Strategem

Book excerpt: Four hundred years of Roman military strategy in the palm of your hand The choice of these two works – Stratagems and On Military Matters in one volume allows the reader a bookend of Roman military theory and style. Stratagem was written in the first century AD by noted engineer and soldier, Sextus Julius Frontius. Rather than a specific outline of tactics, it is examples of strategies employed by other generals over time that could be, presumably learned by commanders and applied as the situation arose. This is somewhat similar to the style Plutarch uses in describing the lives of the notable Greeks and Romans in his book, Parallel Lives. On Military Matter, on the other hand, was written near the end of the western Empire in the fourth century AD, as a manual of how an army should be organized and used. Little is known about its author, Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, beyond this work and another on veterinary medicine.