War, What Is It Good For? Sixteenth-Century English Translations of Ancient Texts on Warfare
WAR, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF ANCIENT TEXTS ON WARFARE Fred Schurink It is a commonplace that humanism and war are opposites. Yet, as C.H. Conley noted as long ago as 1927, many classical translations from the Tudor period have a military subject matter and, what is more, claim to instruct their readers in military skills.1 This is a particularly common fea- ture of translations of histories and, not surprisingly, military manuals, but the same applies to works from a variety of genres, ranging from biography to epic. The comments in the preface to Thomas Stocker’s translation of books 18 to 20 of Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheca historica, supplemented by Plutarch’s Life of Demetrius, are typical. In Diodorus’s work, Stocker claims, “may be sene the Stratagemes and pollicies in the facts of war, togither [with] many sundry and diuerse battailles, sieges and enterprises, verie pleasaunt to read and heare: wherein may also be lerned many things apperteyning to that arte.”2 The attitudes of Tudor translators of the clas- sics are neatly summed up by Ben Jonson, who wrote in a prefatory poem to the 1609 edition of Clement Edmondes’ translation of, and commentary on, the works of Caesar, Obseruations vpon Cæsars Comentaries (first pub- lished in 1600 with the revealing subtitle “setting fovrth the practise of the art military, in the time of the Roman Empire … for the better direction of our moderne warres”): WHo, Edmondes, reades thy booke, and doth not see What th’antique Souldiers were, the moderne be? Wherein thou shew’st, how much the latter are Beholden, to this Master of the Warre: And that, in Action, there is nothing new, More then to varie what our Elders knew.3 1 C.H.
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