01-25-2002, 07:35 PM
On the contrary, I would class him as a good (if opaque) source precisely because he was such an appalling essayist. Anybody who has taught in higher education has come across the student who dashed down to the library at the last moment and copied chunks indiscriminately out of text books and presented it as his own work, even when the books used contradict each other (how wide *was* a Roman ditch?) and have differing and distinctive literary styles (is armour 'lorica' or 'catafracta').<br>
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A recommended read is Schenk* who has done all the legwork in comparing the original texts, where they survive, with V's take on things. There are many characteristic passages where you find an informed technical explanation of something and then a noddy comment comes from V, as in his throwaway line that 'castellum is the diminutive of castra' - no, really? And a Latin-literate audience would not know that?<br>
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The Anonymous, on the other, is completely and utterly barking and not merely a poor epitomator.<br>
<br>
Mike Bishop<br>
<br>
*Schenk, D. 1930, Flavius Vegetius Renatus, Die Quellen der Epitoma Rei Militaris, Klio Beihefte 21, Leipzig <p></p><i></i>
<br>
A recommended read is Schenk* who has done all the legwork in comparing the original texts, where they survive, with V's take on things. There are many characteristic passages where you find an informed technical explanation of something and then a noddy comment comes from V, as in his throwaway line that 'castellum is the diminutive of castra' - no, really? And a Latin-literate audience would not know that?<br>
<br>
The Anonymous, on the other, is completely and utterly barking and not merely a poor epitomator.<br>
<br>
Mike Bishop<br>
<br>
*Schenk, D. 1930, Flavius Vegetius Renatus, Die Quellen der Epitoma Rei Militaris, Klio Beihefte 21, Leipzig <p></p><i></i>
