ABSTRACT
A decade ago Benjamin Isaac raised the question of whether there was such a thing as a 'Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire', in the sense of a consistent policy towards the East formulated by the high command in the light of such rational considerations as deterrence, the security of the inhabitants of the provinces and supposedly 'natural' frontiers. The theses of Birley, Isaac and other writers have shown how miscellaneous assumptions and rhetoric about the frontiers and the nature of imperial dominion interacted with one another and with external realities during the early empire. The culture and values that emerged in Byzantine society in these unpredictable, often violent circumstances differed in many ways from what had earlier been the norm, and the changes of the seventh century have been aptly characterised as 'the transformation of a culture'. The example of constant campaigning which Basil II set added a more concrete definition to the notion of expansionism.
