A Roman reformer and inventor, being a new text of the treatise rebus bellicis

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A ROMAN REFORMER AND INVENTOR BEING A NEW TEXT OF THE TREATISE

DE REBUS BELLICIS WITH A TRANSLATION AND INTRODUCTION BY

E. A. THOMPSON AND A LATIN INDEX

BARBARA FLOWER

OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1952

Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.4 OLASOOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS CAPETOWN

Geoffrey Cumberlege, Publisher to the University

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD BY CHARLES BATEY, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

PREFACE The text of the treatise de rebus bellicis printed in this book is based on a collation of the four major extant manuscripts. I collated C at Oxford and MPV from photographs kindly suppHed by the Directors of the Bayerische Staatsbibhothek and the Bibhotheque Nationale and by Professor A. Cetto of the Bibhoteca Comunale, Trento, to all of whom my warmest thanks are due. At the foot of each page of the text the reader will find (together with one or two matters mentioned in the Introduction) the materials which will enable him, it is hoped, to reconstruct the text given by the lost archetype of CMPV, the famous Codex Spirensis; and in a Critical Appendix at the end of the text he will fmd a hst of the numerous sHps and errors of which the scribes of CMPV have been guilty and which are of httle importance in themselves. Since CMV have not been collated hitherto, the study of the anonymous writer’s text has made httle progress. Whatever advance this edition marks is entirely due to the kindness of Professor P. Maas, who generously put at my disposal his critical corrections and suggestions: they form the most valuable contribution that has hitherto been made to the subject. The text is divided into chapters as indicated in the Thesaurus

Linguae Latinae, although it might have been better to mark the praefatio as chapter I. The sections of each chapter correspond to the paragraphs into which the text is divided in CMPV. What is rather audaciously called a ‘Translation’ is, in fact, merely a version designed to show what meaning I attach to the Latin, apart, of course, from those passages to which I can assign no meaning at all. The inadequacies of this version will become apparent at a glance, and it is scarcely an excuse, I suppose, to point out that the author’s style is very difficult. At any rate, its shortcomings would have been un¬ speakably more obvious had it not been for the kindness of Miss Barbara Flower, who submitted it aU to a thorough revision, from which it emerged wearing in very many places

VI

a new and better aspect. Miss Flower crowned her kindness by adding the Latin Index at the end of the book. The purpose of the Introduction is to place before the reader the results of such study as has been given to the treatise by earlier students of it. It is, of course, difficult to summarize the views of others without coming to one or two conclusions of one’s own; but the chief novelty to be found here is due to Professor A. H. M. Jones, who has allowed me to print his elucidations of some passages so obscure that they had baffled all those who have hitherto concerned themselves with the de

rebus bellicis. It is a pleasure to acknowledge

the help

which other

scholars, too, have given to me. Professor W. S. Maguiness and Mr. W. R. Smith discussed many passages of the text and translation with me, and have kindly permitted me to print one or two of their emendations. Mr. C. E. Stevens allowed me to see his paper on the treatise before it went to print. Professor W. M. Edwards and my colleague Professor W. J. H. Sprott put me on the track of the Yarmouth liburna. Professor P. Lehmann procured for me a photograph of Diemand’s article, which does not appear to be available in any British hbrary. Not least. Dr. Norman H. Baynes, in addition to other acts of kindness, lent me his copy of Neher’s valuable Disserta¬ tion, which would have otherwise been inaccessible. I would offer my gratitude to all these scholars, and in particular to Miss Flower, Professor Maas, and Professor Jones, as well as to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press for their generosity in publishing this book, and Mr. W. R. Chalmers for helping to correct the proofs. It will be understood that the scholars who have helped me are in no way responsible for such mistakes, omissions, and errors of judgement as will be found throughout the work. I would dedicate this book to Professor Benjamin Farrington as a small return for his personal kindness and as a mark of respect for his services to scholarship.

EAT

CONTENTS BIBLIOGRAPHY INTRODUCTION A. The Author and the Book 1. THE DATE OF THE BOOK

xi 1-89 i I

H. THE AUTHOR

2

III. MANUSCRIPTS

6

IV. MODERN STUDY OF THE TREATISE

B. The Contents of the Book

17

22

V. THE PREFACE

22

VI. THE COINAGE

26

VII. THE DECLINE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE VIII. THE REFORM OF THE MINT IX. PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION X. THE MILITARY BUDGET XI. SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY IN THE LATER EMPIRE XII. THE INVENTIONS

31 34 37

4I 44 5O

(a) The Warship

50

(b) The Scythed Chariots

54

(c) The Portable Bridge

58

(d) Artillery

61

(e) The Tichodifrus

65

(J) The Clipeocentrus

67

(^)

The Plumbata et tribulata

67

(h)

The Plumbata mamillata

68

(y)

The Thoracomachus

68

XIII. THE LINE OF MARCH

7O

XIV. FRONTIER FORTIFICATIONS

72

XV. THE CODIFICATION OF THE LAW XVI. CONCLUSION

74 75

viii

Contents

SIGLA

90

TEXT

91

TRANSLATION

106

CRITICAL APPENDIX

124

ADDENDA

125

INDEX

VOCABVLORVM

ET

TIONVM NOTABILIORVM

LOCV127

LIST OF FIGURES at end of volume I. COMMODAE AVCTORITATIS

VARIAE PRI-

SCORVM MONETAE II. FELIX INCHOATIO MONETAE

SACRAE

DIVINAEQVE

III.

BALLISTA QVADRIROTIS

IV.

TICHODIFRVS: CLIPEOCENTRVS

V. PLVMBATA

ET

TRIBVLATA:

PLVMBATA

MAMILLATA VI. CVRRODREPANVS VII. CVRRODREPANVS SINGVLARIS VIII. CVRRODREPANVS CLIPEATVS IX. THORACOMACHVS X. ASCOGEFYRVS XI. LIBVRNA XII. BALLISTA FVLMINALIS XIII. HARVESTING

MACHINE

DESCRIBED

BY

PLINY AND PALLADIVS

(reconstruction by A. Nachtweh, Journal fiir Landwirtschaft, lix, 1911, Tafel iii).

BIBLIOGRAPHY This bibliography is not intended to be complete: some works—most of them by Renaissance scholars—which contain incidental references to our author or reveal a knowledge of his book without expressly naming it are not included. An almost complete bibUography down to 1911 will be found in Neher’s Dissertation.

Cadwallader J. Bates, ‘A Forgotten Reference to Roman Mile-Castles’, Archaeologia Aeliana, ser. ii, vol. xvi, 1894, pp. 447-51. M. Berthelot, ‘Histoire des machines de guerre et des arts mecaniques au moyen age’. Annales de Chimie et de Physique, ser. vii, vol. xix, 1900, pp. 289-420. — ‘Sur le traite de rebus bellicis qui accompagne le Notitia Dignitatum dans les manuscrits’, Jowrna/ des Savants, 1900, pp. 171-7. — ‘Le hvre d’un ingenieiu: mihtaire a la fin du XIV® siecle’, ibid., pp. 1-15, 85-94— ‘Les manuscrits de Leonard de Vinci et les machines de guerre’, ibid., 1902, pp. 116-20. J. Bedez and F. Cumont, luliani Epistulae Leges Poematia, &c. (Oxford and Paris, 1922), at p. 212. E. Birley, ‘The Beaumont Inscription, the Notitia Dignitatum, and the Garrison of Hadrian’s Wall’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmore¬ land Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, vol. xxxix (n.s.), 1939, pp. 190226, at pp. 208-10 and 226. W. Camden, Britannia, ed. 5 (London, 1600), at p. 715; cf. Philemon Holland’s translation Britain (London, 1637), at p. 793. A. Diemand, ‘Ein in WaUerstein aufgefimdenes Bruchstiick des Itinerarium AntoTuni’, Jahrbuch des historischen Vereins Dillingen, xxii, 1909, pp. 1-9. H. T. Horwitz, ‘Zur Geschichte des Schaufelradantriebes’, Zeitschrift des Oesterreichischen Ingenieur- und Architekten-Vereines, Ixxxii, 1930, pp. 309-13. 356-60.

