This volume is the most recent work on the only practical military handbook of Classical Greek antiquity to have been preserved. The last decades have seen an increase and diversification in the research of Aineias’ work, due to the intensive use of the intratextual information available, making it today a valuable source of knowledge regarding the history and life of small Greek cities in the mid fourth century bc. In this context, the present volume was conceived to enhance this multitude of ‘secondary’ aspects rather than the central military theme. Aineias’ text acquires more reality through the figures and photographs that back up visually the explanations in some of the articles. The volume comprises, besides the introduction written by the two editors, the contributions of thirteen authors in fourteen articles, with Pretzler writing two of them. As we read in the introduction, this represents the end point of a project started in 2010, in the aftermath of a conference aiming at the multidisciplinary analysis of Aineias’ treatise. Although the approach, as well as the methods and the themes in focus are very much divergent, together these studies form a whole that displays a very clear plan.
The first contribution, ‘The Other Aineias’, is by D. Whitehead, a long-standing contributor to the knowledge about and modern interpretation of Aineias’ handbook. His primary purpose is to discuss the name of the author and to restate his intention to preserve the Greek form of the name Aineias, which the volume's editors adopt in the title of the volume. His article also brings into discussion whether the name Taktikós attributed to the author is justified considering the content and whether it is pivotal to the generic classification of the work. Whitehead also provides an overview of Aineias’ reception in antiquity.
The next article by R. Lane Fox also has the author of the manual as its subject. It formulates three objectives in question form in the title: ‘Aineias the Author: Who, Where and When?’. ‘Who’ refers to the still disputed identity of the author of the treatise, given the existence of several persons with roots in Arcadia and bearing the name of Aineias of Stymphalos, although several researchers, Whitehead among them, consider Aineias Tacticus to be the same Aineias of Stymphalos mentioned by Xenophon in Hellenika 7.3.1–3. The question ‘where’ is not so much about the origins of the author, but more about the perimeter of his military activities, and cannot result in an accurate answer, because the information found in the text indicates a vast geographical area and describes Aineias as a ‘global Greek, from Arcadia to Pontus to Syracuse’. (p. 46). It also refers to the place where he wrote the manual, which is difficult to determine. The prescriptions in his manual do not apply to a specific city state, but to a ‘generic polis as an ideal type’ (p. 45). The answer to the question ‘when’ is more easily found through references to other events firmly determined in time, namely 354/3 bc (p. 44).
In ‘Aineias Tacticus in His Intellectual Context’ D.G.J. Shipley sets out to explore first Aineias’ possible ethnic and political identities (pp. 50–6) and second his ‘Literary and Intellectual Context’ (pp. 57–64). The first conclusion is that Aineias displays a way of thinking and mentality specific to the Greek polis, but not to a particular one, and that he shows no preference for a specific type of political system. As to the second aspect of this chapter, after a comparative analysis of some fragments from Aineias and Xenophon, as well as from Aineias and Thucydides, Shipley comes to the conclusion that Aineias, aware that he is mapping ‘out a new field of written discourse’ (p. 64), needs to resort to the Greek literary tradition in order to confer his discourse legitimation and credibility.
In ‘Aineias and History: the Purpose and Context of Historical Narrative in the Poliorketika’ Pretzler analyses the narrative strategies in the short accounts or historical vignettes inserted by Aineias in his text with the purpose of increasing the validity of his precepts. His examples are selected on different criteria, such as the renown of a city or the proximity in time or space, which keep them vivid in the memory of the people. Aineias adapts the narrative to his demonstrative aims in support of the didactic intentions. The final part of the article offers an exhaustive list of fragments that mention narratives or places linked to a certain event as well as a summary of the information they include and the respective dates.
J. Vela Tejada, in ‘Creating Koine: Aineias Tacticus in the History of the Greek Language’, investigates the linguistic field. His profound knowledge of Aineias’ language enables him to conclude that the text carries top-grade information about the incipient phases of the Attic koine. He reaches this conclusion by a detailed study of the language of the Poliorketika, comparing it to the Attic standard at all levels: phonetics, morphology, syntax and lexicon. On the other hand, by approaching the treatise as a literary work, Vela Tejada examines those stylistic features that he places in the linguistic and literary context of Attic prose. But Aineias has non-Attic roots, which leads Vela Tejada to conclude, in parallel with a remark by A. Meillet, that Aineias’ complex language provides the earliest evidence that the prestige of literary Attic began to transcend its natural boundaries and to make an impact on Hellenic culture as a whole (p. 120). This is a contribution of Aineias’ text to the history of the Greek language.
