Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-qs9v7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T08:29:11.188Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On handling the menavlion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Michael P. Anastasiadis
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The study of Byzantine military treatises is often fraught with obstacles due to the interpretation of technical terms which have lost their meaning through the passage of time. This paper is concerned with an obscurity called the menavlion and the soldiers who wielded that weapon: the menavlatoi . The menavlion has been identified as a heavy javelin or spear, a short hunting-spear and, more recently, as a pike comparable to that carried by the heavy foot-soldiers in the Byzantine army.

Type
Research Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 18 , 1994 , pp. 1 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. See respectively, Haldon, J.F., ‘Some Aspects of Byzantine Military Technology from the Sixth to the Tenth Century’, BMGS 1 (1975) 33 Google Scholar; Mihaescu, H., ‘Pour une nouvelle édition du traité Praecepta Militaria du Xesiècle’, RSBS 2 (1982) 318 Google Scholar; and McGeer, E., 4 (1986-87) 53–7 Google Scholar. This study will demonstrate that the interpretation of the first two authors is to be preferred.

2. Sylloge Tacticorum, quae olim ‘inedita Leonis Táctica’ dicebatur, ed. Dain, A. (Paris 1938)Google Scholar.

3. Nikephoros II, Praecepta Militaria ex codice Mosquensi, ed. Kulakovskij, J.A., in: ZapiskiImperatorskoi AkademiiNauk: Istoriko-filologicheskogoe otdelenie, viii 9 (St Petersburg 1908)Google Scholar.

4. Praecepta 4.11-14: .

5. The species of wood called is unclear; cf. D. Demetrakos, a nettle (urtica dioeca or urtica pilulifera), or a wood-rush (chondrylla juncea) which is any plant of the genus Luzula; and, Du Cange, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae Graecitatis, s.v., a nettle. None of these definitions, unfortunately, fits the context of the passage.

6. Leo VI, Tactica, ed. Vàri, R., 2 vols. (Budapest 1917-22)Google Scholar.

7. Leo, Tact, xi.26:

8. Where one span approximates to 23.4 cm. (or 9 in.), one cubit to 46.8 cm. (or 18 in.) and one fathom to 1.87 m. (or 6 ft.): Schilbach, E., Byzanliniscke Metrologie (Munich 1970) 19–22 Google Scholar.

9. For a history of this treatise: Dain. La, A. ‘Tactique’ deNicéphore Ouranos (Paris 1937)Google Scholar. I have used Vári’s recension where he appended some chapters from Ouranos as a footer for a new edition of Leo’s Tactica, and to supplement this: Foucault, J.A. de, ‘Douze chapitres inédits de la “Tactique” de Nicéphore Ouranos’, TM 5 (1973) 281–312 Google Scholar.

10. Ouranos, , Tact, xiv.27 (Vàri, 300–1)Google Scholar:

11. Praecepta 3.14-16: Oi .

12. See the commentary by Kulakovskij, 30, n.3: ‘The definition of the length of the monavla at 2½A spithamai, that is, 553.5 millimetres (3.15), clearly relates to the length of the barbed element affixed onto the wooden shaft’. Furthermore, the corresponding passage in the Tactica of Ouranos (Monacensis 452, fol. 110v) attests: .

13. Cf. McGeer, 54-55, who considers the menavlion to have measured twenty-five to thirty spans by comparison with the pike of the hoplites in the Praecepta, but in the next paragraph, while remarking on the length of the spear-point, contradicts himself by stating that the menavlion could have been modelled on the caltrop devices recommended by Leo which had a shaft of about five or six spans.

14. Leo, Tactica vi.31:

15. Excerptum Tacticum, ed. and tr. Dain, A., in: L’extrait ‘Tactique’ tiré de Léon VI le Sage (Paris 1942) 87 Google Scholar:

16. Mihaescu, 318.

17. Sylloge xlvii.16: .

18. Praecepta 3.8-10, 13-15. McGeer, E., ‘Infantry versus Cavalry: The Byzantine Response’, REB 46 (1988) 138 Google Scholar.

19. Praecepta 1.24-2.6. In the Sylloge xxxviii.3, 5, the specifications are identical except that the pike-armed infantry, called , have a pike measuring ten (or at least eight) cubits in length with a spear-point of one-and-a-half spans, and a single-edged sword, called a , measuring four spans excluding the hilt and pommel.

20. Praecepta 2.8-12. The Praecepta mirrors the Sylloge in these details except that in the latter the bowmen have a single-edged sword, one quiver with thirty or forty arrows and another quiver with an arrow guide, called a (xxxviii.10). On the identification of the solenarion as an arrow guide: Nishimura, D., ‘Crossbows, Arrow-Guides and the Solenarion ’, B 58 (1988) 422–35 Google Scholar.

21. Praecepta 3.26-7:

22. Praecepta 2.33-5:

23. Praecepta 3.35-4.6.

24. Praecepta 4.6-10:

25. Cf. McGeer, , 57; and idem, ‘Inf. v. Cav.’, 141. If the menavlion had the same length as the pike (according to McGeer), it is difficult to understand how the Praecepta could state that three ranks of hoplite pikes take the brunt of the enemy charge first if the menavlatoi are deployed in front of the hoplites.

26. Praecepta 4.19-25. McGeer, ‘Inf. v. Cav.’, 140.

27. De Re Militari xx, ed. and trans. Dennis, G.T., in: Three Byzantine Military Treatises (Washington, D.C. 1985) 300.128–32 Google Scholar:

28. Ouranos, , Tact, lxiv.8 (de Foucault, 295)Google Scholar:

29. De Velitatione iii.3, ed. Dagron, G. and Mihaescu, H., and trans. Dagron, G., Le traité sur la guérilla (De Velitatione) de l’empereur Nicéphore Phocas (963-969) (Paris 1986) 43.16–24 Google Scholar.

30. Praecepta 8.21-5:

31. Arrian, Expeditio contra Alanos, ed. Ross, A.G. with amendments by Wirth, G., in: Quae exstant omnia: Scripta minora et fragmenta, 2 (Leipzig 1968) 177–85 Google Scholar.

32. I follow the school of thought on the arming of the legionaries for this campaign that their was a pilum and not a long spear. On the former interpretation: RE, S.V., ‘pilum’, and Kiechle, F., ‘Die “Taktik” des Flavius Arrianus’, BRGK 45 (1964) 87–129 Google Scholar; and for the latter interpretation: Wheeler, E.L., ‘Flavius Arrianus: A Political and Military Biography’ (Ph.D. diss., Duke University 1977) 260–76 Google Scholar, and Bosworth, A.B., ‘Arrian and the Alani’, HSCP 81 (1977) 242 Google Scholar.

33. Arr. Alan, xvi; xvii.

34. Arr. Alan, xvi; xvii; xxvi. On the problems with this text: Bosworth, 238-40, nn.92 and 94.