H. Kochly and W. Rustow, Griechische Kriegsschriftsteller, i (Leipzig, 1853), pp. 410-19. P. Lehmann, ‘Die mittelalterhche Dombibhothek zu Speyer’, Sitzungsberichte der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: phil.-hist. Abteilung, 1934, Heft iv. P. Lejay, Review of Schneider’s edition. Revue critique d’histoire et de littdrature, N.S., Ixviii, 1909, pp. 289-91; cf Revue dephilologie, xxxvi, 1912, pp. 344 f. M. M(anitius), Review of Schneider’s edition, Literarisches Zentralblatt, bd, 1910, p. 313B. A. Muller, Review of Schneider’s edition, Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift, xxi, 1911, pp. 229-38. — Review of Neher’s Dissertation, ibid., xxxvi, 1916, pp. 1521-30, 1551-62, 1583-94-

Bibliography

XU

R. Neher, Der Anonymus de Rebus Bellicis, Diss. Tubingen, 1911. R. Oehler, Reviews of Schneider’s edition and Neher’s Dissertation, Wochenschrift Jiir klassische Philologie, xxvi, 1909» PP* 875—7» ibid., xxix, 19^2, pp. 520-1; Zeitschriftfiir das Gymnasialwesen, bcvi (n.f. xlvi), 1912, pp. 227-9. H. Omont, Notitia Dignitatum Imperii Romani: reproduction rdduite des 105 miniatures du manuscrit latin g66i de la Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, 1911. S. Reinach, ‘Un homme d’idees au Bas-Empire’, Revue archiologique, s^r. v, vol. xvi, 1922, pp. 205-65 (with text on pp. 255-65). P. Schnabel, ‘Der verlorene Speirer Codex des Itinerarium Antonini, der Notitia Dignitatum imd anderer Schriften’, Sitzungsberichte der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: phil.-hist. Klasse, xxix, 1926, pp. 242-57. R. Schneider, Anonymi de rebus bellicis liber, Text und Erlautenmgen, Berlin, 1908. — ‘Vom Biichlein de rebus bellicis', Neue Jahrbucher fiir das klassische Altertum, xiii, 1910, pp. 327-42K. ScHOTTENiOHER, Pfalzgraf Ottheinrich und das Buch (Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien imd Texte begriindet von J. Greving, Heft 50/51), Miinster in Westf., 1927, at pp. 9-22, 192. O. Seeck, ‘Zur Kritik der Notitia Dignitatum’, Hermes, ix, 1875, pp. 217-42; cf. his edition of the Notitia (Berlin, 1876), pp. ix sqq. — Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopddie, i, 1894, p. 2325, s.v. ‘Anonymi (3)’. — Review of Schneider’s eition, Deutsche Literaturzeitung, xxix, 1908, pp. 3171-2.

C. E. Stevens, ‘A Roman Author in North-West Britain’, Transactions of the

Cumberland and Westmoreland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, vol. (N.S.), 1951, PP- 70-79-

For editions of the text see below, p. 17.

1

INTRODUCTION A. THE AUTHOR AND THE BOOK pamplilet de rebus bellicis consists of a series of suggestions for reforming the Roman Empire. Reforms of Imperial financial poHcy, of the currency, of provincial administration, of the army, and of the law are proposed in turn. The writer describes a number of new mechanical contrivances which in his opinion ought to form part of the equipment of the Roman army. To facditate the task of constructing them he included in his treatise coloured drawings of what these contrivances should look like when completed. More or less faithful copies of his drawings have survived in several of the manuscripts. The author of this httle book is imknown. Scholars are not agreed on the precise date at which he wrote, or on the identity of the Emperors to whom he addressed his work.^ Opinions are sharply divided on the value of the proposed reforms and particularly on the worth of the mechanical contrivances which he describes: indeed, his machines (if we may call them such) are usually overlooked in histories of ancient science and techno¬ logy. The purpose of the present edition is to assist the reader to form his own judgement on one of the most curious docu¬ ments that have survived from the ancient world. The

1. THE DATE OF THE BOOK

The author hved later than the reign of the Emperor Con¬ stantine, to whom he refers by name. But he appears to assume that the barbarians have not yet driven deeply into the Roman Empire: they still merely threaten the frontiers and launch elusive plundering bands into the provinces.^ In fact, when the de rebus bellicis was written, the battle of Adrianople seems not * He refers to his work as a libellus, praef. 2, and an oratio, praef. 6 and 10 vi. 4. The former is the correct term for a petition addressed to the Emperor.

^ vi. I if. 5314

B

2

The Author and the Book

yet to have been fought and lost.^ It would appear to follow that our author wrote later than 337, the year in which Con¬ stantine died, and earlier than 378, the date of Adrianople. Can we narrow these limits? At the time when our author wrote, more than one Emperor was reigning over the Roman Empire; for in his Preface he addresses the

most sacred

Emperors’, the ‘most merciful Emperors’, and so on, and in one passage he mentions their sons.^ It seems, therefore, that we require a time when there was a plurahty of Roman Emperors each with one or more sons. From the death of Constantine in 337 until the extinction of the Western Empire there was only one such period—the joint reign of Valentinian I and his brother Valens. The son of Valens was born in 366, when Valentinian’s son Gratian was about seven years of age; and Valentinian died in 375, three years before his brother was burned to death on the field of Adrianople. Consequently, it is probable (though the argument is by no means conclusive) that the de rebus bellicis was written in the period 366-75.^ There is nothing either in the subject-matter of the treatise or in its style, syntax, or vocabulary which contradicts such a dating; and in this edition we shall assume that our author wrote sometime between these years 366 and 375. Gelenius, however, the first editor of the Anonymus, was inclined to date the work to the time of Theodosius I and his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius, that is, to the years 392-5, and this view is still sometimes supported:'^ but it is not whoUy consistent with the author’s reference to ‘Emperors’ and their ‘sons’, and in fact, as we shall see (p. 12 below), it appears to be based ultimately on the erroneous guess of a copyist. II. THE AUTHOR

There is no evidence to show who the author was or where he lived. The fact that he writes in Latin suggests that he was a * So Seeck (1894). ^ Praef. 5. 3 So Seeck, loc. dt.; Muller (1916), p. 1585; but they inadvertently write 378 for 375. See Addenda. * Reinach, pp. 212 f. For Geleiuus’s words see below, p. 17.

