The Army.—We have already seen how the disasters and losses of the 7th century led to a radical change in the military organization, and how the empire was divided into themes. The preponderant influence which Asia Minor won and retained till the i ith century is reflected in the military establishment, which mainly depended on the Asiatic provinces. The strategos of a large theme commanded a corps of io,000 and the scheme of the divisions and subordinate commands has a remarkable resemblance to the organization of some of the armies of modern Europe.
The recorded scheme was probably not uniform in all the themes, and varied at different periods. The Thema (corps) con sisted of 2 turmai (brigades) under turmarchai; the turma of 5 bandy (regiments), each under a drungarios (colonel) ; the bandon of 5 pentarkhiai (companies) under a kometes (captain). The pentarkhia, containing 200 men had 5 subdivisions under pente kontarkl:ai (lieutenants) ; and there was a smaller unit of ten men under the dekarkhes (corporal). The total strength in the 9th century was 120,000; in Justinian's time it was reckoned at I 50,00o.
Distinct from the military forces (Ruara) of the provinces were the forces (ra-yp.ara) stationed in or near the capital. The most important of these were the sc/iolae and the excubitores. The scholarian troops were in early times under the master of offices, but subsequently their chief officer, the domestic of the schools, became the highest military commander in the empire next to the strategos of the Anatolic theme. In war, when the emperor did not assume the chief command himself, he might entrust it to any commander, and he often entrusted it to the domestic. In the II th century, after the conquest of Bulgaria, there were two domestics, one for the East and one for the West, and under Alexius Comnenus the domestic of the West received the title great domestic. Under the Palaeologi the great domestic was superior in rank to all other ministers.
Besides the scholarians and the excubitores (who had been organized in the 5th century), there were the regiments of the hikanatoi, the arithmos and the numeroi. The numeroi were foot soldiers. The optimatoi, also infantry, properly belonged to the same category, though they were constituted as a theme. It is to be observed that the demes or corporations of Constantinople were partly organized as militia, and were available for purposes of defence.
The great difference between this Byzantine army and that of the earlier empire is that its strength (like that of the feudal armies of the West) lay entirely in cavalry, which the successors of Heraclius and the Isaurian emperors developed to great per fection. The few contingents of foot were subsidiary. The army
was free from the want of discipline which was so notable in the 6th century; it was maintained in Asia Minor, which was the great recruiting ground, by a system of military holdings of land (an extension of the old Roman system of assigning lands in the frontier districts to federate barbarians and to veterans). The conditions of the marauding expeditions and guerilla warfare, continuously carried on against and by the Saracens in the 8th, 9th and loth centuries, were carefully studied by generals and tacticians, and we possess the theory of the Byzantine methods in a treatise composed by the emperor Nicephorus Phocas, and edited by one of his pupils. Every detail of an inroad into Saracen territory is regulated.
In the 8th and 9th centuries there was a system of signals by which an approaching Saracen incursion was announced to Con stantinople from the Cilician frontier. The news was flashed across Asia Minor by eight beacon fires. The first beacon was at Lulon (which commanded the pass between Tyana and the Cilician Gates), the last on Mt. Auxentius in Bithynia. When this fire appeared, a light was kindled in the pharos of the imperial palace at Constantinople. The system was discontinued in the reign of Michael III., probably after the capture of Lulon by the enemy in 86o, and was not renewed, though Lulon was re covered in 877.
The loss of a great part of Asia Minor to the Seljuks, and the disorganization of the provinces which they did not acquire, seriously weakened the army, and the emperors had recourse more and more to foreign mercenaries and barbarian auxiliaries. The employment of Scandinavians had begun in the loth century, and in 988 was formed the Varangian guard. In the arsenal of Venice are two lions, which were transported from the Peiraeus, inscribed with obscure Runic characters, carved perhaps by Scan dinavians in the army of Basil II. Under Michael IV. the famous Norwegian prince Harald Hardrada (described by a Greek writer as "Araltes, son of the king of Varangia") fought for the empire in Sicily and in Bulgaria. But in the latter part of the i ith century foreign mercenaries greatly increased in numbers and importance.