Jonathan Jeckell

“Like their modern counterparts, and unlike traditional warriors, Byzantine soldiers were normally trained to fight in different ways, according to specific tactics adapted to the terrain and the enemy at hand. In that simple disposition lay one of the secrets of Byzantine survival. While standards of proficiency obviously varied greatly, Byzantine soldiers went into battle with learned combat skills, which could be adapted by further training for particular circumstances. That made Byzantine soldiers, units, and armies much more versatile than their enemy counterparts, who only had the traditional fighting skills of their nation or tribe, learned from elders by imitation and difficult to change. In”
― Edward N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire

“Bold knaves thrive without one grain of sense,
But good men starve for want of impudence.”
― John Dryden, The Poetical Works of John Dryden

“Persuasion usually came first, but military strength was always the indispensable instrument of Byzantine statecraft, without which nothing else could be of much use—certainly not bribes to avert attacks, which would merely whet appetites if proffered in weakness. The upkeep of sufficient military strength was therefore the permanent, many-sided challenge that the Byzantine state had to overcome each and every day, year after year, century after century. Two essential Roman practices that the Byzantines were long able to preserve—as the western empire could not—made this possible, if only by a very small margin at times.”
― Edward N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire

“We cannot hope to recapture today the terror that the mounted horse struck into the Middle East and Eastern Europe when it first appeared. That is because there is a difference of scale which I can only compare with the arrival of tanks in Poland in 1939, sweeping all before them. I believe that the importance of the horse in European history has always been underrated. In a sense, warfare was created by the horse, as a nomad activity. That is what the Huns brought, that is what the Phrygians brought, that is what finally the Mongols brought, and brought to a climax under Genghis Khan much later. In particular, the mobile hordes transformed the organisation of battle. They conceived a different strategy of war – a strategy that is like a war game; how, warmakers love to play games!”
― Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent Of Man