'Military Manuals' of the Roman Empire
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Commanding Texts: Knowledge-ordering, Identity Construction and Ethics in 'Military Manuals’ of the Roman Empire Contents Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 3 1. Different approaches to military manuals ............................................................................................ 3 2. A holistic approach to military manuals ............................................................................................... 6 I. Authors, projects and the tradition of ‘military writings’ ...................................................................... 11 1. The authors and their work ................................................................................................................ 12 2. The works and the ‘tradition’ of military writing. ............................................................................... 20 2.1 Earlier texts, extant and lost. ........................................................................................................ 21 2.2. Later texts, extant and lost .......................................................................................................... 27 2.2.1 ‘Military’ and ‘artillery’ manuals ................................................................................................ 27 2.2.2 Different ‘genres’/groups of ‘military manuals’ ........................................................................ 33 3. Audience: The emperor, Greeks, Romans, ‘general audience’ and ‘specialists’ ................................ 47 4. Military manuals and practicality ........................................................................................................ 56 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 65 II. Ordering ‘military knowledge’ in a new world: integration and/or opposition? ................................ 66 1. Integration by uniformity: Onasander – Greeks and Romans or Greeks as Romans ......................... 69 1.1 Presenting the material: Greek principles as Roman and mixing the ‘Roman’ and the ‘Greek’ .. 69 1.2 Presenting one’s authority: Onasander as master of a continuum of knowledge ....................... 79 2. Integration by exempla: Frontinus’ Strategemata ............................................................................. 85 2.1. Presenting the material: diversity in stratagem .......................................................................... 85 2.2. Presenting one’s authority: Frontinus, ‘reinvention’, different voices and ‘real’ authority ........ 90 3. Separation by exempla: Polyaenus’ Strategika .................................................................................. 94 3.1. Presenting the material: uniformity in stratagem. ...................................................................... 94 3.2 Presenting one’s authority: Macedonian Polyaenus and channeling authority ........................... 97 4. A mixed approach to military knowledge: Arrian and Aelian’s Taktika ............................................ 101 1 4.1.1. Presenting the material: Aelian – Homeric precedence, integration and ‘empires of knowledge’ ........................................................................................................................................ 102 4.1.2. Presenting one’s authority: Aelian, Homer, Greek tactical authorities, Alexander and Frontinus ........................................................................................................................................... 111 4.2.1 Presenting the material: Arrian – competition, ‘succession of empires’ and rehabilitating Greek knowledge. ............................................................................................................................. 113 4.2.2. Presenting one’s authority: Arrian, Xenophon, Greek scholarship and personal authority ... 127 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 128 III. Tactics, identity and ‘Roman’ Greece ................................................................................................. 130 1. Ektaxis – rhetoric and impersonation ............................................................................................... 131 2. The Ektaxis and the geography of the army ..................................................................................... 142 3. The Taktika, Alexander, Greek phalanxes and the emperors’ military image .................................. 148 3.1. Arrian’s Taktika and Hadrian ‘the commander’. ........................................................................ 148 3.2 The Greek phalanx: advertising Greek military achievements and building up the emperors’ military knowledge............................................................................................................................ 153 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 164 IV.‘Ethics’ and ‘moral qualities’ in ‘military manuals’............................................................................. 165 1. A Greek and Roman ‘ethical code of conduct’ in war? ..................................................................... 167 2. Fairness and ‘military manuals’. ....................................................................................................... 180 2.1 Fairness, stratagem and trickery: the case of Frontinus’ Strategemata..................................... 181 2.2 Just war ....................................................................................................................................... 189 2.3 Oaths, tyrants and fairness ......................................................................................................... 191 3. Ius in bello. Virtues and dealing with the enemy. ............................................................................. 198 3.1 Frontinus ..................................................................................................................................... 200 3.2 Polyaenus .................................................................................................................................... 204 3.3 Onasander ................................................................................................................................... 208 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 211 V. Conclusions .......................................................................................................................................... 212 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................................. 216 2 Introduction This thesis is about military manuals—synoptic pedagogic texts on military matters – produced in the first few centuries of the Roman imperial period. These are not the most popular of Classical texts, often described as dry, practical, and straightforward, but this thesis argues that they merit far more attention and appreciation than they have received in the scholarship so far, and will explore some of the areas in which this more sustained scrutiny is particularly fruitful. Before doing so, however, it is worth providing a short summary of the present state of the field, since the study of ancient military manuals has been associated mainly with the discipline of military history and has altered as that discipline itself has changed over the last decades, and since Classics itself also extended its textual horizons over the same time frame. This thesis builds on this recent work, as well as developing themes and questions about empire and identity, power and knowledge in the Roman world that have emerged from other areas of ancient historical enquiry. 1. Different approaches to military manuals ‘Traditional’ military history focuses mainly on topics that have to do with campaigning, in particular strategy, tactics, battle formations and weapons. Military historians usually take a strictly utilitarian approach, being interested in the very practical aspects of all these components. Such an approach, which has been applied to the Classical world as well, is reinforced by the belief popular amongst military historians that certain parameters remain constant, irrespective of cultural background and time period, and that similar methods of investigation will yield similar results.1 Ancient military manuals – from Aeneas Tacticus’ fourth-century B.C. work on how to survive a siege to Vegetius’ fourth or fifth century A.D. epitome of the military art (and beyond) – have been considered rich sources, because they provide precisely the sort of information sought out by this line of inquiry. But the traditional military historians’ relationship with the manuals has 1 Köchly and Rüstow (1852), Droysen (1888), Delbrück (1920), Kromayer and Veith (1928), Anderson (1970). 3 been limited, with little attention paid to the potential agendas and overall projects of these texts. In recent decades, military history and its approaches have evolved and diversified. Arguably,