ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 serves as a background chapter, which sets the stage to understand the Sylloge Tacticorum and its contents better. In order to demonstrate the challenges and changes of Byzantine strategy in the time the treatise was compiled, the chapter analyses the context of Byzantine warfare in the period 900–950 AD. The chapter explains that it was mainly during the reign of Romanos I Lekapenos that the Byzantines started to take the upper hand in their struggle against the Arabs. The Byzantines took the initiative and now raided deep into Arab territory and aimed first at demilitarizing enemy cities, fortresses and towns. It was only key objectives which were annexed, and this occurred more often during and after the reign of Constantine VII. The chapter concludes that these developments influenced the compilation of the Sylloge Tacticorum, as the latter presents an army and strategy able to operate in the context of this period which required both guerrilla strategies and tactical offensive warfare.
