ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the challenges of supply faced by Byzantium as it conducted campaigns against a formidable array of enemies in a variety of circumstances over the course of a millennium. Although one may quibble about dates, the most reasonable point for the beginning of Byzantine logistics was the creation of a seat of imperial government at the former city of Byzantium, renamed Constantinople, by Emperor Constantine I in 330. The Byzantine Empire, as a glance at a map will underscore, depended upon transportation by water as well as by land. The Byzantines inherited Roman traditions of the camp as the military base, although this was adapted to the realities of an era different from that of the legionary. In general, the logistical system of the empire was cumbersome and relatively inefficient in the early period. In later centuries the empire was smaller and poorer and could no longer function as it had in its earliest centuries.
