ABSTRACT
The conclusion presents an overview of the main arguments of each chapter. It begins by considering the cultural, military and political context of the production of the Sylloge Tacticorum. The discussion continues with an analysis of the purpose and character of imitation in Byzantine literature and explains that the author of the Sylloge Tacticorum was a regular example of an established tradition. The conclusion explains that the latter used one lost source for the production of his work and that he adapted and paraphrased other individual works, both classical and Byzantine, from various genres such as military manuals, florilegia, admonitory works and legal texts. The conclusion also discusses the dating of the Sylloge Tacticorum, which is put during the reign of Romanos I. The false attribution to Leo VI is seen as a damnatio memoriae imposed on the name of Romanos I by his political rivals, Constantine VII and/or Basil Lekapenos. The latter two seem to have also intervened in the text itself, adding and moving material and chapters around. The discussion then moves to the original material of the Sylloge Tacticorum, which is significant not only because it presents an updated Byzantine way of thinking in terms of morality, warfare and religion but also introduces us to tenth-century strategy, tactics and equipment. The advice and purpose of the Sylloge Tacticorum are mostly seen as practical, and after a critical assessment of parallel information in military manuals and other sources, it seems that in some cases it was indeed followed on the battlefield. This is also determined by the afterlife of the manual, which was used as a basis by later experienced generals to sophisticate and optimize Byzantine tactics.
