This book came to life through a long and torturous process, or so it seems. It began as the resurrection of my first book on Procopius, when it was on the verge of collapse. I had been convinced that the earlier book was mostly drivel, and in order to get something people might read out there, I decided I would have to shift to more traditional aspects of military history. Then, Elodie Turquois invited me to Oxford in January of 2014 for a conference she was co-organizing with Chris Lillington-Martin and Miranda Williams on Procopius: it was a godsend, and the collected presentations and assorted chitchat convinced me the initial project was worth saving. It later appeared as Battles and Generals (Brill 2016). This left the revised version in limbo. I planned to work on this beast—initially it was to be a complete study of Procopius the military historian—gradually, and I presented much of the chapter on Procopius’ sources to some unwitting colleagues at the Universities of Manitoba and Winnipeg not long after. Then, a year or so later, the unthinkable happened: on the day Britain voted to leave the EU, SSHRC, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, awarded me a two-year Insight Development Grant based on the revised Procopius project. And this came when my enthusiasm for all of my current research was at a spectacularly low ebb, perhaps not coincidentally after I had finally got the notice that I had received tenure. Given how much failure I had had, so much so that just days before I had lamented that I would never get a grant because of my interests (and had just been denied an institutional one), this was a complete and utter shock. That grant has now spawned a handful of publications, two of which have already appeared, my chapter on combat motivation in the sixth century and my chapter on the siege of Rome, while two other outputs are forthcoming, a journal article in the Journal of Ancient History on the late antique military revolution and a chapter on war and society in late Roman Arabia. Two more might not be far off, one on unit cohesion in late antiquity, the other on unit sizes in Procopius, though the latter is still up in the air.
The first draft of the manuscript was submitted to Brill at the end of 2019 when nobody, or almost nobody, had any idea what lurked around the corner. In mid-March, when Covid-19 was ramping up and I had received a host of rejections for other things (2020 was the year that keeps on giving), I received my first round of reviewer feedback for this book. It helped enormously, and I went off and revised the manuscript. Initially, I had thought it would take forever (months? years?), as the transition to distance education while my two young daughters were home proved difficult, to say the least. But when Manitoba’s esteemed provincial government started ramping up their rhetoric about budget cuts and the prospect of crushing financial hardship seemed inevitable, one of my primary means of “escape” turned out to be working ruthlessly and relentlessly on getting this book into better shape. Not surprisingly, given the devastating impact Covid has had on everyone, not least those who have lost their lives, in rejigging this book I incorporated some of the fantastic new research on the Justinianic plague in my wider discussion of military demographics. But I made other changes too, which I think have made the whole better, and I hope those one or two people who will read this book appreciate the effort I have put into it. After resubmission, I received another round of invaluable feedback, and I was, again, in debt to their efforts. Indeed, I cannot thank enough the two (possibly four?) anonymous reviewers who read this manuscript. I accepted just about all of your suggestions—just about. Obviously, there were a few places where I disagreed and stuck to my guns. I can honestly say, however, that the feedback I got throughout this process has been extremely useful, and as some past experiences have taught me this often is not the case. Thanks to my inability to say no and my foolhardy decision to undertake a wide and dizzying array of research projects, this has not been the smoothest of writing processes. If this book is any good, or at least not awful, a big reason is those reviewers.
I should add too that this book is something like book two in what has become a four-book enterprise. The first, Battles and Generals, focused on descriptions of battles in Procopius’ Wars and the cultural framework that underpinned them. This, the second, as I alluded to above, focuses more on traditional aspects, like unit types and recruitment, though the central item of focus that serves as the core of the book is the rank-and-file soldier of the sixth century. While the Wars plays an important role in this book too, so too do the Buildings and Secret History, as well as much of the other varied and wonderful kinds of evidence, like sixth-century inscriptions, papyri, and law codes. The other two books that will round out this four-book collection are not yet finished (though they were supposed to be): one will look at the broader practice of describing battle in sixth-century historiography and beyond (and it might see the light of day in the next couple of years), while the other will focus more squarely on the limitanei that feature so much in this book. That books is some years off. When those four books are all done, they should put me in good stead to look at the wider impact of war on the Roman world at the end of antiquity.
Besides the four (two?) reviewers noted above, there are, undoubtedly, others I should thank for this book. Obviously, Hannah, Ella, Penny, and Don are, as always, wonderful. This awful pandemic would have been much worse without them. In fact, much more exciting than this book are the two books Hannah was commissioned to write on math puzzles for kids in kindergarten and grade one, which will be read by far more people than this one. I am super-excited to see those in print in 2021. If you are reading this preface, you have small children, and you want some extra help with math, check out Hannah’s amazing array of resources. Ella (6) and Penny (3) are a constant and consistent source of joy and happiness. They are truly wonderful, and I hope that the late nights for months on end as Hannah and I divided our time between our respective projects and the family mean that, in years to come, this pandemic will only be a relatively small part of their lives. As for Don, he is a legend, and has been such a good dog, those times he does a poo in the house aside. He is gentle, smart, and funny, and I could not imagine going on long walks without him. He and I spent a lot of time on weekly walks in Manitoba’s fantastic provincial parks (hidden gems to those outside of Manitoba) while I was on leave in the fall of 2019. They were wonderful.
I should give a big shout out to colleagues in my university, province, and further afield who contributed in big and small ways to this book. Matt Gibbs deserves thanks for listening to me moan about how the book was going. Fraser and Darryl deserve thanks for indulging my cidery fantasies when things were bleak. Thanks to SSHRC for the money, which allowed me to do so much. Thanks to Mustafa, who served as my driver and guide on two trips to Jordan (an invaluable influence on this book). Indeed, Jordan is a magical place, and I am tempted to say that everyone should go visit, but I like the relative solitude you find on the fortifications of the limes Arabicus and so maybe not quite everyone. Only some of you. Thanks to my mom and dad for being wonderful companions on those two trips. I should also give thanks to the University of Winnipeg for granting me research leave in fall of 2019, and for continuing to employ from the summer of 2009 to today (December 9, 2020). I want to thank Marcella Mulder at Brill and the editorial board of the History of Warfare series for their support of this project, as well as all those at Brill who worked on this in some capacity or other. If I have missed anyone, I apologize.
I have had a few students (miraculously) express some interest in Procopius and military things. In fact, in one, glorious term I taught a fourth-year honours seminar on Procopius. Even though my students might only occasionally be exposed to Procopius, given how much time I spend in the classroom, even if the classroom these past several months has been a chair and table at home, I want to thank all of them for their contributions, big and small.