Practice question · Select all that apply
Why did the theme system, soldiers settled on land in the districts they defended, reshape the empire’s politics as well as its finances? Select every consequence that followed.
Hints
- Three of these are real effects of paying soldiers in land; one confuses a cheaper army with a free state.
- Think about what a general who controls both the tax base and the troops of a province can do.
Show the answer
- A. Provincial commanders acquired the resources to mount rebellions
- B. Defence became locally rooted, since soldiers were defending their own land
- C. Armies became far cheaper to maintain in a period of collapsed cash revenue
Why
A land-based army solves the cash problem and creates a political one: the strategos of a theme commanded troops and revenues together, and Byzantine history is punctuated by their revolts. Taxation continued throughout, the themes reduced the army’s cost, they did not abolish the fiscal state.
Practise Byzantium: the Empire That Kept the Name
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