The Author

3

native of the Western rather than of the Eastern provinces. Even this has been disputed, however, and several scholars con¬ sider it likely that the author was a Greek who wrote in Latin: he chose Latin, it is argued, because that was the official language of the Empire and also perhaps because he could not count on the Emperor to be famihar with Greek.* But die arguments on which this view is based carry little weight, and to accept it is merely to multiply hypotheses. It has been pointed out, for instance, that the only foreign peoples mentioned by name in the pamphlet are the Persians and the Arabs, and that the author’s geographical outlook is bounded by the Danube.^ But it is now known that our author was not particularly interested in the Arabs: the view that he was is based on a faulty reading in Gelenius’s text,^ so that this argument loses most of its force. Again, it is beheved that one of the technical inventions of the Anonymus, the bridge made of inflated skins, reveals a famfliarity with the skin boats of some of the Arabs.^ But the author need not have travelled to Arabia to secure his information about the Arabs; and even if he had travelled thither, it by no means follows that his native language was Greek. Finally, the fact that his Latin is clumsy and unwieldy [unbehiilflichy proves nothing in this connexion. It merely illustrates the difficulty of composing in a nebulous, artificial, hterary language which had long since diverged sharply from the spoken tongue. There is another suggestion over which we need not linger. One sentence m the Preface has been taken to mean that the author was neither a Greek nor a Roman but a barbarian. The suggestion would be interesting if true (pp. 45 ff. below); but * Seeck (1894); Neher, p. 58; Muller (1911), p. 235; idem (1916), p. 1559; Birley, p. 209 nn. ^ Seeck, loc. cit.; for the Persians see xii. i, xix. 2; the Arabs, xvi. 2; the Danube, xviii. 5. ^ See critical note on p. 97. i. The old reading made the Anonymus recom¬ mend that all veterans be sent to the Arabian limes. ‘C’eut ete bien mal les recompenser’, as M. Reinach (p. 223) remarks. * xvi. 2, cf. Pliny, NH. vi. 176; Muller (1911), p. 235. s Seeck (1894); cf. Schneider (1908), p. 29.

4

The Author and the Book

in fact the sentence in question can scarcely bear such an inter¬ pretation.^ Let us say, then, that our author was a Latin-speaking subject of the Empire who knew a hmited amount of Greek; and let us concede that his undoubted interest in the frontiers of the Eastern Empire may perhaps be due to his living in one of the more easterly of the Latin provinces—say, in the lUyrican Prefecture. He was certainly educated in the Latin tradition. Although he excludes liimself from the number of those who could be accounted eloquentj^ he has carefully studied the rhythmical laws according to which writers of the fourth and later centuries constructed their sentences, ^ a fact which in itself indicates some years of study. The author feels himself sufficiently at home in literary Latin not only to invent some quasi-Greek technical terms and add them to that language but also to coin the unprepossessing Latin words delectabilitas zndjixorium^ Moreover, he quotes m his Preface from a writer whom he calls ‘optimus orator’ and whom it is tempting to identify with Cicero; and a thorough search would doubtless reveal several echoes in his book of classical Latin authors such as Cicero and Virgil and perhaps Suetonius.® We cannot attempt here to analyse the Anonymus’ style. As we have already mentioned, he has tried to master the obscure, abstract, pom¬ pous style fashionable in educated circles at the end of the fourth century and later. But his attempt was not over-successful. He pens some sentences which would have been avoided by a sensitive styfist, as, for instance, ii. i ‘huius auaritiae origo hinc creditur emanasse’,^ xx. i ‘ut prouinciarum quies inlaesa * Praef. 4 (last sentence), cf. Mulier (1916), p. 1593. 2 Praef. 4. 3 Lejay (1909) has studied the clausulae of the Preface; cf. Reinach, p. 214.

i. I, viii. I tned., ix. i. The former word has been omitted from the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. 5 On Suetonius see Section VI below, and on Virgil p. 29 below. With the

phrase ‘fugientium popHtes incidantur’, xix. 4, cf. Virgil, Aen. ix. 762, Horace, Odes iii. 2.15 f, &c., MuUer (1916), p. 1560. With ii. 3 cf Cicero, de Repub. i. 44. 68, &c. ® With this cf Digest, i. ii. i pr.; SHA. Hadrian i. i.

The Author

5

requiescat’, and so on. He is all too familiar with the notorious chancellery style in which the later Emperors issued their laws and edicts; and more than one of his phrases can best be paral¬ leled from the law codes of Theodosius and Justinian.’' The words mamillatus in cap. xi and uterus in xvi. 2 are homely oases in a dreary literary desert. It will further be observed how frequently he finds it necessary to explain a word by a (pre¬ sumably more famihar) synonym, as at viii. i ‘compositio uel fabrica’, ix. i ‘parma, hoc est modicus clipeus’, xv. 3 ‘soccis, hoc est calciamentis’, xvii. 2 ‘alueo uel capacitate’, ibid., ‘ambitum uel rotunditatem’. Finally, we may note that on more than one occasion it seems only too clear that he himself did not know precisely what it was that he wanted to say.^ He distinctly imphes that he did not belong to the highest strata of society, although he says that he was a man of some leisure.3 In one passage he appears to dissociate liimself from the nuhtary and, although he is well informed about the problems and equipment of the Imperial forces in the fourth century, there is no need to suppose that he was anything more than a knowledgeable civihan. To this we can only add that he appears to have seen the Danube,^ that he was interested in the Roman wars against the Persians,^ and that his critical attitude towards Constantine together with the complete absence of any Chris¬ tian sentiment in his work strongly suggests that he was a pagan. Whether the Emperors ever saw his book we do not know. Valentinian himself is said on excellent authority to have been * For example, cf. v. i with Clust. x. 22. 3 ‘ad illationem functionis tribu¬ tariae’. 2 ii. 3, xiv. ijin.-, but in the latter case the fault would seem to be that of the copyists. His use of the word habeatur (s.u.l.) in praef. 6 Jin., together with the clause cum . . . est, ibid. 10 Jin., is very difficult. In the first of these passages, ii. 3,1 have translated without much confidence as though paupertas were still the subject of produxit. But Professor Maas may well be right in supposing that a subject {e.g. fortuna) to produxit has fallen out of the text. See also p. 24, n. 2. 3 Praef. 4 and 10, cf. Reinach, p. 210. ^ xii. ijin., cf. Muller (1911), P- 237; Schneider (1910), pp. 327, 335. 5 xviii. 5. ® xii. i, xix. 2.

The Author and the Booh

6

an inventor of new weapons,’' and he might perhaps have been interested in our audior’s suggestions if he could have under¬ stood liis Latin. Yet few will agree wnth Nchcr’s view that ‘diese Dcnksclurift konntc luimdi^lich unbcriicksichtictt blcibcn. Sie kain sicherlich zur Besprcchung und zwar im kaiscrlichcn Staatsrat {coiisistoritiin principis).'^ On tlic whole it is much more likely that the dc rebus bellicis was intercepted by a civil servant and pigeon-holed without ever reacliing die Emperor. At any rate, for half a millenium after it w'as written nodiing is known of its fate. III. MANUSCRIPTS

Our pamphlet w^as preserved diroughout the later Middle Ages in die Codex Spirensis, so called because it was discovered in the Cadicdral Library at Speyer. We shall indicate later die circumstances of die destruction of this fimous manuscript, in so far as they are known. What concerns us immediately is diat its loss is fir from irreparable, for at least four copies of it wxre made before its final disappearance, and these reproduce its text accurately for the most part and widiout interpolations. In fact, Seeck says (widi some exaggeradon) that ‘die text of die Spirensis can be reconstructed so completely that, if it were foimd today, practically die sole gain w'ould be diat we should have to collate only one manuscript instead of four’.^ From a comparison of diese four copies we can see diat die contents of the Spirensis were as foliow's: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (vii) (viii)

Aediici cosmograplua Itinerarium Antonini Septem montes urbis Romae Dicuil: De mensura orbis terrae Notitia Galliarum Laterculus Polemii Siluae De montibus portis et uiis urbis Romae De rebus bellicis

* Amm. Mare. xxx. 9. 4 ‘uouorum inuentor armomm’. ^ Neher, p. 61.

