"Without an own state, the Aromanians or the Vlachs were mentioned
in the Byzantine sources only when they came to be involved in some
way into the political and military history of the empire.
In Macedonia, they were mentioned for the first time with the
occasion of an event happened in 976. Several Vlachs called hoditai
(“travelers”) killed David, the brother of the future Bulgarian tsar
Samuel, on the road between Prespa and Kastoria. This testimony
comes from an interpolation in the chronicle of Ioannes Skylitzes
made by an unknown copyist who was obviously accustomed with
the local history of Macedonia.1 According to Werner Seibt, the
information comes from the lost work of Theodore of Sebasteia, who
wrote a biography of Basil II2. The word hoditai, which does not mean
“nomads”, concerns the same people who were recorded in the Serbian
sources with the name kjelatori, involved in the military transportation.
The name kjelatori renders the Romanian word of Latin origin călători
(“travelers”). Mathias Gyóni, Radu C. Lăzărescu and Achille Lazarou
sustained that the Vlachs guilty for that murder were guards of the
military road and that they acted as representatives of the Byzantine
authority against the rebelled Bulgarians3. If this information remains
questionable, there is another source that reveals the beginning of the
Vlach military units in the Byzantine army. Kekaumenos, the aristocrat
from Larissa, has remembered that his grandfather, Niculitzas, was
in the year 980 the commander of the Vlachs settled in the Hellas
theme. This Niculitzas, who was the duke of that province, was also
appointed by the emperor Basil II as archon of these Vlachs4. His title
of duke is an anachronism, because the commander of Hellas was
called strategos in Taktikon Scorialensis (975)5. During the lifetime
of Kekaumenos, the themes were no more ruled by strategoi, but by
dukes or katepanoi. Since the oral tradition from Larissa recorded that
his grandfather was the chief of that province, Kekaumenos believed
he was a duke.
The fragment belongs to the section Logos basilikos, considered a
different work by the last editor6. Even so scarce, the information is,
as has shown the Romanian Byzantinist George Murnu, a proof that a
particular territory existed in the theme of Hellas, a region that could
be called Vlachia. Actually, the source tells even more if it is read with
more attention. The function bestowed to Niculitzas in 980 was the
command over an army corps recruited from the local Vlachs7. This
function was received in exchange to the previous one, domestikos of
the Exkubitors from the Hellas theme, which was given by Basil II to
a German nobleman established in the empire. The Exkubitors were
one of the fourth cavalry tagmata of the imperial guard established
by Constantine V. In the 10th century, these elite troops were no more
settled in Constantinople, being spread in various provinces which
required a better defense8. Larissa remained in the following decades
the garrison of the Excubitores unit. One of the chiefs of the rebellion
of 1066, Theodore Petastos, was a skribon, the third officer in the
structure of the tagma of Excubitors.9 It is obvious that Niculitzas was
not downgraded, and this means that his new function was of a same
kind, the command over a tagma. In that time, besides the troops that
composed the army of a theme (peasant stratiotes who were mobilized
when it was needed), some provinces had a permanent force, a kernel
to which these stratiotes were added in the wartime. These permanent
units were called too tagmata10. The Vlachs commanded by Niculitzas
were most probable such a tagma. Being an important part of the
population of Thessaly and being good horsemen because their way of
life, it was normal that some of them were recruited in these permanent
elite forces."
https://www.academia.edu/18072996/V...14_Edited_by_Mitko_B._Panov_Skopje_2015_47-55
"Simultaneously, the existence of the hussars "inherited" from the Byzantine military
machinery of the 10th century intermediated through the Balkan can likely be detected in
the southern border regions of Hungary in the 14th century. In other words, not only the
ancestors of the succeeding Hungarian hussars should be traced among the Southern Slav
warriors fleeing from the Ottoman Empire, but also the Southern Slav or Vlach population
that served in the royal army of the Southern Banat regions might have belonged to them."
https://www.academia.edu/4141874/FR...HE_HUSSARS_LIGHT_CAVALRY_IN_MEDIAEVAL_HUNGARY
"The Vlachs were particularly suitable for the Ottoman government's purposes,
not only because they were mobile (their typical occupations were shepherding,
horse-breeding and organizing transport for traders), but also because they
had a strong military tradition".
Other Byzantine writers refer to to the transhumance of the Vlachs,
and medieval Serbian documents refer to them as shepherds and kjelatori --
a version of the Latin calator, "packhorse-leader", surviving in modern Vlach
as calator, "traveller". Their only other distinctive occupation at that period
was fighting: as hardy mountain-dwellers they were valued for their stamina,
and their supply of horses made them useful adjuncts to any military campaign.
The Byzantine authorities seem not to have trusted them very much, and generally
used them as auxiliaries; sometimes they functioned as quite independent irregular troops
Most of these early Dalmatian and Bosnian Vlachs seem to have led quiet, secluded lives in the mountains.But in Hercegovina itself, where there was a large concentration of Vlachs, a more military and aggressive tradition developed. There are many complaints in Ragusan records of raids by these neighboring Vlachs during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Vlachs of Hercegovina were horse-breeders and caravan-leaders who,
when they were not engaged in plunder, grew rich out of the trade between Ragusa and mines of Bosnia; some ofthem were probably responsible for commissioning the imposing Bosnian stone tombstones or stecci decorated with carvings of horsemen. Their trading links to the east must have brought them more into contact with the Vlach peoples
of Serbia and Bulgaria, who had long traditions of military activity in the armies of the Byzantine emperors and Serbian kings."
http://www.farsarotul.org/nl16_1.htm
https://books.google.ro/books?id=3o...slovak latin cursores cavalry robbers&f=false
The Vlach riding tradition has surely an earlier origin than the Byzantine era,since turma exclusively referred to cavalry
only in the Imperial Age.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turma
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/turmă
Edit:
And alot of Latin words have been preserved in this respect.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cal
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/buiestru
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/capistrum
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sella
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/admissarius
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/roib
Regarding buiestru,the first of the proposed etimologies seems the closest,since the suffix is Latin-derived,as in maiestru or capastru,
not to mention the obvious semantic origin- the fetter.
Edit2:
https://books.google.ro/books?id=2W...oQ6AEIMDAD#v=onepage&q=vlach horsemen&f=false