Before Aeneas Tacticus

[Eleatic Guest]

Aeneas Tacticus' work is the oldest surviving treatise on military strategy and tactics, but do we know - for example through references by others - of any military author who wrote before him?

[Sean Manning]

Some of Xenophon's writings are probably earlier than Aen. Tact. right? And the on Sieges is not really on strategy and tactics in the sense the Prussians used those terms (Aeneas' other treatises, the lost ones, may have covered those topics) Its specifically a booklet on the specific practical problem of how to defend a typical Greek polis.

Aeneas' works have intriguing similarities to the Hittite instructions for the border guards. I suspect that there were very long lived traditions of mostly oral instruction about these practical things. But I never had time to do my deep dive into ancient military literature in Hittite, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.

[Dan Howard]

Aeneas Tacticus - 4th C BC
Sun Tzu - 6th C BC.

[Eleatic Guest]

I was talking about the subject area at hand, obviously. Besides, the text by "Sun Tzu" was earlier begun but probably later finished than that of Aeneas Tacticus, making the case for the earliest tactical treatise globally not as clear as it might seem.

[Sean Manning]

Well, if you mean treatise on how to defend a small city, the Hittite Instruction for Commanders of Border Posts is a thousand years earlier than Aen. Tact.! It has practical advice on how to build the fortifications, who should have a key to the gate, and what to do before you open the gates in the morning.

If you mean treatises on field generalship, I suspect that the Greek tradition began with collections of anonymous aphorisms like Vegetius' Regula Bellorum Generales and the equivalent book in Maur. Strat.. That is how better-documented traditions of practical knowledge such as geometry transitioned from purely oral to partially written. It would be very unlikely if Xen. and Aen. Tact. were both the first surviving technical writers on warfare in Greek, and the first to write in Greek on the subject (both cover many different topics!), but I can't name other names.

[Flavivs Aetivs]

If you're talking about the Greco-Roman military manual tradition, we can actually trace this tradition by the errors. We know most of the Roman authors copied from an intermediary manuscript because they copy the statement of an author who gives incorrect units for pike lengths (8 to 14 cubits with a theoretical 16), while only Asclepiodotus gives the correct measurements (8 to 10 cubits with a theoretical 12, corroborated by Theophrastus).

We know Asclepiodotus was probably a student of Poseidonius studying in Rhodes before 51 BC. Polybius was born in Megalopolis in Arcadia and travelled extensively with multiple generals, including Scipio and his own father Lycortas, and we know he had access to Aeneas Tacticus' manuscript. Aelianus Tacticus lived in Rome, and we know Arrian copied from Poseidonius. From this information we can gather that there were two manuscripts being copied: a theoretical or erroneous manuscript, and those of Poseidonius and Asclepiodotus. Arrian actually either corrects the measurements of the intermediary manuscript, or had access to the original said manuscript was copying from.

Who exactly wrote this theoretical/erroneous manuscript is uncertain. We know Clearchus, Iphicrates, Aeneas Tacticus, and Pyrrhus all wrote treatises on the subject. We might be able to guess that Aeneas Tacticus was the one whose manuscript was theoretical or had an erroneous copy because of this, maybe done by one of Pyrrhus subordinates named Cineas, who copied Aeneas' manual on siege tactics and had little military experience, being primarily a statesman. Iphicrates and Clearchus both lived too early to talk about the Sarissa or the much more sophisticated division of the late Phalanx into regiments, but it's possible they could have written a treatise that was later amended for the Chaeronea-era Phalanx by a later author, and then copied.

Whether or not Poseidonius' manual was his own writing or he was copying from an earlier manual is uncertain, but the latter seems likely. We can guess that whomever wrote the original manual had not yet lived to see the 12 cubit Sarissa and it was still only theoretical, but by the time of Theophrastus it had been realized (but was probably rare).

[Sean Manning]

You have made this claim on social media before. What is your basis for claiming that 8 to 16 cubits is wrong but 8 to 12 cubits is right? Polybius was a soldier, he knew how long sarissae were, and I think 15' to 18' (roughly 10 to 12 cubits) was common in 16th and 17th century Europe. So Polybius' 14 cubits is not so much bigger.

There are things I disagree with Polybius about, but when I say I disagree I try to back that with as much evidence as possible. Its hard to envision how anyone could ever show that 14 cubits is 'wrong' without a time machine. Those early modern pikes often varied in length within a single group of pikemen (Sir John Smythe compared them to organ pipes).