All soldiers of this period were called "militia", or stratiots. And if the division of riders according to protective weapons did not exist during this period, as we wrote above, then in the infantry the division into heavily armed and light infantry was preserved.
The generic name of the infantry of this time was "scutatus", from the name of the shield, or, in the Greek manner, "oplita". The same name will be retained later. Heavy weapons were expressed primarily in the presence of carapace or armor, be it leather, scaly or laminar defensive weapons.
It should be said that not all soldiers of the same category had protective weapons, we also note that the line between infantry and cavalry was ghostly, so, due to the small number of infantry in Italy, all the soldiers got themselves horses. But even at the end of the century, we see that a clear division continues to exist. The mine in 593 was magister equitum and magister peditum in Thrace, and the next year he led only the cavalry, and the infantry was led by Gentzon.
Anonymous 6th century, describing a heavily armed infantryman, represented him in the form of a motionless warrior. He believed that the Romans should have used a defensive strategy: this is how the protostats acted in the battle with the Franks at Tannet in 553. The tactics of this period implied that the scutates, like heavily armed infantry, take over and "extinguish" the first impulse of the enemy. Be it the horsemen of Iran or the Goths, the infantry of the Franks and Alemanni, after which the cavalry of the Romans attacks the enemies who have lost their fighting impulse. Agathius of Myrene, as if clearly following the strategist Anonymous of the 6th century, wrote about the infantry at Tannet:
"The advanced, dressed in armor that reached their feet, and with very strong helmets, formed a close formation."
But Procopius of Caesarea, a combatant, noted that the presence of heavy armor did not interfere with the infantryman's mobility:
“Today's archers go into battle dressed in carapace, with knee-length greaves. On the right side they have arrows hanging, on the left - a sword."
The Oplites were originally armed with a spear and shield. An anonymous author of the 6th century, speaking of the protostats, the warriors in the front row, believed that higher-ranking commanders should not yield to them in strength:
"… and especially to surpass others in military experience and prudence, and the older each of them is the other and the more subordinates he has, the more."
In the first row were the commanders of the decarkhs or lohags, that is, the commanders of the suckers - “squads” standing in a row behind his back.
The blow of the enemies most often fell on the first rank, where the hecatontarchs also stood - centurions and commanders of suckers, who also had to have courage and remarkable physical strength. Judging by the military successes that "achieved" during his reign, Emperor Phoca, a former hecatontarch-centurion, he was just a dashing swashbuckler who won fame among comrades in arms, and not an experienced commander-tactician.
In the second rank there were scutates-epistats, who were not supposed to be inferior in strength and courage to the protostats, since in the event of the death of the soldiers of the first row, they stood in their place. In the last line were Uraghi, who control the line and give confidence to the soldiers in front, if necessary, with a blow of a spear. During the siege of Rome, two soldiers offered to lead a small detachment of the Roman infantry, Procopius of Caesarea put into their mouth the following speech about the Roman infantry, "thanks to which alone, as we hear, the power of the Romans reached such a degree of greatness."
This battle at the walls of Rome clearly demonstrates a real combat situation. At first, everything went well for the besieged, but the Goths, taking advantage of the lack of discipline among the Roman plebeians, inflicted a flank cavalry attack. The Roman cavalry, consisting of Moors and Huns, could not withstand the blow of numerous horsemen with spears and fled, followed by the main part of the infantry, standing in the center. The remaining part organized resistance, it must be understood that the attackers, who had a numerical advantage, immediately broke through the formation, moreover, it was almost impossible to restore any breakthrough in the formation, no mythical impenetrable "wall of shields" existed, the battle instantly turned into a personal duel:
“Principius and Tarmut, with a few of the infantry around them, showed examples of valor worthy of them: they continued to fight and least of all wished to take flight with others. The Goths, deeply amazed at their bravery, stopped, and this enabled the rest of the infantry and most of the horsemen to escape. Principicus, whose body had been hacked to pieces, fell right there and around him forty-two infantrymen. Tarmut, holding Isaurian darts in both hands, all the time hitting the attackers from one side or the other, began to weaken under the influence of wounds, then his brother Ann came to his aid with several horsemen. This gave him the opportunity to rest, and he was covered with blood and wounds, but without losing any of his darts, he rushed to the fortifications at a quick run."
