Greek and Roman war treatises

[D B Campbell]

... apart from Vegetius' work we have no other Roman treatise...

Onasander?

[Macedon]

Onasander (or Onisander) is Roman???? (maybe in the veeery broad sense that Arrian and Asclepiodotus were?)

[D B Campbell]

I was assuming that being born during the period of the Roman empire and holding office as a Roman official qualified a person as "a Roman". :wink: Onasander's Strategikos is a study of Roman generalship dedicated to the consul of AD 49, Q. Veranius. Surely that qualifies as Roman?

[Macedon]

Strange way of labeling authors... Well, I made two distinctions. "Regarding the Romans" and "Regarding the (non-Byzantine) Greeks". I include Onasander among the latter, along with Asclepiodotus, Arrian, historians like Diodorus etc.

[D B Campbell]

Strange way of labeling authors...

Ditto! :wink: Rather than Greek vs. Roman, it looks as if you are differentiating between writers of Latin and writers of Greek, which may well be a valid differentiation to make -- except that (a) it was well-known that the Greeks were more prolific (cf. Vitruvius' comments on his source material) and (b) Vegetius cites several Latin precursors who are no longer available to us.

[Macedon]

No.. I am differentiating between Greeks and Romans as I thought we all understood the terms. Many non-Greeks wrote in Greek (both in the west and the east), certainly many non-Romans wrote in Latin (especially in late Roman times and later). By Greek I mean any author who was Greek no matter if he had or had not Roman citizenship. I wouldn't for example call Josephus a Greek and I would also not call him Roman. Fabius Pictor I would not call Greek... Among the Romans I include all those who are of Italiot, Latin ancestry which would include possible ex-Etruscan, Peligni etc elements who also were Roman citizens but not those who were from cities of Magna Graecia which still retained their Greekness. Would you really call Arrian or Diodorus Roman authors? I really am at a loss here (actually I have seen a few such instances but I always thought they were the minority and generally meant in a non-ethnic manner)... Do you propose that Onasander (and Arrian etc) are generally presented as Roman and not Greek authors? Maybe I miss something? Is your comment based on some academic convention on what is a Greek writer and what a Roman one in the 1st century AD? Anyways... I think that this post explains at least what I mean when I speak of "Greek" and "Roman" authors and maybe both are equally correct in an academic manner where actual nationality does not play a role.

As for Roman treatises, yes, of course there have to have been more. As I wrote : "apart from Vegetius' work we have no other Roman treatise", at least as far as I know. It is my view that traces of the older Roman systems should be looked for in the non-Greek elements of the Byzantine tactics but of course there is little evidence for such an assertion apart from a general argument regarding the continuity of tactical doctrines.

[Lyceum]

I would definitely label Arrianus as Roman, yes. He held citizenship, office and even is I think the first source for the phrase "emeis oi romaioi" in Greek.

Obviously I'm talking from a general classical lit perspective here but we don't seperate based SOLELY on language. Many of the novels, though written in Greek are certainly Roman and after Christ labels like "Greek" are in many instances rather unhelpful. Imperial Lit is a complex topic in and of itself and obviously there are crap loads of works on that, local identities etc. Whitmarsh is usually a starting point.

"As for Roman treatises, yes, of course there have to have been more. As I wrote : "apart from Vegetius' work we have no other Roman treatise", at least as far as I know. It is my view that traces of the older Roman systems should be looked for in the non-Greek elements of the Byzantine tactics but of course there is little evidence for such an assertion apart from a general argument regarding the continuity of tactical doctrines."

There is this, which is actually a really good idea. Of course when we talk about finite literary texts its really hard to separate the Greek from the Roman anyway. Lucretius, for example, I would say is writing in a very Roman ethos despite his subject on Greek philosophy, many of the Roman historians on the other hand are clearly heavily using Greek tropes.

Essentially, what I'm saying is, even if we look at Byzantine Greek (= Roman) treatises, many of the elements we delineate as being purely classical Roman probably have Greek influence anyway.

[Macedon]

Well.. then maybe we should call Arrian an Athenian... And he certainly lived in Athens much longer than he did anywhere in the Italian penninsula. Anyways... I understand that in theory we can call anyone who had Roman citizenship a Roman but to me it sounds really funny to include Polybius, Arrian or Onnasander among the "Roman authors" of the time when we explicitly differentiate between Romans and Greeks.

As for the Byzantine military treatises, it is true they need a lot of scrutinizing before any conclusions may be drawn as to the origin and influences of various tactical, strategical or other details. Yet, I think it is possible to come to such conclusions. My favorite example here is the usage of gaps in the phalanx, a feature also described by Onnasander. We can only make (educated or sometimes just extremely bold) guesses regarding the use of gaps by the Polybian or Caesarian Roman legions. Studying the Byzantine military treatises, in my opinion, can help.

[Lyceum]

Well as we say I'm sure it may be a worthwhile pursuit providing all such caveats are accounted for, even if it adds just a little bit to our overall knowledge on the military.

I can see your protest re: Arrian but it hardly makes sense. Roman does not mean "inhabitant of the Italian peninsula" anymore than person from Elis = Greek. To keep it short, no there is no reason to call Polybius (!!) or Onasander Roman.

Arrian is counted as such since he was a citizen, held office and fully interacted within said circles, if asked he would have told you that he was indeed Roman.

Simply demarcating texts based on language becomes very unhelpful after a while, hence the term imperial. In a broader sense this language problem does go rather far back, only a madman would call Berossos a Greek, or Sanuchthion (sp, major sp, jesus) anymore than one would call Josephus and there are quite a few people writing in Latin one would not call Romans. Fortunatus, perhaps. Its overly simplistic and unhelpful. Especially in the case of someone like Arian whose depiction of Alexandros often goes along Roman lines despite his use of Aristovoulos, Ptolemy etc and these things are important for a historian and hence accounted in commentaries.

Basically the line becomes blurry.

[Robert Vermaat]

I've had the impression that Romans almost viewed time as static: what was morally acceptable in the time of Romulus, for instance, was morally acceptable in the time of Marcus Aurelius (or so the people of the 2nd century AD thought).

Actually I believe they might have viewed it in reverse - as a process of regression and degeneration rather than progress! Everything in the days of ones ancestors is therefore better than today, and the further back you go the better everything becomes, until you reach the mythical Age of Saturn when all was perfect...

Hmm, nothing changes. Although.. we look upon time as progressive, yet we have a very nostalgic view of the past..including the Romans!

[Robert Vermaat]

There were many Romans who moved to improve thing in their own time, in their own way, by progress...

I don't think Romans were against progress, but not in the way we see it today. Improving wasd a good thing (seen for instance in architecture), but when you look at Roman industrial history overall, the picture is more like 'don't change anything if it works'.

The same goes for military treatises, we see ancient material being re-used over and over again. Partly because it gives the writer a 'learned' image (which was immensely important, partly because that's how they looked at older work. You see innovations only when older solutions no longer work. I.e. we see Maurice explaining why he changed the role of the cavalry: he devetes far more space for cavalry tactics than infantry, which he no doubt considered well-known to his readers (and not less important, which you sometimes hear).

[Robert Vermaat]

Onasander (or Onisander) is Roman???? (maybe in the veeery broad sense that Arrian and Asclepiodotus were?)

Why would Arrian be a 'Roman in the broad sense'? Are we judging someone by his language and place of birth rather than the world he belonged to? If the author had been a Greek-speaking citizen of Antioch, would he still be a Greek or perhaps a Syrian?
To me, Arrian was a Roman, being a Roman citizen, educated and functioning within a totally Roman society. He was a Roman governor, planning a Roman tactic which he dedicated to a Roman emperor. Had he been from Spain or Egypt, this would have been the same I guess. What should we call a Thracian emperor: Roman, Greek, Thracian, Dacian even after the name of his ancestral province? I would not call Arrian an Athenian either if that was not place of birth? He hailed from Nicomedia (today’s Izmit), which would make him a Bithynian.

I see no need to label him ‘Greek’ because of the language he used, as Greek was spoken and written by far more ‘Romans’ than those from Greece alone. The same goes for every author writing in Greek or Latin, by the way. As long as they were from the Roman empire, they are to be considered ‘Romans’ in my opinion. Only then you can label them ‘Bithynian’, ‘Nicomedian’, or ‘Greek speaking’. Therefore I see his treatise as one from a Roman tradition, too.

Lines can be blurred, but they need not be so.

[Draconis]

Out of curiosity, is there any evidence that these manuals, or whatever you might call them were ever used or any attention paid to them? Or were they writings of hobbyists and arm chair generals, pretty much only read by other hobbyists and arm chair generals?

[Robert Vermaat]

Out of curiosity, is there any evidence that these manuals, or whatever you might call them were ever used or any attention paid to them? Or were they writings of hobbyists and arm chair generals, pretty much only read by other hobbyists and arm chair generals?

The fact that we have them (and some in different versions) means they were copied. They were copied because they were used. They were used because, apparently, they were considered to be of value. This is confirmed by younger treatises too, which use material from the older ones.

So yes, I would say that there is evidence.

[Macedon]

Well... Regarding the "Romanism" of Arrian, although it is totally irrelevant to my arguments regarding the OP, I have to add that we all have to keep in mind that we are in the late 1st - early 2nd century AD. There is no broad Roman identity sense yet in the east where Arrian has lived and served the Roman Empire. Arrian was a Greek working for the Romans and trusted with high offices, for a part of his adult life, because of his personal relations with the Emperor. Bithynia and Cappadocia were no "Rome", no functioning "Roman" society nor was he educated in a "Roman" manner (at least as far as the limited information regarding his life indicate as far as I know). Before that he studied philosophy in Epirus where he started his "career" as an author. The second part of his life he spent in Athens, where he also held a high office as an archon, where he adopted the name of his "hero" Xenophon (as he had done with his Roman part of his name before) and where he wrote his works in question partly in imitation of the older Greek authors like Xenophon and Herodot. In all, Arrian was born, raised and educated, he lived and died in a totally Greek environment, albeit a Greek environment that had by now been annexed by the Romans. Calling him a Roman over Greek would only make sense if we call all citizens of the Empire Romans when studying them, which of course is a valid possibility if we do not, for some reason, want to differentiate the various "ethnicities" or if we for some reason dismiss "Greek" as a valid identity for the era. Under that prism, Diodorus and Josephus would also be Roman historians. And of course, Arrian's books are also a Roman legacy in that they were compiled in the extent of the Roman Empire, exactly as the works of an alien artist are parts of the culture of any country he was/became a citizen of, even if that country plainly and simply conquered his.

I already said that I understand how one could call Arrian a Roman in a broad sense but I also offered the following dilemma. IF you had to fill in three lists of authors/personas of the era (1st-2nd century AD), one of "Romans", one of "Greeks" and one of "Others", where would you place Arrian? Of course, later on, when the Roman identity is accepted by the non-Latins over their older regional identities, things are different.

This is no "ueberGreekness" issue guys, we all (well, most of us) use these names often (in articles, books, posts, lectures) and we should try to do so as "properly" as possible. Would you say that calling Arrian a Roman author (instead of Greek or "Roman of Greek ethnicity" etc) would be the norm among contemporary scholars (I do not think so, but maybe I am mistaken)? What would we then call Onasander (Duncan seems to prefer "Roman"?), Diodorus, Josephus (a Roman? A Jew? or a Roman Jew?), Strabo, Appian, Dionysius of Hallicarnnassus etc. They all lived within the Roman Empire, some worked for the Romans, some in Rome, some even studied there, some wrote about Roman history specifically. Would you indeed feel more comfortable to call them Romans or is it the sole fact that Arrian had also been a governor appointed by Rome (among other offices) that makes you specifically view him as "more Roman"? Jass also mentioned something about his style, although I think that any Roman influence is secondary in Arrian's work, but again, would that be a valid argument to call some author "Roman" over his initial (not localized) nationality (Greek, Jew, Syrian, later on Goth, Slav etc)?

So would you be comfortable with a statement such as "Roman historians like Arrian state that... while Greeks like Diodorus...." or "Roman scholars, among whom Arrian and Diodorus..."?

@ Jass

Where does Arrian write "emeis oi romaioi"? I think you are mistaken but I might be mistaken myself.