Introduction

Syrianos magistros has been attributed as the author of a comprehensive treatise that was published as three separate works broadly covering all aspects of warfare. In 2007, Philip Rance published the latest academic study concerning the debate about the dating of Syrianos’ compendium in an article that “intended to complement the insights of Baldwin, Lee and Shepard, and Cosentino by identifying five additional dating criteria that are incongruent with a sixth-century date and more consistent with a middle Byzantine context.” Rance also emphasized the importance of a naval treatise like the Naumachiae in the compendium of Syrianos, compared to the predominantly “land-warfare” treatise of the sixth century Strategikon. The basic strategic consideration that determined the empire’s strategic thinking and planning for this period was to achieve a sort of the equilibrium with its archenemy in the East, the Abbasid Caliphate.