Though his work was widely reproduced, and over 200 copies, translations, and extracts survive today, the extent to which Vegetius affected the actual practice of warfare as opposed to its concept is unclear due to his habit of stating the obvious.

Historian Michael Clanchy noted " the medieval axiom that laymen are illiterate and its converse that clergy are literate ", so it may be the case that few soldiers read Vegetius ' work.

While it is uncertain to what extent his work was read amongst the warrior class as opposed to the clergy, Vegetius remained prominent in the literature on warfare in the medieval period.

The late Roman writer Vegetius, in his work De Re Militari, wrote:

Most likely Mathilde rewarded him with a copy of Vegetius ' work De Re Militari which was written in Essen and survived in England.

The late Roman writer Vegetius, in his work De Re Militari, wrote:

Despite this, Watson doubts its value, for Vegetius " was neither a historian nor a soldier: his work is a compilation carelessly constructed from material of all ages, a congeries of inconsistencies ".

The author of the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica article states that " In manuscript, Vegetius ' work had a great vogue from its first advent.

Niccolò Machiavelli attempted to address Vegetius ' defects in his L ' arte della Guerra ( Florence, 1521 ), with heavy use of Polybius, Frontinus and Livy, but Justus Lipsius ' accusation that he confused the institutions of diverse periods of the Roman Empire and G. Stewechius ' opinion that the survival of Vegetius ' work led to the loss of his named sources were more typical of the late Renaissance.

While as late as the 18th century a soldier such as Marshal Puysegur based his own works on this acknowledged model, in Milner's words, Vegetius ' work suffered " a long period of deepening neglect ".

The late Roman writer Vegetius, referring in his work De Re Militari to scythed chariots, wrote:

The name of the work has a number of variants, including Epitoma Rei Militaris, but there are other problems with accepting it at face value as the verbatim work of Vegetius.

Vegetius ' dates are not known or the circumstances under which the work was revised.

The work is dedicated to a mysterious emperor, whose identity is unknown but whom Vegetius must have assumed to have been known to his intended readership.

This article adopts that point of view and assigns an approximate date of 390 to the work, which would not be, then, word for word the same as what Vegetius wrote, accounting for the title variants.

Niccolò Machiavelli attempted to address Vegetius's defects in his L ' arte della Guerra ( Florence, 1521 ), with heavy use of Polybius, Frontinus and Livy, but Justus Lipsius ' accusation that he confused the institutions of diverse periods of the Roman Empire and G. Stewechius ' opinion that the survival of Vegetius ' work led to the loss of his named sources were more typical of the late Renaissance.

In Milner's words, Vegetius ' work suffered " a long period of deepening neglect ".

Vegetius uses epitomata, plural of the Greek epitoma, in his other surviving work on doctoring mules.

The late Roman writer Vegetius, in his work De Re Militari, wrote:

The late Roman writer Vegetius, in his work De Re Militari, wrote:

Later writers also drew from Vegetius such as Honore Bonet who wrote the 14th century L ' arbes des batailles, which discussed the morals and laws of war.

Milner notes, " that it was the same Vegetius who wrote both works was proved through close verbal and stylistic parallels by C. Schoener, and is generally accepted.

The author of De Re Militari was Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, who lived in the late 4th century and possibly the early 5th century.

The actual words of Vegetius are not even recognized by a large number of writers, who attribute the saying directly to him.

To place the role of Vitruvius the military engineer in context, a description of " The Praefect of the camp " or army engineer is quoted here as given by Flavius Vegetius Renatus in The Military Institutions of the Romans:

This signum is described in the surviving epitome of Vegetius De Re Militari 379 CE —" The first sign of the entire legion is the eagle, which the eagle-bearer carries.

Vegetius is writing about a one foot iron shaft because at Vegetius ' time the pilum had disappeared and been replaced by similar shorter weapons such as the plumbatae or the above mentioned spiculum.

Despite Eutropius ' location in Constantinople, the scholarly consensus is that Vegetius wrote in the Western Empire.

As G. R. Watson observes, Vegetius ' Epitoma " is the only ancient manual of Roman military institutions to have survived intact ".

In particular, the five foot ten inches minimum height limit identified by Vegetius would have excluded the majority of the men in Roman times ( the Roman foot was less than the English foot, at 11. 65 inches ; hence, 5 ' 10 " Roman is 5 ' 7. 5 " in modern terms, which is just above average height of Roman ( Italian ) men of the time from skeletal evidence from Herculaneum in 79 A. D .).

De Re Militari ( Latin " Concerning Military Matters "), also Epitoma Rei Militaris, is a treatise by the late Latin writer Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus about Roman warfare and military principles as a presentation of methods and practices in use during the height of Rome's power, and responsible for that power.

The initial date of the window is established by Vegetius ' own statement that he wrote covering the time usque ad tempus divi Gratiani, " up to the time of the divine Gratian.

If the earlier date is preferred, it is unlikely Vegetius did all seven revisions or even one of them.

Watson observes, Vegetius ' Epitoma " is the only ancient manual of Roman military institutions to have survived intact.

Vegetius is keen to stress the shortcomings of the Roman Army in his lifetime.

The earliest extant manuscript from England to contain Vegetius ' text is Cotton Cleopatra D. I ( of the 11th, possibly late 10th century ).

Manuscript 18A. Xii in the Royal Library, written and ornamented for Richard III of England, is a translation of Vegetius.

Though Vegetius had no military experience, and De re militari was derived from the works of Cato and Frontinus, his books were the standard for military discourse in western Europe from their production until the 16th century.

According to Vegetius, infantry was the most important element of an army because it was cheap compared to cavalry and could be deployed on any terrain.

For example the ancient hand-book of warfare written by Vegetius called De Re Militari was translated into French in the 13th century as L ' art de chevalerie by Jean de Meun.

Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, commonly referred to simply as Vegetius, was a writer of the Later Roman Empire.

The army of the early Empire was a formidable fighting force but it probably was not in its entirety quite as good as Vegetius describes.

The Army of the early Empire was a formidable fighting force but it probably was not in its entirety quite as good as Vegetius describes.

The average height of adult male skeletons buried in Italy between 500 BCE and 500 CE was 168 cm so it would probably have been hard to meet Vegetius ' height standards.

The first design for a diving dress to be printed in a book was by Vegetius in 1511.

In classical Latin the word castra always means " great legionary encampment ", both " marching ", " temporary " ones and the " fortified permanent " ones, while the diminutive form castellum was used for the smaller forts, which were usually, but not always, occupied by the auxiliary units and used as logistic bases for the legions, as explained by Vegetius.

However since Vegetius was not a military man and his works ( for example De Re Militari ) freely, anachronistically mixed the present with the dim and distant past, we must take his descriptions with a grain of salt.

Shields in Vegetius ' day were used to distinguish between units, but, contrary to his claim here, there is little evidence that this was true of the earlier empire.