What was Justinian's army like?

Answer 1

Justinian I came to power in the 500's AD, very shortly after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. In the late 300's AD, the Roman Emperor Diocletian separated the Roman army into a few distinct categories. In descending order they were:

Scholae: the elite guard of the Emperor, protectors of first Rome and then Constantinople. These men were the Elite of the Roman Army and were meant to replace the Praetorian Guard, an organization charged with protecting the Emperors created by Augustus Caesar during his reign some four centuries previous. These men were considerably more loyal than the Praetorians and served the Roman Emperors until the 9th century AD.

Comitatenses: These men were the replacement for the classical Roman Legions. Each Roman Province in both the East and West had a legion or two of Comitatenses stationed in its capitol city. Additional Legions were stationed in Rome and Constantinople to be deployed as needed.

Pseudocomitatenses or Limitanei: These soldiers were border guards stationed along the borders of the Roman Empire to guard it against the hordes of Barbarians looking to get into Roman lands. With equipment and training only slightly lesser than their Comitatenses brothers, these men are largely thought of to be weak in comparison to the Comitatenses; however, the difference int their equipment is not to be overstated.

When the Western Roman Empire fell, the East remained strong, and Diocletian's system was so effective that it prevailed to Justinian's time; however, Justinian made some slight augmentations to this system. Since his initial territories included Anatolia and Thrace, he had a population predisposed to horseback riding. Therefore, Justinian augmented the Diocletian system with a very robust cavalry system, including the Eastern Roman Empire's most recognizable type of soldier: the Cataphract.

Cataphracts (Greek Kataphraktos, Latin Clibinarius) were soldiers coated in chain mail riding horses also coated in chain mail. Footsoldiers sometimes called them walking ovens because wearing armor as heavy as theirs raised one's bodily temperature to insufferable heights. While the Cataphracts were anything but comfortable in battle, they had one advantage overwhelming force working for them: brute force. Between the Cataphract and his horse, there was a lot of weight to just one of the horsemen, so when a group of over a hundred of the men charged an enemy line simultaneously, the effect was devastating. Justinian used these mighty soldiers to demolish his enemies.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, there was little to no military organization to the armies of Western Europe and Northern Africa, and so with brilliant generals like Belisarius at his side and armies stocked with -for all intents and purposes- Roman Legionaries and Cataphracts of his own creation, Justinian was able to tear through his opposition like a knife through papyrus.