3 Secck (1875), p. 227.

Manuscripts (ix) (x) (xi) (xii) (xiii)

7

Altercatio Hadriani et Epicteti Descriptio urbis Romae Descriptio urbis Constantinopolis De gradibus cognationum Notitia Dignitatum

What we know about the four copies in question may be summarized as follows: (i) The existence of the Spirensis was reported (perhaps by Nicolaus Cusanus) to the enthusiastic bibliophil Pietro Donato, Bishop of Padua, at the time of the Council of Basle (1431-49); Donato had the text transcribed, and in January 1436 he received his copy of the manuscript (p. II below). Later in the fifteenth century Donato’s copy (C) came into the possession of A. Maffei at Rome, and passed thence into the collection of manuscripts assembled by the Venetian Jesuit jMatheo Luigi Canonici (1727-1805), Canonici’s collection was purchased after his death by the Bodleian Library at Oxford (1817), where C is still preserved (Cod, Canon, lat. misc. 378).* (ii) The second copy of the Spirensis (P) is now preserved at Paris (Cod. Paris, lat. 9661). We first hear of it c. 1443—the year is not quite certain—when it was in the pos¬ session of Pier Candido Decembrio, a Humanist whose father had heard the famous Greek lectures of the Byzantine Manuel Chrysoloras. On i July of the year in question the ‘Good Duke’ Humphrey of Gloucester, an other Humanist, one whose humane activities included a remorseless persecution of the Lollards, wrote to Decembrio, who was his literary agent and book col¬ lector in Italy, asking him to send him among other works ‘librum ilium de totius imperii Romani dignitatibus et insigni¬ bus’, i.e. the Notitia Dignitatum.^ The manuscript he referred * R. Sabbadini, Le scoperte dei codki latini e greci tie’ secoli XIV e XV, i (Florence, 1905), p. 119; C. Jullian, ‘Note sur un manuscrit de la Notitia Dignitatum’, M/lanj^es d’archdologie et d’histoire, i, 1881, pp. 284-9; W. D. Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1890), p. 299. 2 On the relations of Gloucester, who was the youngest brother of King Henry V, with Decembrio see M. Borsa, ‘Correspondence of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester and Pier Candido Decembrio’, English Historical Review, xix, 1904, pp. 509-26, where the correspondence is printed: the letter in

8

The Author and the Book

to was P, but whether Decembrio ever dispatched it we do not know. The Duke and his agent frequently complain in their correspondence of the nefarious practices of the mercatores, most of them Florentines, who acted as carriers between them; and it is not impossible that one of these mercatores sold the manuscript en route. However that may be, P next appears in France, and is stdl preserved there in the Bibhotheque Nationale. It is not altogether certain that P is a direct copy of the Spirensis, but, if not, its intermediary is now lost, so that its readings have the value of a direct copy, (hi) The third of the four copies of the Spirensis (V) was written in 1484 and was first found at Speyer itself, where it was copied in 1529 for Cardinal Cles (Clesius), Archbishop of Trento, who visited the city in that year. V can be traced subsequently in the archiepiscopal hbrary at Salzburg, and later still, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, at Vienna (Cod. Vindob. lat. 3103). As part of the peace settlement of Europe in 1919 this manuscript was trans¬ ferred from Austria to Italy, and V is now at Trento. It is very carelessly written, and, although the majority of its mistakes could be emended without great difficulty, it is the least valuable of the four copies of the Spirensis. It contains no illustrations, although blank spaces have been left at the appropriate places to receive them. Moreover, the coloured capitals were never added at the beginning of the paragraphs and chapters, although spaces have been left for these also. (The omission of these capitals is not noted in the critical appendix to the present edhion.) (iv) The history of the fourth copy of the Codex Spirensis (M) is of some interest. The value of the Spirensis had been loudly acclaimed by Beatus Rhenanus (1485-1547) in and after the year 1525,^ and early in 1548 the Palatinate prince Otto Heinrich (1502-59) asked the Dean and Canons of Speyer Cathedral to lend him the great manuscript so that he might question is Ep. xviii (p. 524). The chronology is discussed by W. L. Newman, ibid. XX, 1905, pp. 484-98, esp. p. 489. See further K. H. Vickers, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester: A Biography (London, 1907), pp. 353-69, * Lehmann, pp. 12 f.

Manuscripts

9

have it copied. His request was refused because of the bad con¬ dition of the manuscript. But for two years Otto Heinrich persistently negotiated with the Chapter, and at last in June 1550 he received his reward, though it was not precisely the reward which he wanted: the Dean and Canons sent liim a copy of the Spirensis which had in fact been made in 1542.^ This copy was M, and with it Otto Heinrich had to be content for a time, but not a long time. In the troubles which befell Speyer in 1552 Otto Heinrich, who was in the city or its neighbour¬ hood, found an opportunity of laying hands on one or two of the Cathedral manuscripts, among them the one which he was so anxious to own. Accordingly, in a hst of the books included in his private hbrary at Heidelberg written in Otto’s own hand in 1556 we find these two entries: ‘Item ain pirmentin buech mit damwappen und conterfet: Itinerarium Antonini. Item ain gar alt pirmentin buech lateinisch Itinerarium Antonini.’ There can be no doubt that these two manuscripts are respec¬ tively M and the original Spirensis itself.^ Some years after the prince s death a hst was drawn up of those of his books which were sent to the prince Wolfgang, Otto’s heir, at Neuburg on the Danube. This hst, which was made in October 1566, also includes descriptions of the Spirensis and its copy M: Itinerarius Antonini Pii, das alt recht Exemplar uf Pirgament geschrieben, mit alten illuminirten Figuren, gebunden in Bretter, mit weissem Leder iiberzogen. BemeUter Itinerarius Antonini uf Pirgament neu abgeschriben und illuminirt, durch Dechant und Capitl zu Speyr Pfaltzgraf Otthainrichen verehrt, in Bretter gebunden, mit goldtfarben Leder iiberzogen, uf dem Schnitt und Leder vergult und mit messen Spangen beschlagen.^

In 1660 M was taken by the Palatinate prince Phihpp Wilhelm to Diisseldorf, and made its way thence to Mannheim at some * The relevant entries in the minute book of Speyer Cathedral are printed by K. Preisendanz, ‘Ottheinrichs Itinerarium’, Zeitschrift fur Buchkunde, i, 1924, pp. 15 f.; c£ Schottenloher, p. 9. * Ibid., p. 192; Lehmann, p. 21. 3 Schottenloher, pp. 9, 22.

10

The Author and the Book

date before 1800, and finally, in the early years of the nine¬ teenth century, was laid in the Munich Staatsbibhothek, where it still lies (Cod. Monac. lat. 10291). But the fate of the Spirensis itself is very obscure. Together with many other manuscripts which Otto Heinrich had owned it remained in Neuburg with M for some years; but then one after another these manu¬ scripts disappeared. The Spirensis was one of the first to go, and it was long believed by modern scholars to have been utterly lost. But a sohtary page of it was used at Wettersteten near Pfalz-Neuburg in the binding of a record book which dates from the years 1602-3. Presumably the manuscript had been removed from Neuburg at or before the beginning of the seventeenth century and by a stroke of bad luck had been given to someone who did not know its value. At any rate, this one leaf, contauiing part of the text of the Itinerarium Antonini, was found by A. Diemand at Wallerstein in 1906, and K. Schottenloher recognized it in 1927 as the sole surviving part ‘of the once proud manuscript of Speyer’.^ It must be dated, accord¬ ing to Professor Lehmann (p. 23), to the second half of the ninth century or perhaps to the early years of the tenth, and it would seem to have been written in the middle Rhine area.^ In addition to CMPV there are about a dozen other manu¬ scripts in existence, but they are either copies of these four, or are so careless or so defective as to be of httle value for the reconstruction of the text.^ Indeed, one of them, that at Copen¬ hagen, contains the illustrations alone without any text whatever."^ There appear to have existed at one time two other * Diemand (1909); Schottenloher, p. 10. Diemand, pp. 6 £, denied that the leaf could be a part of the Codex Spirensis. Note that the leaf contains two glosses written in German in a sixteenth-century hand: Diemand, p. 7. 2 On the manuscripts see also Seeck (1875), Mommsen, Chron. Min. i, pp. 527 ff., Neher, pp. 8-14, The results reached by Schnabel (1926) have been refuted by Lehmann, pp. 16-20, but not before they had exercised an imfortunate effect on the study of the Codex Spirensis. 3 For a Hst of them see Neher, pp. 8 ff., Mommsen, op. cit., pp. 530 f., Schnabel, pp. 244 ff.

