Before the twilight of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, units of heavily armoured cavalry already formed the elite of Roman field armies. The long survival of the Eastern Empire based in Byzantium (Constantinople) saw several periods of vigorous re-conquest, such as the wars of Justinian the Great in the 6th century and those of the emperors of the Macedonian Dynasty in the 9th to 11th centuries. In these campaigns, the katáphraktoi...
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History