Byzantine mercenaries

elite unit of the Byzantine Army from the 10th to 14th century

Italian military adventurer and condottiere

14th century mercenary company

Norman adventurer and Byzantine general

The Optimatoi (, from , "the Best Men") were initially formed as an elite Byzantine military unit. In the mid-8th century, however, they were downgraded to a supply and logistics corps and assigned a province (thema) in north-western Asia Minor, which was named after them. As an administrative unit, the 'Theme of the Optimatoi''' (, thema Optimatōn'') survived until the Ottoman conquest in the first decades of the 14th century.

Momchil (, , ;  – 7 July 1345) was a 14th-century Bulgarian brigand and local ruler. Initially a member of a bandit gang in the borderlands of Bulgaria, Byzantium and Serbia, Momchil was recruited by the Byzantines as a mercenary. Through his opportunistic involvement in the Byzantine civil war of 1341–1347, where he played the various sides against each other, he became ruler of a large area in the Rhodopes and western Thrace.

Licario, called Ikarios () by the Greek chroniclers, was a Byzantine admiral of Italian origin in the 13th century. At odds with the Latin barons (the "triarchs") of his native Euboea, he entered the service of the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos (r. 1259–1282), and reconquered many of the Aegean islands for him in the 1270s. For his exploits, he was rewarded with Euboea as a fief and rose to the rank of megas konostaulos and megas doux, the first foreigner to do so.

The Gasmouloi (singular: Gasmoulos; ) or Vasmouloi (singular: Vasmoulos; Greek: ) were the descendants of mixed Byzantine Greek and "Latin" (West European, most often Italian) unions during the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire. As the Gasmouloi were enrolled as marines in the Byzantine navy by Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos (r. 1259–1261), the term eventually lost its ethnic connotations and came to be applied generally to those owing a military service from the early 14th century on.

Norman mercenary

The '''''' (, , Latinized as ) was a term for a corps of bodyguards during the Byzantine Empire.

commander of Herulian forces (6th c.)

Normal mercenery general

genoese pirate captain