ABSTRACT

What is required of a soldier? Firstly, to obey his superiors; secondly, to die in combat if the occasion demands. At least that is what many of our contemporaries, and most of our historians, believe. For them training serves only as a part of the daily life of a soldier, to be written up in a section between the brothel and the baths. Hence the most prestigious encyclopaedias devoted to antiquity, Pauly-Wissowa and Daremberg-Saglio, did not think fit to include even a short article on the subject of training.