Byzantine question

[Leet Eriksson]

He was pretty vague with the equipment though, they carried long shields, and spears, and were armoured. He said they were the best trained foot soldiers they encountered in yarmouk.

There must be something similiar to that during the 6th-7th centuries

[Prince Cobra]

He was pretty vague with the equipment though, they carried long shields, and spears, and were armoured. He said they were the best trained foot soldiers they encountered in yarmouk.

There must be something similiar to that during the 6th-7th centuries

Not sure but it's possible to be some kind of the stratiots ( the peasants recruited for the army from the themes). Heracles was the first emperor to use the themes and the stratiots. Stratiots were not professional soldiers and buld of the bys armies with huge numbers. But at that time maybe theu were not so much .But I'm not sure at all.

[ArnoldLol]

Not sure but it's possible to be some kind of the stratiots ( the peasants recruited for the army from the themes). Heracles was the first emperor to use the themes and the stratiots. Stratiots were not professional soldiers and buld of the bys armies with huge numbers. But at that time maybe theu were not so much .But I'm not sure at all.

stradiots were mounted units from the balkan weren they

[matteus the inbred]

stradiots were mounted units from the balkan weren they

yes, Albanian refugee cavalry taken into Venetian service after 1468 were called stradiots, elite light skirmishing cavalry.

I think what Stephen Asen was talking about was the Stratiotai, native Byzantine cavalry (often reservists) holding grants of land rents and called up for service whenever necessary. They probably would have fought in fairly deep formations early in the medieval period, but seem to have increasingly relied on skirmishing.

[Seleukos]

Stratiotai is the greek word used to describe ,both the native Byzantine medium cavalry of the late period,and the Greek,Albanian and Dalmatian light/medium cavalry used mainly by Venice.(stradioti in italian translation)

Its reasonable for someone to think,that there was a connection between them,so after the collapse of Byzantine Moreas-Peloponesos in 1460,they continue to exist,serving the Venetians,or acting sometimes by themselves
(as during the local revolution in 1480,in Mani)

Another explanation would be ,that the word was used for different units.Its interesting that the exact word :"Stratiotis-es" ,means "soldier" in modern Greek-a very common word,used for every type of fighter.

[Kraxis]

Heh... Revival... We are pretty good at that here in the Monastery.

I once read the manipular front-line guys first carried a javelin called something like hasta lancea (fairly literally "throwing spear", if my very poor Latin skillz are even close to the truth), as different from the larger close-combat hasta used by the heavier troops. The name apparently stuck around to cause some confusion later on when the only folks with something called hasta were the triarii...

Yup, that is basically what went down.
The Hastati were only guys to carry throwing spears (there is some debate wether they were truly javelins or some special heavy javelin, or even an early version of the pilum). And their primary combatrole was to cause shock. A hefty volley of javelins and a swordcharge to send the enemy into confusion and hopefully rout. But they were not meant to fight protracted battles, that was the job of the primary troops, the Principes. So while the primary troops had a spear to fight with it would make better sense to call them by their battlefield function. The first troops into combat would then be open to be called by their primary weapon, which would also give a short description of their battlefield function, just like the Principes. So it was logical at the time.
But just like we still call certain formations of armour, cavalry, advances in technology and tactics changed the troops but the names were easier to keep, and even at the time of Caesar (don't know about later periods) the three lines were still called Hastati Principes and Triarii despite being armed similarly.

So it is very much possible that what we have here is an outdated name for a 'modern' unit.
But of course I personally lean towards the author not really knowing what we wrote about and generally formed somethign that would fit historical texts. That wasn't too uncommon a few hundred years previously.