Whately Conor. Battles and Generals: Combat, Culture, and Didacticism in Procopius’ Wars

Brill Academic Publishers, 2016. — 276 p.In Battles and Generals: Combat, Culture, and Didacticism in Procopius’ Wars, Whately reads Procopius’ descriptions of combat through the lens of didacticism, arguing that one of Procopius’ intentions was to construct those accounts not only so that they might be entertaining to his audience, but also so that they might provide real value to his readership, which was comprised, in part, of the empire’s military command. In the course of this analysis we discover that the varied battles and sieges that Procopius describes are not generic; rather, they have been crafted to reflect the nature of combat – as understood by Procopius – on the three Byzantine fronts of Justinian’s Wars, the frontier with Persia, Vandal north Africa, and Gothic Italy.Prologue: The Case of CallinicumThe Life of Procopius
How to Defeat the Persians in Combat
How to Defeat the Vandals in Combat
How to Defeat the Goths in CombatProcopius’ Worldview and the Wider Intellectual Context
Appendix: Glossary of Procopian's Battles and Sieges
Appendix: Win/Loss Records of the Persian and Roman Armies in the Persian Wars.