Primary Sources

[mcbishop]

Compare this to Vegetius's epitoma rei militaris - while he uses (and often cites) prior sources, Vegetius is all interpretation! Would there really be no way, within the academic definitions of ancient historiography, to distinguish between the Lambaesis inscription and Vegetius? Or is that just a faulty way of looking at things?

Speidel's edition of the Lambaesis inscription makes it clear he thinks there is an editorial layer between the original speech and what ends up on the stones, and that, just as with Vegetius, you are getting some of Hadrian's words (although, as Eric Morecombe might have said(, not necessarily to the ful extent or in the right order ;-). The quantity of Hadrian in each is unknown, probably unknowable (although Schenk had a damned good try in the former case), and probably subject to the law of diminishing returns in trying to quantify the difference. The problem is that the Vegetius MS tradition looks so dodgy, and that Lambaesis inscription so tempting, that one automatically leans towards believing the latter over the former.

Mike Bishop