This reform Maurice succeeded in carrying out, to the great benefit of the discipline and loyalty of his army. He next took in hand the reducing of the whole force of the empire to a single form of organization. The rapid decrease of the revenues of the state, which had set in towards the end of Justinian’s reign, and continued to make itself more and more felt, had apparently resulted in a great diminution in the number of foreign mercenaries serving in the Roman army. To the same end contributed the fact that of the Lombards, Herules, and Gepidæ, the nations who had furnished the majority of the imperial Foederati, one race had removed to other seats, while the others had been exterminated. At last the number of the foreign corps had sunk to such a low ebb, that there was no military danger incurred in assimilating their organization to that of the rest of the army. The new system introduced by Maurice was destined to last for nearly five hundred years. Its unit, alike for infantry and cavalry, was the βάνδον {bandon}[49]--a weak battalion or horse-regiment of 400 men, commanded by an officer who usually bore the vulgarized title of ‘comes[50],’ but was occasionally denominated by the older name of τριβῶνος {tribônos}, or military tribune. Three ‘bands’ (or τάγματα {tagmata} as they were sometimes styled) formed a small brigade, called indifferently μοῖρα {moira}, χιλιαρχία {chiliarchia}, or δροῦγγος {droungos}[51]. Three ‘drunges’ formed the largest military group recognised by Maurice, and the division made by their union was the ‘turma’ or μέρος {meros}. Nothing can be more characteristic of the whole Byzantine military system than the curious juxtaposition of Latin, Greek, and German words in its terminology. Upon the substratum of the old Roman survivals we find first a layer of Teutonic names introduced by the ‘Foederati’ of the fourth and fifth centuries, and finally numerous Greek denominations, some of them borrowed from the old Macedonian military system, others newly invented. The whole official language of the Empire was in fact still in a state of flux; Maurice himself was hailed by his subjects as ‘Pius, Felix, Augustus[52],’ though those who used the title were, for the most part, accustomed to speak in Greek. In the ‘Stratêgikon’ the two tongues are inextricably mixed: ‘before the battle,’ says the emperor, ‘let the counts face their bands and raise the war-cry “Δεοῦς Νοβισκοῦμ {Deous Nobiskoum}” (Deus nobiscum), and the troopers will shout the answering cry “Κύριε, Ἐλέησον {Kyrie, Eleêson}.”’