This research projects aims to understand the causal mechanisms which facilitated the resilience and survival of a large pre-Modern imperial state in Europe and the Mediterranean World by focusing on governmental approaches to private resources. A new analytical approach towards bodyguards and retainership in Eastern Roman political history will enable the project to gauge state authority towards private force in one of the most transformational periods of pre-industrial history. It will highlight the advantages of retainership as a social strategy via a series of historical case studies using innovative prosopographical methods to analyse social mobility inside the political structures of the Eastern Roman Empire. Despite its chronological remoteness, the processes surrounding the formation of resources that could be employed for violence during the collapse of political structures in the western Roman empire in the fifth century CE, whilst its eastern twin survived and resurged in the sixth century, may also be of strong interest for understanding later historical eras and even our own contemporary world (i.e. the phenomenon of the 'failed state').