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Notes on Vegetius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Michael D. Reeve
Michael D. Reeve
Affiliation:
Pembroke College, Cambridge
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Extract

Vegetius wrote his Epitoma rei militaris between 383 and 450. It survives in at least 220 witnesses designed to be complete, perhaps a dozen of them written in the ninth century. The earliest editions were all printed from inferior manuscripts, and later printers largely followed what is in many respects the worst of them, published at Rome in 1487. In the eighteenth century none of the older and better manuscripts happened to be preserved in the place that would have given it the best chance of making a mark, namely Leiden, and only G, which had reached Wolfenbüttel, seems to have been collated, first by G. Kortte, then by Wernsdorf for N. Schwebel's edition (Nürnberg 1767); not until Friedrich Haase in 1847 reported the outcome of a preliminary exploration, undertaken because he planned a corpus of ancient military tracts, did most of the others emerge. Carl Lang used several for his Teubner editions of 1869 and 1885, such a milestone that for critical purposes the earlier editions seldom repay consultation. The new Teubner edition of Alf Önnerfors, which appeared in 1995, has a fuller apparatus, but his preface sheds less light on the nature of the tradition than might have been expected; indeed, it restores darkness to areas where Lang shed light.

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Research Article
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Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 44 , 1999 , pp. 182 - 218
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Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1999

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References

1 De militarium scriptorum graecorum et latinorum editione instituenda narratio (Berlin 1847) 21–2, 47–9Google Scholar.

2 ‘Editorial opportunities and obligations’, RFIC 123 (1995) 479–99Google Scholar. Towards the end of 1997 Önnerfors kindly sent me a copy of a privately printed rejoinder.

3 In defiance of chronology, the editors of OCD 3 (1996), under ‘Vegetius Renatus. Flavius’, p. 1584, add a cross-reference to the historian.

4 My earlier article (n. 2) includes some remarks on the text. In his rejoinder (n. 2) Önnerfors calls them ‘uninteressant’, and I apologize to him if these notes leave him equally bored. T return here to two passages that I merely touched on, 3.21.6 and 4.46.5.

5 I had written a draft before encountering Müller's volume; I am glad to find us in agreement about 1.27.4, 3.21.6, and 4.44.7, and I have added a note on 3.25.9. Stephen Oakley obligingly communicated to me his opinions on 1 prol. 1, 1.13.2, 3.10.23, and the second of the problems that I discuss at 2 prol. 4–6, which mostly coincide with mine; he also urged me to worry about the third of the problems that I discuss at 2 prol. 4–6. Nicholas Milner very kindly commented on a draft, and some of his comments led me to make changes and additions. Otto Zwierlein and his colleagues in Bonn gave me the opportunity of talking about some passages. I have also benefited from the comments of the editors and their referee.

6 Hall, R. G. & Oberhelman, S. M., ‘Rhythmical clausulae in the Codex Theodosianus and the Leges nouellae ad Theodosianum pertinentes’, CQ 79 (1985) 201–14, at p. 202Google Scholar.

7 Clausulae in the prose of the later Empire have been analysed in several articles by Hall & Oberhelman or by Oberhelman alone, of which the most helpful for exposition and bibliography is op. cit. (n. 6) and for setting Vegetius in context ‘The history and development of the cursus mixtus in Latin literature’, CQ 82 (1988) 228–42Google Scholar. On Vegetius see pp. 229 and 236–7 of the latter and also the table on p. 140 of ‘The cursus in late imperial Latin prose: a reconsideration of methodology’, C. Phil. 83 (1988) 136–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Laurand, L.'s note ‘Le “cursus” dans Végèce’, Musée Beige 28 (1924) 99–101Google Scholar, was fundamentally right but has been overtaken by studies that draw more distinctions. Powell, J. G. F., ‘prose-rhythm, Latin’, in OCD3 (1996) 1261–2Google Scholar, says that in the purely accentual system the last accent was not allowed to fall on the first syllable of a word; but the rule does not apply to the cursus mixtus in the hands of Vegetius, who already in his brief summary, from which I took my examples above, has continet morem.

