First, we have Sextus Julius Frontinus’ Strategemata, another collection of stratagems from the Ancient Greek and Roman period compiled by an experienced officer and civil servant of the Roman State between 84-96 AD. There are only two such works that have been saved in Latin, written some three centuries apart. An author who exercised great influence on the future generations of military writers was Aelian, a Greek living in Rome in the early 2nd century AD who based his Tactical Theory on the art of war developed in the Hellenistic period, having the Macedonian phalanx as his model.Īnother Greek living in Rome in the 2nd century AD was Polyaenus, and whose Στρατηγήματα is a collection of 900 stratagems of famous people like Pericles and Leonidas – an invaluable primary source as a great part of the information we get from it is unique. His work greatly influenced the Byzantine authors of Strategika and, especially, the Emperor Leo VI (c. Asclepiodotus’ Τέχνη Τακτική is also one of the earliest works on military matters, written in the 1st century BC however, much better known to the Byzantines was the Στρατηγικός (General) of Onasander, a platonic philosopher writing around 59 AD, whose work examines the several duties and responsibilities of a general. The first of the Taktika dates back to 357 BC and was written by a certain Aeneas, also known as Taktikos, an experienced soldier in operational theatres in Peloponnesus and Asia Minor who wrote – among other works of military nature now lost – the Περί του πως χρη πολιορκουμένους αντεχείν ( On the defence of walled cities). They are a specific category of literary works that began to appear in Ancient Greece around the end of 5th century BC under the influence of the sophists and Socrates and carried on well into the Roman and Byzantine periods. Military manuals – known as Strategika or Taktika – date back from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, are perhaps the greatest primary source a military historian of the period can have, as they contain centuries of knowledge in military affairs and advices that vary considerably from battlefield formations and tactics to stratagems applied by famous personalities of the past like Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. One question historians have been asking is how much of these Byzantine manuals are imitations of their ancient predecessors, and how much do they reflect the strategic thinking of their own period? The Early Middle Ages saw a revival of these works in the Byzantine Empire. The ancient Greeks and Romans wrote military treatises dating back at least 2400 years.
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