[37] Ibid. 120.
[38] Leo, Tactica: various scattered notices in § 18.
[39] In Leo’s day the Oriental themes had not been sub-divided, as was afterwards done by his son Constantine. There were then eight themes in Asia Minor, each of which contained a military division of the same name, and could be reckoned on for some 4000 heavy cavalry. These were ‘Armeniacon, Anatolicon, Obsequium, Thracesion, Cibyrrhœot, Bucellarion, and Paphlagonia.’ Optimaton, the ninth theme, had (as Constantine tells us in his treatise on the empire), no military establishments.
[40] See in the next section of this treatise for the plan of his formation, p. 45.
[41] Leo, Tactica, 18. 118.
[42] Ibid. 136.
[43] Ibid. 118.
[44] See Colonel Clery’s Minor Tactics.
[45] Leo, Tactica, 18.
[46] Compare with this the stratagem by which the Russian army escaped from a compromised position during the retreat before the battle of Austerlitz. ‘In agreeing to an Armistice,’ wrote Kutusoff, in a very Byzantine tone, ‘I had in view nothing but to gain time, and thereby obtain the means of removing to a distance from the enemy, and saving my army.’ Dumas, xiv. 48.