8 Nisbet, R. G. M. defends them at the end of ‘Cola and clausulae in Cicero's speeches’, in ‘Owls to Athens’: essays on classical subjects presented to Sir Kenneth Dover, ed. Craik, E. M. (Oxford 1990) 349–59Google Scholar. At 3.6.33–4, discussed here for another reason, I have already proposed an emendation partly for the sake of rhythm, but the manuscripts disagree.

9 Leumann–Hofmann–Szantyr II §§ 16, 233, esp. § 233 I D.

10 Op. cit. (n. 2) 482–3.

11 Lang's text, the same as Önnerfors's, is printed by Santini, C., ‘Le praefationes ai quattro libri dell' Epitoma rei militaris di Vegezio’, in Prefazioni, prologhi, proemi di opere tecnico-scientifiche latine, ed. Santini, C. & Scivoletto, N., II (Rome 1992) 1001–18Google Scholar; but he neither translates it nor discusses it.

12 See for instance Gilliam, J. F., ‘The ordinarii and ordinati of the Roman army’, TAPA 71 (1940) 127–48Google Scholar (cited in TLL IX 932.68–79), and TLL X 2 1279.39–58, 1285.61–1286.35, 1353.60–61, 1354.2–11, 1358.54–71 (note 1286.12 ‘usu laxiore’).

13 Cf. Hall & Oberhelman, op. cit. (n. 6) 204 n. 20, on non potest a marito in the Codex Theodosianus.

14 The instances in the Epitoma seem to have eluded TLL, unless they appear in some other place than I 525.70–82. Older uses of ad might have come to be felt as instrumental in expressions like 1.9.6 adsaltum … exercendus est miles (purpose), 1.11.3 exercebantur ad palos (place), 3.8.17 ad clepsydram sunt diuisae uigiliae (standard); and the force of ad in expressions like 3.8.1 ad capiendum cibum occupatis is hard to pin down (note 4.28.2 cibo … occupati).

15 Speidel, M. P., ‘Vegetius (3, 5) on trumpets’, Acta Classica 18 (1975) 153–5Google Scholar; Meucci, R., ‘A proposito di un passo di Vegezio: cornu e bucina’, RCCM 25 (1983) 71–3Google Scholar, and ‘Lo strumento del bucinator A. Surus e il cod. Pal. Lat. 909 di Vegezio’, Bonner Jahrbücher 187 (1987) 259–72, at pp. 260–64, 267–70Google Scholar. Önnerfors, p. xxxvi n. 31, gives the impression that Meucci follows Speidel, who accepts from T both cornu <tuba> (also in Z) and its punctuation; but in fact Meucci rejects both and instead exchanges bucina quae and cornu quod.

16 op. cit. (n. 2) 493.

17 op. cit. (n. 2) 492–3.

18 Sileno 21 (1995) 299–308, at pp. 305–7Google Scholar.

19 See no. 3 of the ‘Sententiae controuersae’ at the end of De fide Flauii Vegetii Renati (Bonn 1879)Google Scholar, where he lists haec and perdiderunt among readings of T that he would accept. These also include one that I treated with respect above, a campidoctoribus at 1.13.1, and two that I accepted, deleuerunt at 3.10.23 and anhelus in the previous sentence here (both shared with Z and δ). The monograph seems to be rare, but Önnerfors consulted it, and there is a copy in Cambridge University Library (Bonn c philos. 1879), listed not in the main catalogue but in a card catalogue, ‘incomplete’, of foreign dissertations.

20 Certainly a large amount of pertinent material from Merovingian France can be found in Orlandi, G.'s important article ‘Un dilemma editoriale: ortografia e morfologia nelle Historiae di Gregorio di Tours’, Filologia Mediolatina 3 (1996) 35–71Google Scholar.

