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.

Theodosius's partial failure may have stimulated Vegetius to offer advice on re-forming an effective army ( the advice may date from the 390s or from the 430s ):

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.

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.

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

Vegetius noted that, “ besiegers sometimes built a tower with another turret inside it that could suddenly be raised by ropes and pulleys to over-top the wall ”.

However, from that point Vegetius ' position as the premier military authority began to decline, as ancient historians such as Polybius became available.

Vegetius composed his treatise on the Roman Empire's military, De Re Militari, at some point between 378 and 390 CE during the reign of Valentinian II in the Western Roman Empire.

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.

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.

The view that auxilia were light troops originates from Vegetius ' comment that " auxilia are always joined as light troops with the legions in the line ".

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

Not within the scope of this article are books on military strategy such as Sun Tzu's The Art of War ( before 100 BC ) or Vegetius ' De Re Militari ( 4th c. AD ), or military technology, such as De Rebus Bellicis ( 4th to 5th c .).

According to Vegetius river stones were best, since they are round, smooth, and dense.

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

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

The late 4th century writer on Roman military affairs Vegetius mentions soldiers using reed rafts, drawn by leather leads, to transport equipment across rivers.

Greek and Roman authors like Vegetius ( fl.

According to the late Roman writer Vegetius ' De Re Militari, each century had a ballista and each cohort had an onager, giving the legion a formidable siege train of 59 Ballistae and 10 Onagers each manned by 10 libritors ( artillerymen ) and mounted on wagons drawn by oxen or mules.

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

Two major works on tactics come from the late Roman period: Taktike Theoria by Aelianus Tacticus and De Re Militari (" On military matters ") by Vegetius.

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

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

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

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.

Vegetius emphasizes the shortcomings of the Roman Army in his lifetime.

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 .).

Despite the romanticism extolling the idealized virtues of the Roman legion of an earlier time, Vegetius ' De Re Militari remains a reliable and useful insight into the success of the early Roman Empire.

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

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.

Vegetius based his treatise on descriptions of Roman armies, especially those of the mid to late Republic.

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.

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.

As most were educated men acquainted with Roman military-science manuals ( e. g. Vegetius ’ s Epitoma rei militarii ), they began viewing warfare from the perspective of military science, rather than that of valor or physical courage — a great, consequential departure from chivalry, the traditional mediæval model of soldiering.

Vegetius emphasized things such as training of soldiers as a disciplined force, orderly strategy, maintenance of supply lines and logistics, quality leadership and use of tactics and even deceit to ensure advantage over the opposition.

Vegetius was not clear that the soldiers were required to carry these items personally, but we know that soldiers were required to carry entrenching tools ( such as the dolabra ) and turf cutters for the construction of a temporary camp at the end of each day's march.

The ancient Greek horse trainer Xenophon mentioned nothing about horseshoes in his treatise on the care of military cavalry, nor did the Digesta Artis Mulomedicinae by Vegetius Renatus, written in the 4th or 5th century AD, mention nailed-on shoes, though he accurately enumerated everything connected with an army forge in the time.

* Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De Re Militari ( with English translation on-line )

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

Vegetius dedicates his work to the reigning emperor, who is identified as Theodosius, ad Theodosium imperatorem, in the manuscript family that was not edited in 450 ; the identity is disputed: some scholars identify him with Theodosius the Great, while others follow Otto Seeck and identify him with the later Valentinian III, dating the work 430-35.

They were the normal weapon of later Roman archers, both infantry and cavalry units ( although Vegetius recommends training recruits " arcubus ligneis ", with wooden bows ).

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.

Later historical tradition made much of the prevalence of lighter and swifter vessels in Octavian's fleet, with Vegetius even explicitly ascribing Octavian's victory to the liburnians.

The Danube Fleet ( Classis Histrica ) with its attendant legionary flotillas is still well attested in the Notitia Dignitatum, and its increased activity is commented upon by Vegetius.

The reconstruction seems entirely consistent with Vegetius ' description.