In ‘Writing and Other Forms of Communication in Aineias’ Poliorketika’ P. Liddel analyses the most efficient communication modalities for transmitting messages in case of a siege and finds three categories: ‘a) visible non-verbal signs and sounds; b) messages disseminated by telegraph, by word of mouth, or proclamation; c) concealed or encrypted messages’ (pp. 138–9), of which type (b) is in Aineias’ eyes the most efficient. As for the written messages for the secret communication, included under type (c), Aineias extensively writes about them in Chapter 31.
The second article by Pretzler is ‘The Polis Falling Apart: Aineias Tacticus and Stasis’. Stasis, meaning ‘civil war’ or ‘civil strife’, is more dangerous in the case of a siege than an enemy attack, because it undermines from within the resisting capacity of the city. Aineias examines the possible causes for civil unrest and arrives at the conclusion that the most frequent ones are those of a moral or psychological nature. The only way to avoid such manifestations is to preserve the civil concordia, homonoia.
In Chapters 9–14 the authors direct their attention to military themes. M. Bettalli, in ‘Greek Poleis and Warfare in the Fourth Century bc: Aineias’ Poliorketika’, studies Aineias’ views on military conflicts in the light of the battles carried out by the Greeks. He describes Aineias as ‘a rare example of an intelligent, flexible, up-to-date commander; one who knows warfare in all its aspects and how common it is, but at the same time is aware of the need to safeguard oases of calm and everyday life whenever possible’ (p. 180).
Barley, in ‘Light Infantry and Leadership in Aineias’, underlines the importance Aineias lends to the light infantry and its capacity for efficient resistance thanks to the mobility and versatility in creating ambushes, traps and all kinds of stratagems meant to repel the enemy from the city walls.
J. Roy, in ‘Mercenaries in Aineias Tacticus’, observes that Aineias has few remarks about mercenaries, leaning on the idea that defence of the city state relies on its own troops and possibly on allied help. These few remarks are either indirect, included in accounts about mercenary involvement in certain situations, or direct, when Aineias makes recommendations about the terms under which the city should hire them and stresses the need of strict supervision. Aineias recommends that only rich citizens hire mercenaries and not more than three each, to ensure better control of their movements.
The threats of naval war are examined by P. de Souza, in ‘Raiders from the Sea: the Maritime Context of the Poliorketika’, in which he sums up and comments on the fragments containing references by Aineias about everything regarding naval war. De Souza shows that there are quite a few such references and that Aineias underlines the need of close monitoring of all harbour activities.
A dense and well-documented chapter by B. Gourley is dedicated to the city of Stymphalos, ‘Notes from Home: a Perspective on Fourth-Century Defence from Arkadian Stymphalos’. Without implying that Stymphalos is beyond any doubt Aineias’ home, the small Arcadian city ‘serves as a “potential paradigm” for the study of Greek fortifications in the age of fourth-century defensive warfare’ (p. 229).
T.E. Rihll, in ‘Technology in Aineias Tacticus: Simple and Complex’, remarks that the Poliorketika offers little to no information about specific siege technology and barely any on military technology in general, but, by contrast, much more regarding civil technology that could be used for military purposes.
The final chapter is a very well-documented reception study by P. Rance, ‘The Reception of Aineias’ Poliorketika in Byzantine Military Literature’. He establishes that the manuscript tradition of Aineias’ text was extremely poor up to the Byzantine tenth century and that it had no influence on poliorcetic literature, its only representation being a single manuscript, and that in very poor condition. It is only much later that the value of the manuscript, albeit in excerpts, was acknowledged. Figure 15 (p. 359) schematises the transmission of Aineias in late-antique and Byzantine military literature. The appendix contains seven chapters of Taktika by Nikephoros Ouranos, derived from Aineias’ Poliorketika.
In conclusion, the volume demonstrates not only that Aineias Tacticus has survived the siege of time, but also that the scholarly interest in his work has been gaining momentum.