* E. Steffenhagen, ‘Der Gottorfer Codex der Notitia Dignitatum’, Hermes, xix, 1884, pp. 458-61.

Manuscripts

II

direct copies of parts of the Codex Spirensis: httle is known about them, but at least one of them did not contain the de rebus bellicisd A difficult problem is raised by the identity of the manu¬ script used by Gelenius in his edition (1552). Gelenius himself says that his manuscript was recovered ex ultimis Britannis. This excludes the Spirensis itself, wliich, as we have seen, was certainly in Speyer during the years 1542-52. Since nobody will suggest that Gelenius followed a text which was independent of the Spirensis or that he followed one of the four copies CMPV, we must conclude that he used either a derivative of one of the four copies or a manuscript which is now lost. For some years scholars have accepted Neher’s answer to this prob¬ lem, namely that Gelenius used a copy of C.^ Neher draws attention to a note which is added in C by Donato or one of his secretaries at the end of the text of the Notitia Dignitatum, but which in fact refers to the Aethici Cosmographia. It reads thus (fol. 170); ‘exemplata est hec Cosmographia que Scoti dicitur cum picturis ex uetustissimo codice quem habui ex Spirensi bibhotheca, anno domini m. cccc. xxxvi. mense Januario dum ego Petrus Donatus dei pacientia episcopus Paduanus, uice Sanctissimi Domini Eugenii pape iiii Generah Basiliensi Concdio presiderem.’ In view of the word ‘Scoti’ it was widely assumed in Renaissance times and later that the works preserved in the manuscript had been transcribed by Marianus Scotus, who travelled from England to Germany in 1056. Now if Gelenius had had access to this note, we could account for his belief that his manuscript had originated in England, and it would follow that his text must be descended from that of C, for Donato’s note, of course, does not appear in MPV. Neher further argues that the works printed by Gelenius are items 8-13 (exclusive of 12) of the Spirensis, and ^ Schnabel, pp. 243, 246 f.; H. Omont, ‘Le plus ancien manuscrit de la Notitia Dignitatum’, Me'moires de la Societi nationak des antiquaires de France, li, 1891, pp. 225-44. 2 Neher, pp. 17-19; cf., for example, Lehmann, p. 13.

12

The Author and the Book

these are precisely the works preserved in two extant manu¬ scripts, Vaticanus 3715 and Vossianus 44, which are both descendants of C, Furthermore, in the former of these manu¬ scripts there stands over the illustration of the Balhsta quadrirotis a copy of the note which Donato or his secretary had added to C at the end of the Notitia Dignitatum: ‘exemplata est hec cosmographia, quae Scoti dicitur, ad Theodosium Augustum cum picturis’, &c. The addition of the words ‘ad Theodosium Augustum’ must have been made by the scribe of this manu¬ script, for these words are not to be fornid in C itself. Gelenius, it will be remembered (p. 2 above), tentatively dated the de rebus bellicis to the reign of Theodosius; and Neher concludes that all the data can be accounted for if we assume that Gelenius’s text is based on a manuscript copied directly or indirectly from C, such a manuscript as the Vaticanus mentioned above. To the present writer one of these conclusions seems very probable: it is very likely that Gelenius’s dating of the treatise was suggested to him by some such manuscript as Neher pro¬ poses, a manuscript containing Donato’s note with the intru¬ sive words ad Theodosium Augustum. But it is not easy to beheve that Gelenius’s text is descended from C. A complete examina¬ tion of the question would involve a collation of the texts of all the works printed by Gelenius—the Notitia, the Descri¬ ptiones, and the Altercatio in addition to our Anonymus; and such a collation hes outside the scope of the present book. Even in the text of the de rebus bellicis, however, the reader will find one or two facts which are difficult to reconcile with Neher’s view. Thus in praef. 7 Jin. the word turbae is omitted by C, and it would have been difhcult to restore it by conjecture: yet it appears in Gelenius’s text.^ A more striking example, how¬ ever, is one to which Professor P. Maas has drawn attention. It is the last word in cap. ix. This word is uenientium in CM, but uenientum in Gelenius. This would be of Httle significance in itself were it not that PV also have uenientum. What conclusion are we to draw from these facts? That Gelenius and the copyists * Note that Gelenius has non ferenda in iii. i, where C has conseruanda.

Manuscripts

13

of PV should all three have independently changed uenientium into uenientum is incredible. It is beyond doubt that the copyists of CM found uenientum in the Spirensis and not inexcusably changed it into uenientium;^ and it is therefore certain that Gelenius’s text is not based either directly or indirectly on that of C. Either he used a manuscript which is now lost or his manuscript is still extant but has not yet been identified. Of these two alternatives the former is much the more probable, as there is only one copy of V—that made in 1529 for Cardinal Cles (p. 8 above)—and one of P, and this last is dated by Neher (p. 14) to the seventeenth or eighteenth century. More¬ over, Gelenius’s readings lend no support to anyone who would suppose his text to be closely akin to that of either P or V. Can we trace the history of the Anonymus’ text before it was copied into the Codex Spirensis late in the ninth century or early in the tenth? Seeck showed that there is reason for beheving the Spirensis to have been copied from a manu¬ script which was not much older than itself and which may well have been written at the court of Charlemagne, where Alcuin read the Altercatio Hadriani et Epicteti.^ Now items 8-11 and 13 of the Spirensis (pp. 6 f. above) form a corpus of works having some very distinctive features in common. They are all illus¬ trated, and the style of the illustrations is homogeneous and characteristic of one historical period, that of the late Roman or early Byzantine Empire. Moreover, it seems that all of these works were written in the fourth or early in the fifth century. ^ Where and when was this corpus of five works, having these * For this -turn in clausula Professor Maas refers to Vegetius, ii. 3 praecedentum, iii. 4 suggerentum, L. Traube in Mommsen’s ed. of Cassiodorus’ Variae, p. 532. 2 Seeck (1875), p. 231; cf. Schnabel, pp. 253 f. See p. 61 below. For Alcuin see W. Wilmanns, Zeitschriftfiir deutsches Altertum, xiv, 1869, pp. 530-55> 3 The Altercatio, however, is notoriously difficult to date with certainty: see Schnabel, pp. 255 f., Daly in L. W. Daly and W. Suchier, Altercatio Hadriani Augusti et Epicteti Philosophi (Illinois Studies in Language and Litera¬ ture, vol. xxiv. Nos. 1-2), Illinois, 1939, pp. 75-79- Contrast £. Ldfstedt, ‘Zur Datierung der Altercatio Fladriani et Epicteti’, Classica et Mediaevalia, vii, 1945, pp. 146-9, whose arguments, however, seem scarcely conclusive.

