Note 723 — Chapter II · THE ROMAN EMPIRE UNDER ANASTASIUS: THE INHERITANCE OF JUSTINIAN
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The general character given to Byzantine soldiers is exceptionally bad: “The vile and contemptible military class”; Isidore Pelus., Epist., i, 390: “as free from crime as you might say the sea is free from waves”; Chrysostom, In Matth. Hom. LXI, 2 (in Migne, vii, 590). These, of course, are priests, but cf. Ammianus, xxii, 4; Zosimus, ii, 34, etc. Thus a century earlier the army had already fallen into a wretched condition; see also Synesius, De Regno.