This volume explores the enigmatic primary source known as the ancient military manual. In particular, the volume explores the extent to which these diverse texts constitute a genre (sometimes unsatisfactorily classified as 'technical literature'), and the degree to which they reflect the practice of warfare.

With contributions from a diverse group of scholars, the chapters examine military manuals from early Archaic Greece to the Byzantine period, covering a wide range of topics including readership, siege warfare, mercenaries, defeat, textual history, and religion. Coverage includes most of the major contemporary siege manual writers, including Xenophon, Frontinus, Vegetius, and Maurice. Close examination of these texts serves to reveals the complex ways in which ancient Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines sought to understand better, and impose order upon, the seemingly irrational phenomenon known as war.

Providing insight into the multifaceted collection of texts that constituted military manuals, this volume is a key resource for students and scholars of warfare and military literature in the classical and Byzantine periods.

About the Author

James T. Chlup is Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University of Manitoba, Canada.

Conor Whatley is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Winnipeg, Canada.

Reviews

"This overview of the volume shows the enormous range of the object from Homer to the Byzantine, even into the early modern period, and demonstrates how a more intensive study of the discussed works can highlight their - admittedly rather indirect - value as a historical source." - Kai Brodersen, sehepunkte

"Non-specialist readers should profit from both an interrogative framework and selected case studies. Specialists too may find contributions of specific interest... a notably well-edited collection, insofar as frequent cross-referencing within and between chapters tightens thematic threads and enhances overall coherence." - Philip Rance, The Byzantine Revew

Book Information
ISBN 9781138335141
Author James T. Chlup
Format Hardback
Page Count 298
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 566g