ABSTRACT

This chapter consists of asking questions, some answers suggests, with a principal aim being to address whether any of the late antique military manuals really were of use to the empire's commanders. The chapter provides a discussion of the issue of genre, their audience, and their function. Vegetius active engagement with the audience and his slandering of histories suggests that authors working in a genre on the periphery of late antique literary culture grappled with many of the same concerns as other contemporary genres while simultaneously competing with them. Finding a satisfactory answer is compounded by the lack of ancient definitions. The second century theorist Aelian said, the definition of tactics laid down by Aeneas is that it is the science of military movements. There survives from Late Antiquity a dizzying array of different histories, and often grouped into quite distinct categories such as secular and Christian histories, a number of scholars now suggest that such differentiation is unwarranted.