Early Byzantine Bukellarii

[tobypartridge]

Another project on the painting table is to finish morphing my Late Imperial Romans into Early Byzantines, and the main missing ingredient is the Bukellarii.  In DBMM they are CV(S), which implies double arming with spear and bow.  At the moment I have a combination of Legio Heroica Goths and armoured house archers that I was going to combined but I was also thinking of adding spears to the horse archers. Would they have been double armed like that, and if so do we know how they would have carried their spears, or can we take a good guess? 

[aligern]

Bukellarii are units described by their recruitment and payment mechanism, rather than by the kit they have. Hence you could be a bukellarius and carry a spear or maybe a bow or a spear and bow. IIRC some of Narses  men carried javelins(perhaps in addition to bows , lances etc.). If the Byzantine Bukellarii follow the convention of others they may well have had gear provided by their lord so they might well have an element of homogeneity about them. However, some were Huns, some Heruls, some Goths, some Bulgars so it is absolutely correct to have different ethnicities represented .
Some were apparently Roman  soldiers who left their units to move to serving a particular general. They could  make up a high proportion of an army when, as in Italy in 540, there were several generals , each with their own bodyguard in the same force.

It appears that The Byzantines made an effort to teach all troops to use the bow so you might want to add bowcases, probably tubular and quivers to some of the Goths. It looks from the Strategikon that lances were slung on the back, perhaps vertically by a loop when using the bow. I rather think that would be behind the left shoulder.
Roy

[Duncan Head]

Certainly some of the heavy cavalry were double-armed with bow and spear, and it is reasonable to assume these were, or included, most of the bucellarii:

But the bowmen of the present time go into battle wearing corselets and fitted out with greaves which extend up to the knee. From the right side hang their arrows, from the other the sword. And there are some who have a spear also attached to them and, at the shoulders, a sort of small shield without a grip, such as to cover the region of the face and neck.

Maurikios describes lances hung from the shoulder by a thong mid-way along the shaft, but this is sometimes thought to be an Avar innovation, which would imply not before the 560s at the earliest. However Procopius' "attached" may still imply a very similar arrangement.

[aligern]

Agreed Duncan, I tend to think of Mauricius' Avar importations as better ways of doing something, than current practice rather than as complete innovations.
It may also have been that a general's bukellarii would combine spears and bows in the way suggested in Maurice,that is with spears in the front ranks, bowmen behind.
Roy

[tobypartridge]

Hanging from the shoulder sounds possible, although possibly complex to add on. I was hoping they tucked it under their leg or something, which I am sure someone said was a technique but possibly a later Turkish one. The Goths mainly have large switch conveniently cover where quivers and bore cases would be, so I might need to add some cloaks to the horse archers to make them blend in. Plus very small shields it sounds like.

[aligern]

The very small shields have been challenged, it may be that they are just small shields, perhaps 2 ft in diameter. The difficult with having a lance under your thigh is that these lances are ten feet long. This would leave a length of lance ahead of the horse and it would be a danger to the man in front , especially when the unit halted or turned.
Roy

[tobypartridge]

I suppose it would encourage a headlong advance:)
I will have a fiddle and might add a few Late Roman heavy cavalry as well bit give then lances rather than javelins, or even as well as. I want them to look sorry of semi regular.

[gavindbm]

Also see info from a new book which Duncan Head discusses in messages 808-810 in the "currently reading" thread

[Jim Webster]

Not entirely relevant, being later, but have you seen this website

http://www.levantia.com.au/

Byzantine re-enactment

Jim