De Re Militari

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This article is about a work by Vegetius. For the work of the same name by Roberto Valturio, see De Re Militari (Valturio).

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De Re Militari (Latin "Concerning Military Matters") is a treatise of Roman warfare and military principles written in the late Roman Empire, claiming to be a presentation of methods and practices in use during the height of Rome's power, and responsible for that power. It became a military guide in the Middle Ages. Even after the introduction of gunpowder to Europe it was carried around by general officers and their staffs as a field guide to methods. Friends and subordinates customarily presented embellished copies as suitable gifts to leaders who had everything. It went on into the 18th and 19th centuries as a source of policy and strategy to the major states of Europe. Scarcely any historian fails to mention it. In that sense De Re Militari is a projection of Roman civilization into modern times and a continuation of its influence on its cultural descendants.

Contents

[edit] Composition

The author of De Re Militari was Flavius Vegetius Renatus, who lived in the late 4th century and possibly the early 5th century. The name of the work has a number of variants, including Epitoma Rei Militaris, but there are other problems with accepting it at face value as the verbatim work of Vegetius. Some of the manuscripts have a note that the text was revised for the 7th time in Constantinople in the consulate of Valentinian, who must have been Valentinian III, reigning 425-455.

Vegetius' dates are not known or the circumstances under which the work was revised. The year 450 is taken as the latest possible time the work could have been written, assuming he did all seven revisions in just a few years. The initial date of the window is established by Vegetius' own statement that he wrote covering the time usque ad tempus divi Gratiani, "up to the time of the divine Gratian."[1] As emperors did not become gods generally until they died, the statement sets the initial possible date at 383, the year Gratian died. If the earlier date is preferred, it is unlikely Vegetius did all seven revisions or even one of them. There is no reason to question his general authorship, however.

The work is dedicated to a mysterious emperor, identity unknown. Vegetius must have assumed that everyone would know. It may be that he wrote on behalf of military reform under the patronage of Theodosius I. In that case he would have been alive in the window 378-392, the dates of Theodosius' reign. This article adopts that point of view and assigns an approximate date of 390 to the work, which would not be, then, word for word the same as what Vegetius wrote, accounting for the title variants.

[edit] Content of the treatise

The treatise is carefully laid out in subsections. They are organized into four books. Vegetius' recapitulation of each book's content is:

  • Primus liber electionem edocet iuniorum, ex quibus locis uel quales milites probandi sint aut quibus armorum exercitiis imbuendi. The first book explains the selection of recruits, from which places and what kinds (of men) are soldiers to be authorized and with what exercises of arms they are to be indoctrinated.
  • Secundus liber ueteris militiae continet morem, ad quem pedestris institui possit exercitus. The second book contains traditional military practices with which infantry can be created.
  • Tertius liber omnia artium genera, quae terrestri proelio necessaria uidentur, exponit. The third book sets forth all types of arts that appear to be necessary for fighting on land.
  • Quartus liber uniuersas machinas, quibus uel obpugnantur ciuitates uel defenduntur, enumerat; naualis quoque belli praecepta subnectit. The fourth book enumerates all the machines with which states are besieged or defended and adds also the precepts of naval warfare.

Vegetius based his treatise on Roman armies, especially those of the mid to late Republic. He emphasized things such as training of soldiers as a disciplined force, orderly strategy, maintenance of supply lines and logistics, quality leadership and use of tactics and even deceit to ensure advantage over the opposition. He was concerned about selection of good soldiers and recommended hard training of at least four months before the soldier was accepted into the ranks. The leader of the army (dux or duke) had to take care of the men under his command and keep himself informed about the movements of the enemy to gain advantage in the battle.

In addition to describing the weapons and discipline of the Roman army in detail, Vegetius recapitulates the more general principles in prologues and digressions. Many of his statements have become adages; for example,

si vis pacem para bellum
"If you want peace, prepare for war"

most likely paraphrases Vegetius. There are many others.

[edit] History of the treatise

Heavily used in its own time, De Re Militari became a popular manual on warfare in the Middle Ages, especially between 9th and 16th centuries, even if some of the information was unsuitable to later times and circumstances. Vegetius' notes about siegecraft became especially obsolete when the technology advanced and gunpowder weapons such as cannon came into widespread use. Vegetius' suggestion of a soldier's religious oath to God and to the realm might have influenced knightly practices. Still, because of the lack of literacy, as a guide it was probably accessible only to aristocracy, clergy and royalty. Machiavelli very likely read Vegetius and incorporated many of his ideas into his own The Art of War.

To the modern day, 226 Latin copies of the book have survived, not including translations to various other European languages. Many of them have a copious amount of personal notes on them, pointing at matters that have interested their contemporary owners.

With so many extant copies, of both manuscripts and printed books, a single authoritative title by Vegetius, if in fact he used one, has not survived the complexities of time. Here are some titles from among the incunabula, books printed before 1501:[2]

  • Epithoma (sic) rei militaris (1474)
  • Epitoma de re militari (1475)
  • Epitoma institutorum rei militaris (1487)
  • Epitoma rei militaris (1488)
  • De Re Militari (1496)

The common element of all the names are the two cases of res militaris (nominative case): rei militaris (genitive case) and re militari (ablative case). Which was used by Vegetius? The classical form would have been the ablative, appearing in the title of this article. On the other hand, Vegetius uses epitomata, plural of the Greek epitoma, in his other surviving work on doctoring mules.[3]

English translations precede printed books. Manuscript 18A.Xii in the Royal Library, written and ornamented for Richard III of England, is a translation of Vegetius. It ends with a paragraph starting: "Here endeth the boke that clerkes clepethe in Latyne Vegecii de re militari." The paragraph goes on to date the translation to 1408. The translator is identified in Manuscript No. 30 of Magdalen College, Oxford, as John Walton, 1410 translator of Boethius.[4]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ 1.20. An overview of the line of reasoning is given in Barnes.
  2. ^ Ebert (1830)
  3. ^ Teuffel (1892)
  4. ^ Madden, pages 13-14.

[edit] References

[edit] Primary Sources

[edit] Secondary Sources

[edit] External links