I've been reading alot of articles about 10th c. byzantine stuff and bought most of the contemporary military manuals. Dimensions of their arms are often mentioned in these texts and when converting the byzantine units to metric, all of the texts I've read so far cite erich schilbach's byzantinische metrologie.

I also read Timothy Dawson's "Fit for the task" and I disagreed with some of the conclusions he arrived to regarding how long units like the span should be, but in order to actually adress his points in any meaningfull way I feel like I have to first read schilbach to understand how he got to his conclusions.

The problem I have is that I've been unable to find schilbach anywhere on the webb for sale in english. I doubt however that everyone which cites Erich knows how to read german which leads me to at least hope that his work is avaliable in english somewhere.

If anyone knows where I can aquire this book then that would be appretiated!

Hello Martin,

I see that Abebooks has two used copies for sale in the US:

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-home-_-Results&an=erich+schilbach+&tn=byzantinische+metrologie&kn=&isbn=

Amazon US has one as well:
https://www.amazon.com/Byzantinische-Metrologie-Handbuch-Altertumswissenschaft-German/dp/3406014240/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1548290372&sr=8-1&keywords=Byzantinische+Metrologie

I hope this helps in your search.

Best wishes,


David