21 Hall & Oberhelman, op. cit. (n. 6) 209, say this: ‘Once the specific rhythmical tendencies of a text have been determined, then either hiatus or elision is allowed so as to obtain the desired clausula … Elision occurs in the Novellae almost exclusively at the end of the sentence and involves the monosyllable est … The Codex, on the other hand, freely elides as the rhythm dictates. The general avoidance of elision in the Novellae, written later than the Codex, may perhaps anticipate the trend in later and medieval Latin to allow hiatus in nearly every instance’.

22 op. cit. (n. 2) 494.

23 The Greek evidence was put together by Müller, K. K., ‘Ein griechisches Fragment über Kriegswesen’, in Festschrift für Ludwig Urlichs (Würzburg 1880), 106–38, at p. 107Google Scholar. For the text see Mauricius 8.2.70 in the edition of H. Mihăescu (Bucharest 1970), p. 216.17–24, which has become 8.2.81 in Dennis, G. T. & Gamillscheg, E., Das Strategikon des Maurikios (Vienna 1981), p. 294Google Scholar.233–41. I do not know what precisely was meant by ἐϰβληθέντα or παϱεϰβληθεῖσαι, or with what justification M is reported as separating λνωμιϰά from . Dennis & Gamillscheg do not say what they take to have stood on the missing leaf of M, and in neither edition is there any reference to Vegetius.

24 Dr Milner kindly tells me that he does not know of any predecessor.

25 Ortoleva, V., La tradizione manoscritta della ‘Mulomedicina’ di Publio Vegezio Renato (Acireale 1996) 61–86Google Scholar.

26 Goetz, G., Thesaurus glossarum emendatarum I (Leipzig 1899) 62Google Scholar; he adds ‘adminiculi et ϰάμαϰες, χαϱάϰαι David Comm. Ien. V 231’. I thank Dr Dietfried Krömer for checking the files of the Thesaurus.

27 Mihăescu includes Urbicius in his edition of Mauricius (n. 23), where see p. 370.25 § 13; Dennis & Gamillscheg (ibid.) do not include him in theirs. Schwebel knew the work from Scheffer's, J. edition, Arriani Tactica et Mauricii Artis militaris libri duodecim (Uppsala 1664)Google Scholar, which Bessel, F., Miscellaneorum philologico-criticomm syntagma (Amsterdam 1742) 249–56Google Scholar, had already used in connexion with some passages of Vegetius, though not the present one. See also Lammert, F., ‘Suda, die Kriegsschriftsteller und Suidas’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 38 (1938) 23–35, at pp. 27–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and F. Dölger, ‘ZurΣΟΥΔΑ-Frage’, ibid. 36–57, at pp. 49,56. Kramer, J., ‘fossatum im Lateinischen, Griechischen und Romanischen’, Wiener Studien 109 (1996) 231–41Google Scholar, does not mention sudatum.

28 ‘Zu Vegetius’, Hermes v1 (1866) 130–33, at p. 131Google Scholar.

29 op. cit. (n. 2) 495.

30 True, the words could have been missing from his copy; but they do not form a line in M, and I cannot see why else they should have dropped out.

31 ‘Önnerfors takes over from the reprint of Lang's second edition two other readings absent from the authoritative manuscripts, 3.9.10 et taedio for ac taedio and 4.17.7 aspiciunt for aspiciant. Lang had printed aspiciant in both his editions and was apparently making a conjecture when he wrote in the Addenda et corrigenda of his second (behind p. xl<v>iiii) ‘aspiciunt legi iubeo’; but the reprint has aspiciunt in the text. I do not know how that came about, because the original printing does not seem to have been altered in any other way; not only are the rest of the Addenda et corrigenda ignored, but on pp. xxviii–xxviiii of the preface the sentence ineptos errores …fere omisimus is left in the wrong place instead of being put after the end of the paragraph.

32 op. cit. (n. 2) 495.

33 CR 93 (1979) 63Google ScholarPubMed.