question about Roman military writers

[Crispvs]

Until someone digs up the entire corpus of what was written within the sphere of Roman influence during the period you are interested in and examines it, we will never know what was written and what was not. In saying that a significant military writer did not emerge during this period, I think you are assuming that we are aware of everything which was written, which we are certainly not. For instance, in all likelihood every general/legate would have been expected to write a detailed report on his activities during his period of office, which would have included details of any military activity. How many of these have survived? Apart from Caesar's commentaries (which may well have started out as reports of this sort) we have none, which means we are missing an AWFUL lot of probably very informative writings. And this is just one category. We know that people wrote proposals for military reform, but apart from Vegetius, how many do we have? Internal evidence within Vegetius' Epitome Re Militaria shows that there were a reasonable number of works dealing with military matters which he was able to consult but which no longer survive. We also know of various works of history which have not survived or which have survived only as fragments. Much of Dio Cassius' work is missing, as is much of Livy's. Tacitus' 'Annales' have not survived intact and neither have his 'Histories'. What was contained within those missing books which we might have found fascinating? We do not know. We also know of historical works which were popular and well regarded in their own time, such as the history of Rome written by Magnus Maximus, which have not survived at all apart from in name. What gems did they contain? We may never know. In addition to that, for every work of history we know of there may well have been a hundred other informative works which existed but which we will never even know of. Take the example of Tacitus. If a single damaged manuscript of his works had not appeared in the middle of the sixteenth century, allowing it to be copied and preserved, we would know virtually nothing of him or his works.
A further category of potentially informative works is that of personal letters. We know that important and informed people were constantly writing letters to one another yet little of this correspondence has survived. We have most of Cicero's letters but few of the letters he was responding to or which were responses to his letters. We also have many of the younger Pliny's letters and some of the letters he received from the Emperor Trajan. What else do we have though? Very little.
No ancient author survives in his own hand, meaning that even if a work might have survived all the opportunities for its destruction which rose in antiquity, if no-one was interested in taking the time and effort to copy it in the middle ages or renaissance (when there were, of course, no photocopiers, fax machines or scanners to make things simple or quick for the copyist), it would not have survived for us to be able to evaluate its merits for our purposes. Papyrus does not last indefinitely except under very dry conditions such as are found in Egypt but certainly not in Britain or northern Europe. What has survived is only a fraction of what was written and what we know existed is only a slightly larger fraction of what existed. What has survived has survived as a matter of luck in most places. A graphic example of this is the Villa of the Papayri in Herculaneum. A library's worth of books was uncovered and much has been examined, but most of it consists of works of philosophy and poetic works, many of them previously unknown. However, for several years years during its excavation in the eighteenth century workmen routinely threw what they took to be lumps of coal into the sea. It was only after several years of this that someone realised that far from being lumps of coal these were actually carbonised books which were capable of being read. How many illuminating works were simply tossed into the sea because those who found them thought they were nothing but coal? Maybe thousands. We will never know.

Thus we can never say that no-one wrote about something we are interested in. They may well have done - we just don't know it. All we can really say is that right now we are not aware of anything which comprehensively answers many of the questions we have.

Crispvs