Isopostolos,

I agree with you about the military families, but between the lesser and greater evil, the military families were surely the greater evil. Byzantium's offensives coincided with the rapacious grab for the soldier's military lands, theoretically inalienable by the military families. Example, John Kurkuas, one of the great generals was one of these officers who participated in the exploitation of soldier's land for their own gratification. The soldiers owed the commander loyalty rather than the state which is a dangerous precedent.

If Basil did not stop their rate of exactions, a cantonisation of the empire would have been possible even causing civil war as the one seen after Manzikert. The civil war was not between the civil admin and the military families but between military families who ruined the empire's strengh.

Although I have to admit, I would have liked the miltary families to rule as Emperors under better circumstances.
I often wonder how far the reconquests would have been.

Egypt? Jerusalem? Sicily? Rome?

Tomorrow I pick up a book about Byz armies. Yipeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee