The blind leading the blind?

Abstract

In 1616, the otherwise unremarkable Captain John Bingham published what would become for the next four hundred years the definitive translation into English of Aelian’s Tactics (Tactica), originally composed in Greek in the early second century CE. This chapter dedicates to proposing some answers to these questions, not yet considers in modern scholarship from this angle. It offers a more nuanced response to Brian Campbell’s thoughtful study of the practical uses and influences of military manuals on real generals in the Roman Empire, and to Conor What-ely’s recent work on the purpose of military manuals in Late Antiquity. Aeneas Tacticus’ military manual on surviving under siege has been described in modern scholarship as the only ancient manual expressly written for civilians. In a twist of irony, their pursuit of philosophical education engaged them in the study of military science, albeit via this thoroughly transhistorical manual.