Equipment and preparation
Not only the spirit of the Roman infantry hovered over the army, as John Lydus pointed out, unification was the norm for the Roman army.
But in his time, it seems to him, she disappeared, although the images speak of something else: uniformity was an important element of the ideological superiority of the empire over the surrounding "barbarians". It should be noted that, despite the high level of economy and technology, even Sassanian Iran could not compare with Rome in the rational approach of equipping warriors. The equipment came at the expense of the state and from state arsenals. The unification of clothing in the army was such, as we wrote earlier, that during the battle of the Byzantine commander Herman with deserters in Africa, the warriors of the opposing sides did not differ in any way either in equipment or in clothing.
The infantry had to carry out combat commands, train on sticks, run, be able to issue a war cry. When the commander exclaims: "Help!" the detachment had to answer: "God!". The soldiers had to obey the signals of the voice and trumpet, move to the flute in a battle dance - pyrrhic. The commander Narses in Italy, during the winter stay, made the soldiers "whirl in pyrrhic", a combat dance-training, imitating the behavior of a warrior in battle, in Ancient Sparta boys were trained in him from the age of five.
About defensive weapons
Shield, as we know from narrative sources, was the most important component of equipment, in the face of increasing threats from small arms, as the anonymous author of the 6th century wrote:
"And when the shields are closely closed with each other, it will be possible to fence, cover and protect the entire army so that no one is hurt by the enemy's projectiles."
Shield in the VI century. It was made of wood and metal: the scutum was quite heavy, as it could withstand the blows of more than one spear, sword or ax, it could withstand the weight of a person, although it was possibly inferior in protective properties to metal aspis. When Phocas was elected emperor in 602, according to Roman tradition, the soldiers raised him high on a shield.
It is worth saying that the question of a clear definition of the terms of shields remains open, given the fact that information about them is spread over time and by different authors, but we will try to give them definitions based on written monuments of this period.
John Lead tried in his work to sanctify the theme of the origin of the shields and what they actually represented in the VI century. Scutum (scutum) in Greek it was called thyreos (θυρεοις) - a light, large, but strong and reliable shield. Klipea (clipeus), according to Lid, is an aspis - a powerful, strong round shield. Anonymous VI century.also uses the term aspis for his, recommended by him, a huge shield in seven spans (≈160cm). There is undoubtedly logic here: since the scutum, originally a Celtic rectangular shield, of all kinds of configurations, even oval. In contrast to it, the aspis, like the klipeya, is an all-metal round shield, and the aspis in general is the shield of the hoplites of the classical period. Procopius of Caesarea, who uses the term aspis to designate a shield, also translates from the Latin name of the hill of Klipea, as the mountain of the Shield.
Corippus, who wrote in Latin, noted that the new emperor, Justin II, was being raised on the "clip". It is possible to assume that he really was stronger than a scutum. However, this issue remains extremely confusing.
In appearance, they can be divided into four groups: oval convex, oval flat, round convex and round flat. Not many images of the Roman shields of the 6th century have come down to us, we tried to put them together, some of the images are built hypothetically, below you can see them:
Armor. Many researchers, quite rightly, believe, following Vegetius, that lorica, due to the financial constraints of the army and the general decline in discipline, was used in the Roman troops to a lesser extent than, say, in the 2nd-3rd centuries. Emperors such as Justinian I or Mauritius tried to “save money” on troops. Nevertheless, the basic minimum, it seems, was respected: Mauritius Stratig wrote that the scutates, especially the warriors of the first two ranks, should have protective weapons. Otherwise, the Romans could not fight on equal terms with their opponents, who are heavily armed, such as the Persians, Avars or, in part, the Goths. Theophylact Simokatta wrote that on the Danube border the main army was heavily armed. In protective equipment, as Procopius wrote about, uniformity was observed. The same can be said about helmets.
Helmets the warriors were the same for arithma. They were both frame and all-metal. Below are images of Roman helmets of only the 6th century, made on the basis of all images and coins of this period:
