The Walls of Justinian and the sixth-century Roman army

The book opens from an unusually rich body of narrative, legal, and administrative evidence for Justinian's military forces. It nevertheless warns that terminology and troop categories remain disputed, particularly the balance between infantry and cavalry, central and local forces, and Roman and non-Roman personnel. The author explicitly challenges the familiar story that Roman infantry simply decayed into ineffective soldier-farmers while barbarian cavalry took over. Reconstructing this army remains difficult because its institutions persisted while surviving sources describe them unevenly.