The Shields of the Empire: Eastern Roman Military Elites During the Reigns of the Emperors Theodosius II, Marcian and Leo I - Paperback

by Lukasz Pigoński (Author)

The Shields of the Empire: Eastern Roman Military Elites during the Reigns of the Emperors Theodosius II, Marcian and Leo I aims to reconstruct the involvement of the Eastern Roman military elite in various matters of the state on the wider background of political history marked by the reigns of the emperors Theodosius II (408-450), Marcian (450-457) and Leo I (457-474). On its pages, the author presents the history of the numerous wars in which the Empire found itself entangled in during that uneasy time, as well the periods of conflict and cooperation between the generals and the emperors. The focus is not only on the military elite as a group, but also on outstanding individuals, such as generals Plintha, Flavius Zeno, Aspar or Zeno-Tarasikodissa, the aforementioned emperors and their civilian advisors. The result is a comprehensive study and a novel interpretation of the nearly seven decades of turmoil that, contrary to what happened in the West, curiously did not result in the collapse of the Eastern Roman state - perhaps, as the author argues, in no small part due to those military leaders, who were serving and protecting it.

Author Biography

Lukasz Pigoński (b. 1991), PhD, received doctorate in the Department of the Byzantine History at the University of Lź (Poland).
His scholarly interests concentrate on various problems concerning the Eastern Roman Empire in the 5th century, especially its foreign policy and the relationship between the emperors and the army, as well as the questions of identity and ethnicity, military history, and the functioning of the Vandal and Hunnic states. He is the author of a monograph on the western policy of emperors Marcian (450-457) and Leo I (457-474), as well as several articles and reviews.