14

The Author and the Book

curious points of similarity, first assembled? To the present writer it seems unhkely that such a corpus could have been put together for the first time at the court of Charlemagne, and it is perhaps safe to assume that the five works in question had been combined in a single manuscript even before the time of Charlemagne. Further than that it is difficult to go, and the reader will readily see that what follows is largely conjectural. Scholars are still divided on the question of whether the Notitia Dignitatum is a Western or an Eastern work. The author of the de rebus bellicis, as we have seen, is interested in the defence of the Eastern rather than of the Western frontiers; and in that fact we have perhaps a hint that the corpus of works in question originated in Constantinople rather than in Ravemia.^ If this were granted, it would foUow that the Anonymus addressed his work to Valens in the first instance rather than to Valentinian.^ Now it was pointed out long ago by Pancirofi that the character of some of these documents, and especially the Notitia Dignitatum, would seem to indicate that this corpus had once belonged to the archive of a Roman official.^ If so, it would foUow that the text of the de rebus bellicis preserved in the Codex Spirensis is directly descended from the very exemplar which the author sent to the Emperor and which, according to our conjecture (p. 6 above), was intercepted and pigeon-holed by a civil servant. Our text is not, on this sup¬ position, descended from any pubhshed copy; and in fact there is no evidence and httle probabihty that the de rebus bellicis was ever pubHshed by its author. The problem is not. How did the de rebus bellicis come to be in a civil servant’s archive? If the author sent it to the Emperor at all, that is precisely where we should expect his manuscript to end up. The problem is rather. How did the Altercatio make its way thither ? Fortunately, ^ Cf. Schnabel, p. 254. 2 This appears to be the view of A. Piganiol, L’Empire chre'tien {325-395), Paris, 1947, p. 334. 3 See Panciroli’s Introduction to his edition; Seeck (1894); Schnabel, p. 254. The Notitia Dignitatum was a document belonging to the Primicerius Notariorum.

Manuscripts

15

an attempt to answer that question lies outside the scope of the present edition. At any rate, it is clear that before the de rebus bellicis was transcribed into the archetype of the Spirensis it had been copied and re-copied a sufficient number of times to allow the text to become deeply corrupted in more than one passage. Consider the sentence in xiv. i fin., the most difficult in the treatise. CMPV enable us to reconstruct the reading of the Spirensis with certainty, for there is no discrepancy whatever between them. Yet the words of the author would appear to have been hopelessly lost. First, the Anonymus wrote an antithesis of which the second limb has disappeared: there is nothing in our text to balance the clause beginning quod in illo, &c. If the missing clause began with the words hie autem (or the like), the explanation of the omission would seem to be that a copyist’s eye jumped to the next sentence, which in fact begins hie etiam. But this is not all: even in the clause which remains there is an extensive corruption. It is difficult to resist the impression that the words dum ipsum equitem portat are a gloss on pondus bella¬ toris subit, and that this gloss has ousted the subject o{amplectitur. For, as the text stands, the subject of this verb must be equus, and we are therefore faced with the task of discovering on what occasions a horse embraces its rider or its car. Finally, there is nothing in the context to explain why the temo should be concealed, and it looks as though a reference to the cataphract’s covering of mail is required here. Whatever be the exact nature of the corruption in this passage, it would appear to have resulted from a long process of transcription and re-transcription of our author’s text. A word may be added concerning the illustrations. In an interesting notice at the beginning of M we are told that when Otto Heinrich received this copy of the Codex Spirensis he feared that the illustrations in it had been ‘modernized’: they were, as he says elsewhere, uf die newe hande gemalt.^ His fears were well grounded, for the miniatures distributed throughout * Lehmann, p. 14.

i6

The Author and the Book

the text of his copy are in fact in a florid Renaissance style. As Seeck says, they strongly resemble the designs of a Cranach or a Griinewald;^ and indeed they are modernized to a far greater extent than those of C or even those of P. Otto Hein¬ rich, therefore, ordered the illustrations to be copied again: he instructed his own painter ‘uf geoldrenckt pappeir die alte figuren durchzuzeichnen’;^ and accordingly a second set of pictures is found at the end of his manuscript. Unhappily, in spite of Otto Heinrich’s precise instructions, the mechanical work of copying wearied the illuminator, who performed his task with considerable negligence and it may be that the miniatures in C are the most valuable extant. Of them we are told that they ‘are the work of a German illuminator of the Upper Rhenish school who also worked for Bishop Donatus on the illumination of another MS. (now Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MS. 180)’.'^ They are dehghtfuUy coloured and are well worth inspecting by visitors at the Bodleian. It is clear, however, that no useful study of the Anonymus’ designs can be made until the pictures in C together with the second set in M have been pubhshed in colour. It is earnestly hoped that this wfll be done before long, for these pictures would tell us much, not only about the Anonymus, but also about the illustration of ancient pagan books in general and about the equipment of the late Roman army.s In the meantime, how¬ ever, we may agree with Reinach that the pictures in CMP— * Seeck (1875), p. 219, where the notice in M is printed. * Lehmann, loc. cit. 3 Seeck (1875), pp. 219 f. Two illustrations from this second set are repro¬ duced—though, alas, not in colour—^by Schneider (1910). * See Italian Illuminated Manuscripts from 1400 to 1500: Catalogue of an Exhibition Held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1^48, p. 16, No. 45. 5 For book illustration in the fourth and fifth centuries see a series of illus¬ trated and well documented articles by A. W. Byvanck, ‘Antike Buchmalerei’, Mnemosyne, ser. iii, vol. vi, 1938, pp. 241-51, vii, 1939, pp. 115-35, viii, i939-40> PP- 177-98. The Codex Spirensis is considered in the third of these articles, but unfortunately Byvanck was misled by Schnabel (1926) into accept¬ ing Schneider’s fantastic dating of the de rebus bellicis (for which see p. 22 below).

Manuscripts

17

it will be recalled that there are none in V (p. 8 above)— reproduce with substantial accuracy the original designs of the i^ionymus; for the Anonymus’ hterary style is so obscure and rebarbatij^thzt no illustrations could have been devised with the aid of the text aloned IV. MODERN STUDY OF THE TREATISE

The de rebus bellicis was first printed in 1552 at Basle by Gelenius (Siegmimd Ghelen) at the end ofliis text of the Notitia Dignitatum. Gelenius included the illustrations in a drastically modermzed form in his edition, of which some copies were pubhshed with the illustrations in colour—there is such a copy in the British Museum. The lengthy title of his book ends with the words: ‘Subjungitur Notitiis uetustus liber de rebus bellicis ad Theodosium Aug. & fUios eius Arcadium atq; Honorium, ut uidetur, scriptus, incerto auctore.’ The problem raised by the words ad Theodosium Aug. and the question of the manuscript which Gelenius used have been discussed above, and we have seen that the edition is not without independent value for the reconstruction of the text. Gelenius’s text was reproduced with a varying number of misprints at least five times: by Scriuerius in 1607, by Panciroli in 1608 and 1623,2 by Labbe in 1651 and in a reprint of Labbe’s work issued in 1729,2 and finally, after an immense interval, by R. Schneider in 1908. In other words, Gelenius’s text held the field unchallenged for exactly 370 years; for it was not until 1922 that M. Salomon Reinach collated P and published a new text in the Revue archeologique. Unhappily, Reinach’s text was * Reinach, p. 208; cf. Schneider (1908), p. 29. The illustrations of P are reproduced by H. Omont (see Bibhography), Plates 2-13, though, again, not in colour; for a short description of them see Berthelot (1900), pp. 174 if. They have been modernized to a considerably greater extent than those of C. ^ In fact, PanciroH died in 1599, and the de rebus bellicis was added to his text of the Notitia Dignitatum (first and second editions 1593 and 1602) after his death, in the third and fourth editions. I do not know who made this addition. 3 So Neher, p. 16, but I confess that I have not seen a copy of this reprint. 6314

