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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 the publication of Dennis’s translation.
In addition to being the editor of the definitive Greek text of the Strategikon, George T. Dennis (1923–2010) was the editor and translator of Three Byzantine Military Treatises and The Letters of Manuel II Palaeologus.
Conor Whately is Professor of Classics at the University of Winnipeg.