review: M. Pretzler/ N. Barley, edd., Brill’s Companion to Aineas Tacticus
Everett L Wheeler2018, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
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Abstract
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The review critically assesses the contributions of the Brill Companion to Aeneas Tacticus, based on papers presented at a conference in 2010. It argues that while numerous works have previously studied Aeneas, the volume does not significantly advance understanding or offer new insights, largely rehashing established knowledge. The review highlights key contributions, critiques the lack of innovative findings, and points out the limitations of the so-called inter-disciplinary approaches, suggesting the need for more original evidence rather than mere discussion.
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Ancient Greek Military Theory and Practice. Aeneas Tacticus (I)
International conference KNOWLEDGE-BASED ORGANIZATION, 2017
The intention of this article is to present the oldest surviving work of military art of the Greek antiquity written in the mid-fourth century B.C. by of the author known today as Aeneas Tacticus. In 1609 Isaac Casaubon, its first editor, gave it the Latin title Commentarius de toleranda obsidione, How to Survive under Siege. Aeneas Tacticus was an experienced general on the battlefield, and had an equally solid theoretical training based on treatises of warfare which undoubtedly existed before his own, but were less fortunate and have not reached us. The study of this manual reveals that Aeneas Tacticus wrote or designed to write at least five books on military themes and information exists from other sources that he might have written three more books on the subject. Thus, all these works could have formed a Corpus Aeneanum, comparable in value to Clausewitz’s famous work On War. Aeneas’s work was highly appreciated and extremely useful for commanders and strategists of the Antiqu...
Reflections on the Military Views of the ‘Military Writer’ Aeneas Tacticus
Rance, P. – Sekunda, N. V. (eds.):: Greek Taktika: Ancient Military Writing and its Heritage Proceedings of the International Conference on Greek Taktika held at the University of Toruń, 7-11 April 2005, 81–93, 2017
This paper assumes that the views of Aeneas Tacticus are not exclusively based on his own experience, but mainly on the experience of others. Examples are given to illustrate the problems this poses for Aeneas' advice to his ancient readers. Furthermore, the problems that arise if Aeneas' work is used as a source for military history in modern historiography.
First pages only of the offprint of “Triumphati magis quam victi? Ways to Respond to Lying and Exaggeration in Aeneid 8 and on the Shield of Aeneas,” MD 89.2 (2022) 67-111; the journal’s rules allow me to share only the typescript and the first pages of the offprint.
Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici, 2022
This paper discusses possible responses to deception and exaggeration in Aeneid 8, especially on the the description of the shield of Aeneas that closes the book, and so it is a supplement to my 1990 book on prophecy in the Aeneid. It discusses statements made by ambassadors or Aeneas acting in that role; what the rivergod Tiberinus says to Aeneas about the anger of the gods; Evander’s odd and perhaps untrustworthy stories about Hercules and Cacus and other Herculean myths, Mezentius, a guest named Argus, and his own history; and at more length the scenes on the Shield of Aeneas, especially the descriptions of the Battle of Actium, and of Augustus’ triumph. For the shield I discuss the association of the shield with the vates (both prophets and poets); the question of whether Ascanius or Silvius Postumus will be the ancestor of the Julians; the two different explanations of the name Lupercal in Book 8; the allusions to the Gauls’ taking the Capitol, and to the downfall of Manlius; who fought at Actium and who is mentioned on the shield despite not being at Actium; whether Antony had been a victor in the East; the mention of Discorda as an allusion to civil war; the odd setting of the triumph of Augustus on the Palatine; the victae gentes who were not actually victae and come from a much wider geographic scope than the peoples actually defeated; and the references to the Euphrates and the Araxes. The lying and exaggeration earlier in Book 8, some of which involve the difference between statements made by the narrator and statements made by characters, provide a new context for the problems on the shield; all of the deception can be looked at in several ways:as appropriate hyperbole, as typical poetic exaggeration or use of incompatible variants, as unreliable history, as excessive exaggeration and inconsistency that undercuts the encomium, as prophecies that mislead here as elsewhere in the poem, or as Vulcan producing what Venus wants to hear. Two problems can be interepreted as related to one another: why so much of the pre-Actium parts of the shield (all but four or so lines) presents material from Ennius, some of it fanciful, and why the depiction of Actium and the triumph feature so many peoples who were not there. Following earlier scholarship suggesting that Augustus himself in his triumph may have exaggerated the geographical extent of his defeated enemies as a way to compete with Julius and Pompey, we can see the shield as largely divided into two parts, one presenting mythical material from Ennius, the second a mythologized and exaggerated version of Actium. Whether Vergil is endorsing this version of Actium, or quoting it but maintaining his distance, is a question different readers will answer in different ways.
