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

Download or read book Battles and Generals: Combat, Culture, and Didacticism in Procopius’ Wars written by Conor Whately and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 fronts of Justinian’s wars, the frontier with Persia, Vandal north Africa, and Gothic Italy.