C

l8

The Author and the Book

in no small degree inferior to that of Gelenius. He introduced a considerable number of arbitrary, and perhaps inadvertent, changes hito the text, and his collation of P was so hurried that in one passage he omitted seven consecutive words given both by P and by Gelenius. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that, apart from the accumulation of theories and facts relating to the Codex Spirensis, the study of the Anonymus’ text has made no progress since the year 1552. Modern study of the de rebus bellicis falls into three clearly marked periods: (i) In the first period, that of the Renaissance, scholars were interested in the book primarily for its practical value: they beheved that the Anonymus’ inventions might actually be constructed and put to use. The present writer must confess his inadequacy to discuss the topic, but it may be permitted to reproduce one or two conclusions reached by recent students of the Anonymus. A fact of some interest, which has been clearly established by Berthelot, Neher, and Reinach, is that study of the Anonymus’ drawings began even before the publication of the printed text by Gelenius in 1552: several of the inferior manuscripts circulated in Italy and elsewhere, and attracted considerable attention. For instance, an engineer named Konrad Kyeser von Eichstadt (1366-c. 1405), the author of a curious treatise called ‘BeUifortis’, written between 1395 and 1405, studied the possibilities of the scythed chariot, an engine of war which aroused much interest in western Europe, though not, it seems, in the Byzantine East, at the end of the Middle Ages. The hope was that it would be possible to mount guns on the chariot and to use it in battle; and the designs of some war chariots in Kyeser’s manuscript are almost identical with the chariots described and illustrated in the de rebus bellicis. Kyeser’s interest was not confined to the scythed chariots: he also devoted considerable thought to the warship and the bridge of our author. His aim was to bring the Anonymus’ ideas up to date and to put them into practice.^ But a more interesting * Berthelot, ‘Le Livre’, &c., p. 10.

Modem Study of the Treatise

19

student of the Anonymus than Kyeser was Leonardo da Vinci. One of his drawings bears an extraordinary resemblance to that of our author s bridge, and we can have no hesitation in agreeing with Reinach that the resemblance cannot be due to chance.^ Indeed, Berthelot had already shown that several of Leonardo s designs are modelled on those of the Anonymus.^ It is unhkely that Leonardo had seen the miniatures in the Codex Spirensis itself, but he had certainly seen copies of them. The interesting point is that he, like Kyeser and others, was attracted by the drawings because he considered that it might be possible to construct and use the actual machines. Examples of such interest in the work of the Anonymus could be multiplied,^ but Kyeser and Leonardo are sufficient to illustrate our point that it was the Anonymus’ practical value that particularly appealed to scholars at this time. It was not long, however, before men became aware that the techniques of the Renais¬ sance were far superior to anything that the Anonymus—or any other Roman—had ever dreamed of; and in 1593 Panciroh refused to print the de rebus bellicis at the end of his edition of the Notitia Dignitatum because, as he said, ‘other mihtary tormenta have been discovered now, and since these [of the Anonymus] seem to be of less use, I thought that there was no need to spend time in explaining them’.4 (ii) In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, despite the occasional reprints of Gelenius’s text, the Anonymus fell into that obscurity from which he has never fuUy emerged. In the ' Reinach, p. 241. ^ Berthelot (1902),p. 119.1 strongly suspect that further study of Leonardo’s notebooks would show that he was even more deeply influenced by the Anonymus than has been supposed. The Anonymus’ drawings, gaily coloured though they be, make a sad comparison with those of Leonardo. Observe that the Notitia Dignitatum was also known in Italy before the appearance of the editio princeps: Muller (1916), p. 1525. 3 Some may, however, doubt Neher’s view (pp. i, 43, 66), accepted by Reinach, p. 244, that Roger Bacon knew our pamphlet.

* This statement still remains in the edition of 1608 at p. 18$ Jin., although, as we have seen (p. 17, n. 2 above), the text of the Anonymus is printed in that edition at pp. 201-23.

20

The Author and the Book

seventeenth century students of the art of war occasionally refer to him, but it may be doubted whether many now subscribed to the view that his inventions might be of some practical use. Moreover, his style was not such as would attract the great Latin scholars of the age; and so in this period he appealed neither to the engineer nor to the critic, and his work is mentioned rarely save in dictionaries.^ His strange neologisms caught the all-seeing eye of a Ducange and one or two others, but his machines were practically forgotten, and throughout the first half of the nineteenth century no writer seems to have mentioned him at all. (iii) When references to our author once more begin to appear (from 1853 onwards to 1922), it is the machines alone which attract attention. This, indeed, is no more than we might expect; for his style could not serve as a model to generations reared on the dehghts of Latin Prose Composition. But the attention shovm to the machines was not such as the author would have welcomed. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth such scholars as glanced at the de rebus bellicis did not fad to ridicule its author, Kochly and Riistow in 1853 in their work on the Greek military writers devote an appendix to what they call das wunderliche Buck, and profess themselves unable to grasp ‘dass Jemand nach rhnen [i.e, the miniatures] iiberhaupt etwas nachahmen konne, ganz abstrahirt davon, ob es Geschiitze seien oder Niimberger Spielzeug’.^ Their conclusion is the untenable one that the miniatures are the forgeries of a monkish scribe. Seeck, although he fixed what seems the most likely date for the treatise, considered the de rebus bellicis to be ‘die Denkschrift eines verriickten Projectenmachers’, and the machines in particular to be ‘aUe nur Einfalle ernes kranken Himes’.^ Again, although Vegetius is not an author for whom students of the Roman army have an imbounded admiration, his com¬ pilations, in Schneider’s opinion, ‘stehen , . . iiberall turmhoch * References in Neher, p. 3. (1908), p. 3172.

3 Seeck (1894)

2 Kochly and Riistow, i, pp. 414 f.

Modern Study of the Treatise

21

liber dem torichten Gerede des Anonymus’. Schneider con¬ cludes that the Anonymus is ein phantastischer Weltverbesserer, um den sich niemand zu kiimmem braucht’, and after giving a summary of the contents of the work he observes that readers ‘werden am Ende gar nicht begreifen, warum man solch einen Autor iiberhaupt ediert, und was der Streit um sein Alter fiir Zweck hat’d Perhaps it was because he had formed this esti¬ mate of his author that Schneider adopted the curious pro¬ cedure of collating the manuscripts after he had pubhshed his edition of the textd After 1918 the western world was somewhat more diffident than it had been in the nineteenth century, a fact which revealed itself even in the study of the Anonymus; and a new respect for his efforts was soon manifested. Reinach treated ce technicien intelligent with considerable admiration, and drew attention to 1 interet considerable qui s’attache a ces quelques pages oubliees, tant pour 1 histoire generale du IV® siecle a son declin que pour celle des appHcations de la science dans I’antiquite’.^ Some may agree with the present writer that a truer value was set upon the Anonymus by M. Andre Piganiol in 1947: ‘Ce petit fivre est plus lourd de reflexions audacieuses et sages, de promesses de progres, de confiance dans la pensee, plus plein d’avenir que toute la legislation d’un Valentinien, pour qui I’empire n’est qu’une immense prison.’'^ It is scarcely worth our while to waste time on the extra¬ ordinary series of dates which have been assigned to the de rebus bellicis, for it is now agreed on all sides that, as Seeck saw,^ ' Schneider (1910),pp. 335,342, cf.pp. 334,341 ‘demharmlosen Schwatzer’. Birley, p. 209, also compares Vegerius favourably with the Anonymus, and cf. Mommsen quoted in n. 5 below. ^ Ibid., p. 339: his edition had appeared in 1908. Lejay, p. 290, describes the machines as reves de songe-creux. ^ Reinach, pp. 254 f. + Piganiol, op. cit. (on p. 14, n. 2 above), p. 200, cf p. 390 ‘un esprit merveilleusement inventif’. 5 Seeck (1894). Mommsen’s opinion of the work was this {Chron. Min. i.

