Military Tactics and Literary Strategies: stratagems, war writing, and the dating of John Skylitzes' Synopsis Historion

This paper focuses on the study of three stratagems recorded in the Synopsis Historion of John Skylitzes, which are otherwise absent from any other independent Byzantine and foreign source. The discussion sheds light on war writing in the Synopsis: it examines its sources for military events, its reception of military trickery, and discusses how the latter two can result into a synthesis of the conflicting views on the dating, purpose, and methodology of the work. The paper argues that John Skylitzes drew on stratagems of antiquity to enhance the image and the legacy of aristocratic families which were central to the ruling regime at the time of the composition of the work, and envisages the Synopsis as an earlier history, dating to c. 1059–1067.