ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 studies the thorny issue of the purpose of military manuals and of the Sylloge Tacticorum. In the beginning it discusses military manuals as antiquarian literary projects whose purpose was mostly to preserve the ancient tradition or to include promotional material and political propaganda. Then the chapter offers a powerful critique of this perspective by exploring literary conventions and the value of tradition in Byzantine society and literature. The chapter continues to study military manuals as practical handbooks and draws on the material of manuals themselves and on the military, political and administrative context of the empire. After that, the focus shifts to the relationship between historical narratives and Byzantine manuals and discusses the extent to which the parallel information found in these two genres can be used to estimate the practicality of manuals. Finally, the chapter determines how practical certain aspects of the Sylloge Tacticorum were by studying its contents comparatively with the testimony of Byzantine, Arab and Western historical narratives, as well as administrative and legal documents and other manuals. The study looks at the sources critically and determines whether they should be taken at face value.
