Recent Views

The other main point of interest in the Epitoma has been what Goffart has described as the dismissal of the fundamental concepts of recruitment, training and fortification emphasised by Vegetius.[3]  This he ascribes to the Industrial Revolution and the idea in the industrialised and economically-minded West that any attempt at mechanisation and economic adjustment can, in light of the past three centuries, be seen as foresight on the part of an ancient author; in this case 'Anonymous' and the ‘de rebus bellicis’, written around A.D. 370.

An example of this bias can be seen in Vogt, where Anonymous' treatise is given sixty three lines of flattering text whereas Vegetius is given only three lines - and these are used to discredit him by comparison with Anonymous.[4]  Furthermore, Vegetius' emphasis on the legions of the past, whether these are real or conjectural units, now results in derision from authors such as Vogt who see him as an antiquarian who 'continues to advocate the old, long outdated military system and thinks solely in terms of defensive warfare.'[5]  In my view this is a completely unsatisfactory state of affairs.  Such a very biased attitude has resulted in the impractical (and in some cases ridiculous) inventions of Anonymous being given precedence over Vegetius' proposals, and so the ideas of Vegetius regarding training and morale are dismissed without consideration. 

The situation is utterly unacceptable; training and morale are two of the most basic tenets of warfare and can be seen as two of the main reasons behind the rise of Rome, not to mention the later victories of disciplined and heavily outnumbered European troops against Third World states during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Vegetius' theories on these matters can be seen as relevant not simply to his own but to all periods of history.  Furthermore, the thought that he was 'reintroducing' an old measure is also debatable;  'By the fifth-century, the gap between past and present was so great that someone recommending the old-time legionary organisation was, in effect, an innovator, proposing a sharp break with current military tradition and a new start in a different direction'[6] and in my opinion the time-lapse between the two periods is too often forgotten by historians and classicists alike.

As Goffart notes, the '....downfall of Vegetius was when it fell into the hands of military historians who judged him on his historical accuracy.'[7]  The unfortunate repercussion of these judgements has been the dismissal of his work and the apparent amazement that he was still seen in the seventeenth century as one of the basic military handbooks.  Thus he is described by Gordon as 'Vegetius and his trite maxims', with the conclusion that '....what the Renaissance generals derived from [him] was only the generalised advice....that to a lay mind seems self-evident.'[8]  The emphasis on the phrase 'lay mind' to my mind sums up the basic fault with this argument.  Gordon is working in a period where the study of warfare, but not its practice, is accepted as a norm and where a large number of  books are dedicated to its teaching.  The result is that many of the maxims in Vegetius are to modern eyes simplistic.  On the other hand, what appears to be being forgotten here is that there was little access to material of this nature until comparatively recently, and that, furthermore, what appears to an armchair historian as basic and self-evident whilst sitting in a library is likely to be groped for in panic when the same individual is faced with an actual battle where he is expected to make instantaneous decisions. 

The straight-forward and basic maxims given by Vegetius are of the kind that can be remembered easily and are relevant to most (if not all) battlefield situations from his era to the present.  This is what explains Vegetius' use as a military manual, and modern dismissal can therefore be seen as failing to take into account the salient factors.

Having cast doubts upon some of the modern interpretations of the pertinence of Vegetius I will now attempt to reinterpret the evidence in order to look at his work in respect to his own era.  As the work in question is concerned with military matters, it seems reasonable to start with the topic needing the greatest coverage.