Procopius and incomplete battle evidence

Procopius often avoids precise technical labels and calls troops simply soldiers, making unit identification difficult. At the Battle of Taginae, also known as Busta Gallorum, he gives numbers for archers, selected cavalry, and a small force on a tactically important hill but omits totals for other major parts of the army. The pattern suggests that he recorded elements important to the story he was telling rather than preserving a modern order of battle. That frustration becomes a rule of historical method: historians must work from the sources that survive while remaining explicit about what those sources do not reveal.