02-17-2012, 02:08 AM
I've been reading my copy of Lenski's 'Failure of Empire' which I purchased in 2002, but only really got around to reading it properly this week.
I came across this passage which I find one of the most outrageous, and unchallenged, statements I have ever read in what purports to be an academic work.
'Valens arrived with his army the following spring, when he is attested at Marcianople from May 10. There, he supplemented his rather deficient strategic knowledge with the new manual 'De rebus bellicis', written for him in the period following the Procopius revolt. The manual not only recommended the sort of border fortifications that he soon built and the manufacture of the ballistae with which he equipped these forts, it also had advice on shirts to protect his men from cool and damp weather, and portable bridges, which would have been ideal for the marshy territory in which he was about to campaign' P127.
How did this ever go unchallenged? What on Earth made Lenski make such a bold and frankly astounding statement?
I was going to reference Lenski myself but I am rather loath to now.
I came across this passage which I find one of the most outrageous, and unchallenged, statements I have ever read in what purports to be an academic work.
'Valens arrived with his army the following spring, when he is attested at Marcianople from May 10. There, he supplemented his rather deficient strategic knowledge with the new manual 'De rebus bellicis', written for him in the period following the Procopius revolt. The manual not only recommended the sort of border fortifications that he soon built and the manufacture of the ballistae with which he equipped these forts, it also had advice on shirts to protect his men from cool and damp weather, and portable bridges, which would have been ideal for the marshy territory in which he was about to campaign' P127.
How did this ever go unchallenged? What on Earth made Lenski make such a bold and frankly astounding statement?
I was going to reference Lenski myself but I am rather loath to now.
Adrian Coombs-Hoar
