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Publius (or Flavius) Vegetius Renatus,His name appears both as Publius Vegetius Renatus and Flavius Vegetius Renatus. Milner, Vegetius: Epitome of Military Science (Liverpool University Press, 1993), pp. xxxi–xxxiii, believes the evidence favors Publius. known as Vegetius (), was a writer of the Later Roman Empire (late 4th century). Nothing is known of his life or station beyond what is contained in his two surviving works: Epitoma rei militaris (also referred to as De re militari), and the lesser-known Digesta Artis Mulomedicinae, a guide to veterinary medicine. He identifies himself in the opening of his work Epitoma rei militaris as a Christians.
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As G. R. Watson observes, Vegetius' Epitoma "is the only ancient manual of Roman military institutions to have survived intact". Despite this, Watson doubts its value, for Vegetius "was neither a historian nor a soldier: his work is a compilation carelessly constructed from material of all ages, a congeries of inconsistencies".Watson, The Roman Soldier, pp. 25f These antiquarian sources, according to his own statement, were Cato the Elder, Cornelius Celsus, Frontinus, Paternus and the imperial constitutions of Augustus, Trajan, and Hadrian (1.8).
The first book is a plea for army reform; it vividly portrays the military decadence of the Late Roman Empire. Vegetius also describes in detail the organisation, training and equipment of the army of the early Empire. The third book contains a series of military maxims, which were (appropriately enough, considering the similarity in the military conditions of the two ages) the foundation of military learning for every European commander from William the Silent to Frederick the Great.
His book on contains the best description of Late Empire and Medieval siege machines. Among other things, it shows details of the siege engine called the onager, which afterwards played a great part in sieges until the development of modern cannonry. The fifth book gives an account of the materiel and personnel of the Roman navy.
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, "In manuscript, Vegetius' work had a great vogue from its first advent. Its rules of siegecraft were much studied in the Middle Ages." N.P. Milner observes that it was "one of the most popular Latin technical works from Antiquity, rivalling the elder Pliny's Natural History in the number of surviving copies dating from before AD 1300."Milner, Vegetius, p. xiii It was translated into English, French (by Jean de Meun and others), Italian (by the Florentine judge Bono Giamboni and others), Catalan, Spanish, Czech, and Yiddish before the invention of printing. The first printed editions are ascribed to Utrecht (1473), Cologne (1476), Paris (1478), Rome (in Veteres de re mil. scriptores, 1487), and Pisa (1488). A German translation by Ludwig Hohenwang appeared at Ulm in 1475.
However, from that point Vegetius' position as the premier military authority began to decline, as ancient historians such as Polybius became available. Niccolò Machiavelli attempted to address Vegetius' defects in his L'arte della Guerra (Florence, 1521), with heavy use of Polybius, Frontinus, and Livy, but Justus Lipsius' accusation that he confused the institutions of diverse periods of the Roman Empire and G. Stewechius' opinion that the survival of Vegetius' work led to the loss of his named sources were more typical of the late Renaissance.Milner, Vegetius, pp. xiiif. While as late as the 18th century a soldier such as Marshal Puysegur based his own works on this acknowledged model, in Milner's words, Vegetius' work suffered "a long period of deepening neglect".Milner, Vegetius, p. xiv.
From the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection at the Library of Congress
The 1944 abridged edition of Lieutenant John Clarke's 1767 translation (omitting Books IV and V, "of interest only to military antiquarians") is available online:
A complete facsimile of John Clarke's 1767 translation is available at Google Books:
1529 German-language edition of De re militari published by Heinrich Stayner with woodcuts variously depicting underwater diving suits, siege equipment, cannons, and air mattresses for the comfort of soldiers in the field.
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