07-04-2009, 05:55 PM
Quote:According to Plutarch (Pyrrh. 16.7), Pyrrhus highly praised the contruction or Roman military camps. But, accirding to Frontinus (Strat. II. 1. 14), it was Pyrrhus who first began to fortify his camp by rampart. Which of the authors is right?Ah, the delights of source criticism.
I suppose the temptation is to automatically choose Frontinus, because he was "a military man"; and he was in good company, because there was a strong tradition in the ancient world of Pyrrhus as camp-builder. Livy got essentially the same information (from his source, C. Acilius), and it percolated down through Ammianus Marcellinus. All we can say is that Plutarch represents a different tradition (whether he made it up or read it somewhere doesn't much matter). (Is it more important for us to pin down the inventor of the temporary camp, if there ever was such an individual, or to acknowledge that the ancients revered Pyrrhus as a military genius?)