STASIS AND POLEMOS AT PONTUS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 4TH CENTURY BC ACCORDING TO AENEAS TACTICUS: THE DATAMES’ SIEGE OF SINOPE
The Poliorcetica of Aeneas Tacticus is very important first-hand evidence for our knowledge of the Greek world in the first half of the 4th century BC. Since this author followed the historiographical tradition of Thucydides and probably served as a mercenary officer – he is usually identified with the Arcadian general Aeneas of Stymphalus quoted by Xenophon (Hellenica 7. 3. 1) – we can verify the crisis which shook the Greek poleis as a consequence of an unresolved fight for hegemony after the Peloponnesian War and the political struggles between oligarchic and democratic groups. This information involves the whole Greek world from Sicily to Asia, but the Hellespont and the Greek colonies of the Black Sea area seem particularly troubled regions. In the same historical context we are informed by Aeneas about the war between the city of Sinope and Datamas (40. 4-5), the Carian satrap of Cappadocia who became independent of the Persian king Artaxerxes and conquered Paphlagonia. Thus, the general setting of Greece in the first half of the 4th century BC, thanks to historical information given by Aeneas Tacticus, is providing valuable evidence on stasis and polemos in the poleis of Pontus
The Principles of 'ars tactica': Roman Military Theory and Practice in Arrian's 'Acies contra Alanos'
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The identifi cation of Aeneas Tacticus has always been a matter of dispute. Most often he is supposed to have been a mercenary offi cer, probably from Stymphalus, to whom Xenophon makes reference in Hellenica, 7.3.1. Accordingly, one may fi nd the views that in Aeneas' treatise a mercenary perspective is adopted, a claim also supported by the observation that the author records the phenomenon of the ubiquitous popularity of paid soldiers in the Greek warfare system of the fourth century BC. In this paper it is argued that Aeneas' outlook in fact had little in common with mercenary ethics; instead, it is the writer's deep commitment to civic values (explicitly stated in the Preface) that is stressed. Especially worth pointing out remains Aeneas' belief that during siege civic patriotism still matters. It is a value on which success in overwhelming the invaders depends: all the steps and preventive actions of the city's dwellers leading to a successful defense of a native polis must be rooted -according to him -in the conviction that polis in its material (territory, estates, shrines, temples, walls) and spiritual dimension (religion, gods, respect for the parents) constitutes the best framework for life. By the same token, a relatively high importance is given by Aeneas to hoplite troops, usually consisting of yeomen and farmers who were the owners of land. In the author's conviction they could provide the best possible protection to a polis. Looking from a purely military point of view, hoplite forces -together with auxiliary troops (the light-armed and cavalry, if possible) -were also useful at the time when the enemy entered the city's territory and ravaged it before attempting a direct assault on the walls.
‘Maurice’s Strategicon and “the Ancients”: the Late Antique Reception of Aelian and Arrian’ in: Philip RANCE and Nicholas V. SEKUNDA (edd.), Greek Taktika. Ancient Military Writing and its Heritage (Gdańsk 2017) 217-255
ABSTRACT: This chapter addresses the textual relationship between Maurice's Strategicon and its classical antecedents, a largely unexplored question, given that this late sixth-century military treatise has been studied primarily by Byzantine historians and as a foundational document of Byzantine military theory. While the unprecedented vernacular idiom, institutional jargon, technical content and documentary source-material of the Strategicon are consistent with Maurice’s professed intention to write a non-literary elementary compendium, his familiarity with examples of classical military writing is evident in explicit references to ‘the Ancients’, his adherence to the conventions and rhetorical repertoire of the genre and a self-conscious positioning of his treatise in relation to this literary tradition, as well as in conceptual and structural parallelism and similarities of language and/or substance. Without claims to exhaustive Quellenforschung, the paper examines the extent and nature of Maurice’s interaction with ‘the Ancients’ in general, and Aelian’s Tactica theoria and Arrian’s Acies contra Alanos in particular, with a view to differentiating the various ways in which Maurice exploited this classical heritage, whether as conceptual models, sources of technical content, validatory antique authority or allusive literary ornament. Greater clarity in this regard sheds light on the Nachleben of these two classical treatises, Maurice’s methodology, authorial credentials and literary-cultural milieu, and the transmission and reception of Greco-Roman military literature in late antiquity. KEYWORDS: Maurice’s Strategikon / Strategicon, Aelian / Ailianos, Arrian, Greco-Roman military literature, Late Antiquity, Classical Reception, Late Roman army.
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The Aeneas–Dido Episode as an Attack on Aeneas' Mission and Rome
Greece and Rome, 1980
Since antiquity the Aeneas—Dido episode has generally been recognized as the most powerful and memorable part of the Aeneid. During the past several decades there has been a considerable amount of argument as to whether it shows Aeneas' mission in a favourable or unfavourable light. Yet this problem has not been studied systematically. It is the purpose of this article to demonstrate systematically that Vergil deliberately protrays Aeneas' mission as brutal and destructive.
2021, "Assaults and Sieges: Rewriting the Other Side of Greek Land Warfare" (only first 3 pages)
R. Konijnendijk; C. Kucewicz; M. Lloyd, eds., Brill’s Companion to Greek Land Warfare Beyond the Phalanx, Brill, 236-265, 2021
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