The role that military literature played in both medieval warfare and culture has been a topic of lively investigation for the last several decades, especially regarding the writings of the fourth-fifth century Roman author Vegetius. This volume comprises fourteen chapters, in addition to an Introduction and Epilogue, to examine military treatises in what the editor calls “the medieval Roman world and beyond.” While the title is broadly accurate, to a point, the focus is on Rome in Late Antiquity and the Byzantine world, with a few contributions that go beyond those geographical and temporal boundaries. This gives the volume an uneven feel, with discussions of the role of treatises in the Byzantine world getting substantial coverage, while other areas get cursory or no consideration. That being said, the contributions are of good quality and are individually quite interesting and well-constructed.
The volume is arranged into four thematic parts (though part four contains only one concluding chapter and the epilogue), plus an introduction. In his Introduction, Whately offers a brief, but concise and illuminative overview of military manual writing from the ancient Greeks through the early modern period. He supplements this with a section considering the definition, form, and function of these military manuals—what made something a manual, what was its structure, and how was it used? These questions are considered throughout the volume. He concludes with a consideration of using these manuals as general historical evidence of the period (rather than necessarily what they can tell us about the military realities), and a traditional chapter overview of the volume.
Part One has four chapters arranged around questions from the Roman world of Late Antiquity. Michael B. Charles kicks off the volume with a chapter on using Vegetius’s Epitoma Rei Militaris as a source for the period. He argues for an early fifth century date for Vegetius (rather than the late fourth century), and an eastern empire location, rather than western. These are important considerations to help establish the context of Vegetius’s rhetoric, and with that in mind he spends quite a lot of time discussing the utility of literary theory and criticism in that context. The discussion is predicated on the idea that the past is not “discoverable” like a chemical element, but rather constructed by historians; this is not a particularly controversial belief among historians these days, though as he points out, military historians can be particularly prone to traditionalist approaches.
The section continues with articles on tribunes and prefects in Vegetius by Pierre Cosme and Maxime Emion and an article on using city wall features to derive what military manuals recommended for fortifications by Catherine Hof. The first article on tribunes and prefects provides a good overview of the roles that military tribunes played in Vegetius’s day, and the authors give a convincing argument that his presentation of their roles was both descriptive and prescriptive of what he wanted to see out of those offices. Hof’s article on connecting the precepts in military manuals on fortifications with actual examples is similarly valuable. She examines five military manuals in rough order of their composition from the late fourth through the early tenth centuries to discern what sort of practical advice for the construction of fortifications each contained, with the De Re Strategica of Syrianus holding the most potential for applicable advice. She then “reconstructs” the building manual used to construct the walls of Refasa based on the advice given in earlier manuals and an analysis of surviving archaeology. This inversion of the traditional approach to using sources is speculative and unfalsifiable, but nevertheless is ingenious and compelling.
The final article in this section—Łukasz Różycki’s study of bravado on the battlefield—posits a need to engage with both Aristotelian notions of “courage” as well as Latin ideals of virtus to best understand Late Antique Eastern Roman notions of battlefield bravado. Różycki shows that most late antique authors stressed the importance of discipline and emotional control, so, while courage in the face of the enemy was noble, bravado was seen as a detriment to maintaining the necessary discipline of an effective army.
Part Two—the Medieval Roman world—is the largest of the sections with six articles. The first two articles—Michael Whitby’s analysis of the usage of the Strategikon of Maurice and Immacolata Eramo’s examination of the authorship of three Byzantine military treatises—both wrestle with what we know about the form and function of Byzantine military treatises. In the first, Whitby shows that the Strategikon was probably actually used by contemporaries from around 600 AD up through the reign of Leo VI (886-912). In the second, Eramo seeks to (re)create “biographies” of the authors of three unnamed Byzantine treatises. While her reconstructions are interesting, albeit speculative, her point that these collections were shaped more by the decisions of the many copyists on what to include/exclude, rather than those of the original “author” is well-founded and compelling.
Katherine Schoneveld’s chapter on manuscript illuminations in military manuals demonstrates that the manuscript illuminations encountered in these texts should best be read as illuminating the Byzantine culture of war, rather than the practicalities of actual warfare. These illuminations were to enhance the narrative, and perhaps demonstrate the art of engineering, rather than actual blueprints for the creation of military machines.
The next two articles consider the usage of military manuals in the Byzantine empire. Nadya Williams’s chapter on the legacy of these manuals is based on examining three elements—that these were designed to be practical, that they were secular, and they were often composed after defeats and were thus designed to be cathartic. She argues that the manuals of the Byzantine era were designed to maintain the illusion that the authors and audiences were conversant with military affairs, and thus reflected the anxieties of the age. These manuals can also be seen as trying to recapture the glories of the Homeric past, which cast long shadows over the Greek and Roman worlds. This theme is continued in Georgios Chatzelis’s chapter on the intersection of warfare, culture, and ideology in Byzantine military treatises. He demonstrates that these texts emerged and flourished because of these intersections of culture, warfare, and ideology, and they should be examined in light of developments in all three areas (and beyond).
The final chapter in this section—Savvas Kyriakidis’s chapter on military treatises in the eleventh through fourteenth centuries—explores the readers of these manuals, the purpose to which they were put, and the effects they had on Byzantine warfare. What he finds is that, while military manuals continued to be written in the eleventh through fourteenth centuries, the preference among readers was for the older “classics.” He argues persuasively that this preference reflected the contemporary literary tastes of the readers, rather than the manuals connection to contemporary military theory and practice.
Part Three—Beyond the Roman World—contains three articles extending the examination of military manuals outside the world of Late Antiquity. All three articles are interesting and well-written, and to some extent fit in with the major themes established in the preceding offerings. David Graff’s examination of medieval Chinese military thought demonstrates that medieval Chinese manuals followed in the footsteps of their ancient exemplars (like the works of Sun Tzu), but also expanded the scope of those texts by including new elements, such as instructions on engineering, formations, and drilling. Michael Fulton’s piece on medieval artillery examines three European and two Islamic thirteenth- and fourteenth-century texts discussing artillery, and he shows that these texts were not written by practitioners or engineers, and are thus not overly helpful on the technical aspects of medieval mechanical artillery. Finally, John Hosler’s piece on John of Salisbury’s Policraticus shows that while Salisbury specifically claimed that the Policraticus should not be used for military matters, it was nevertheless popular with medieval commanders. He also shows that, while Salisbury’s influence extended into the eighteenth century, it is unclear to what extent.
The final part and chapter—Georgios Theotokis’s “Timeless Principles of War and the Vertical Transmission of Military Knowledge through the Taktika”—brings together many of the themes of the volume by examining the “common elements” (such as a general aversion to seeking battle unless necessary) of these manuals and traces their vertical transmission. John Haldon’s Epilogue, where he reinforces the value of studying these texts, especially for the Greco-Roman/Byzantine world, closes out the volume.
In all, this is a well-constructed volume comprised of interesting, engaging, well-written contributions. If one wishes to level a criticism, it would be in the unbalanced nature of the focus. While the chapters in Part Three are excellent individually, they sit awkwardly in a volume whose focus is much more clearly on the world of Late Antiquity and Byzantium. While I certainly understand the desire to offer comparative breadth in the contributions, in the current form, the Part Three chapters seem more like appendages, rather than core parts of the body of the volume. That being said, however, readers will find great value in all of the contributions, including those that might be a bit distant from the overall focus of the volume.