points of correspondence between the Naumachiae and the On Strategy, based on Anonymus’ concept of land and naval tactics, which is largely shaped by the author’s notion of the “phalanx.” The naval formation of warships is an adaptation of his description of a land phalanx, while the same principle applies for the author’s highlighting of the importance of keeping an orderly formation while on march, for the use of scouts in advance of a phalanx and for equipping the front ranks of a phalanx with the best weaponry available. Furthermore, numerous parallels between the Naumachiae and the Rhetorica Militaris are drawn from the passages...