528): ‘quando scriptus sit, ignoratur: sed doctrinae Vegetianae non multum cedit et sine dubio antiquae aetatis est, etsi extremae, non medii aeui.’

The Author and the Book

22

it is a product of the second half of the fourth century. It was a small matter that Neher attributed the pamphlet to the reign of Justinian; he was quickly refuted by Muller and by Reinach independently.^ Oehler’s suggestion that the booklet was written in the reign of Heraclius was withdrawn by its author a few years after it had been propounded.^ But Rudolf Schneider seems never to have abandoned his view that the de rebus bellicis was not an ancient work at all but the product of a Humanist of the fourteenth century. ^ He based his view on the argument that the Anonymus’ inventions would not have been practicable in the fourth century, that such inventions could only have been proposed at a time when they were practicable, and that the earliest such date was the late fourteenth century. We have only to state the argument to see that it consists of one non sequitur piled upon another, like Pelion upon Ossa. And when Seeck asked how a fourteenth-century pamphlet had come to be preserved in a manuscript written in the tenth centuryhis question was not easy to answer. Schnabel, it is true, tried to show that the de rebus bellicis was in fact added to the Codex Spirensis about the year 1400, but his arguments have been utterly refuted by P. Lehmann. ^

B. THE CONTENTS OF THE BOOK V. THE PREFACE

The Style of the opening section of the work is even more elaborate than that of the rest of the book; and a study of the clausulae has revealed the pains which the author took in com¬ posing this curious piece of Latin.^ But clearly his ear was not ' Miiller (1916); Reinach, pp. 213 f.; cf. Lejay (1912), p. 345. ^ See Bibliography s.v. Oehler. 3 See the introduction to his edition (1908); his view was at once accepted by Manitius (1910), re-asserted by Schneider himself (1910), and revived by Schnabel, pp. 256 f., and others.

Seeck (1908).

s Lehmann, pp. 19 f.

* Lejay (1909). In one of the lesser manuscripts there stands in the margin opposite the title de rebus bellicis the apt words in stilo elaborato: see R. Sabbadini,

The Preface

23

offended by the repetition of words at short intervals. The word utilitas occurs three times in the second sentence of the Preface and twice again before the paragraph ends. And the reader will not fail to notice the tiresome repetition of fides, subnixa, felicitas, tractantibus, and magisterio. In fact, in spite of all his care the task of composing a passage of prose of which an ‘optimus orator might have approved was scarcely within his power. One function of the Preface is to indicate briefly to the Emperor the contents of the rest of the treatise. ^ The author singles out the Imperial largitiones for mention at the very beginning, for in his opinion, as we shall see, these lay at the root of the Empire’s troubles. After discussing them he wdl outline reforms designed to benefit the various social classes in the Empire—the leisured, the mditary, the agricultural, and the commercial.^ After briefly sketching the character of the proposed reforms, he finally adds that in order to provide light rehef he will have something to say about certain military machines.3 Of these he specifies the warship, one of the scythed chariots, and the bridge, the three, in fact, which are the most striking of them all. Although he here mentions these machines in an incidental and rather off-hand manner, it will not be doubted that they lay very near to his heart. If the reforms which he proposes are put into operation, he undertakes that their effect will be to relieve the State from its present unhappy phght.'^ The Preface does not refer to all that follows in the body of the work; but on the other hand everything mentioned here ‘Spogli Ambrosiani Latini’, Studi italiani di filologia classica, xi, 1903, pp. 165388 at p. 260. * In the Preface he speaks of the ‘Emperors’, principes, in the plural; but elsewhere (except in iii. 2 uestrae, where he is dealing with the Imperial coinage) he uses the singular, imperator, only. The work is formally addressed to two Emperors, but he proceeds to concentrate on one—presumably the one who governed the part of the Empire in which he himself was hving: see Schneider (1910), p. 327, Neher, pp. 58 ff., and especially Muller (1916), p. 1554, who gives parallels. We have conjectured (p. 14 above) that the Emperor in question was Valens. ^ Praef. 6. 3 Praef. 7. Praef. 10.

24

The Contents of the Book

is in fact taken up in later chapters, so that the Preface provides no basis for supposing that the treatise, as we have it, is incomplete^ The Preface, then, contains something like a ‘Table of Con¬ tents’; but it also has another function. To suggest a reform is implicitly to offer a criticism; and in late Roman times to criticize the reigning Emperor was an act implying some courage in the critic. It may be no coincidence that the work has survived anonymously. At any rate, in the Preface the author makes no secret of his anxiety. Indeed, he says that he wants no praise if his suggestions relating to the largitiones prove acceptable: it wdl be an ample reward if he escapes the Emperor’s wrath at his audacity in writing on such a subject at all.2 The largitiones were evidently a particularly dangerous topic to raise. But later he does not confine his apprehensions to them: the entire subject-matter of the treatise is Hable to contain pitfalls. If, then, he speaks somewhat freely, as the critical situation of the Empire demands that he should, he claims that the Emperor must pardon him in the interests of the freedom of science, propter philosophiae libertatem.^ Moreover, in addition to the Emperor, the Emperor’s ministers must not be offended. He therefore points out that if the reforms which he is about to propose have not been made before that is in no way the fault of the Imperial ministers: these reforms are of course well known to them already, but the ministers are distracted by quantities of other business and cannot think of everything.^ 1 Reinach, pp. 252, 265, considers the end of the work to have been lost. He also says (p. 211) that although fortifications are discussed in the penidtimate chapter of the work they are not mentioned in the Preface; but cf. praef. 7 ‘erectis castrorum munitionibus’. 2 Praef. 2 Jin. His thought here is so cltunsily expressed (to say the least of it) that if we were dealing with a clearer-headed writer it would be tempting to emend. In fact. Professor Maas is inclined to beheve that the Anonymus wrote something like: ‘ne promissioni fides accommodata uelut fallacem in posterum grauet, si promissio"secus cesserit, pro conscientia ueritatis ipse mihi poenam, praemii loco, (etiam si bene cesserit) posco; ne me’, &c. 3 Praef. 10 Jin. Praef 10. Similarly Vegetius in his prefaces to Books I-II is careful not to assume ignorance in the Emperor whom he addresses.

The Preface

25

There are one or two other tactful passages in the Preface. Thus, it appears from later pages that the largitas of the Em¬ perors is not only the cause of wars but indeed the cause of the decline of the Empire itself.^ Accordingly, it is singled out for special mention at the very beginning of the treatise. But it is here referred to as an inmensa utilitas; and at some cost to his style (p. 23 above) the author hastens to bring mto that very sentence, in which he mentions this inmensa utilitas, another reference to the largitionum utilitas. It would have been bad tactics to danm the Emperor’s generosity to his troops, &c., in the very first paragraph of the book. Again, we are told in the body of the work that the provincials are groaning under the damna reipublicae non ferenda, the execranda cupiditas of the provincial Governors and their understrappers, and so on.^ But not so in the Preface. In it every social class in the Empire ‘rejoices in the fehcity of your age’.^ In a word, there is scarcely a sentence in the Preface (apart from those which merely outline the con¬ tents of the treatise) which does not in some way hint at the dehcacyofthe author’s position. The ‘hbertas philosophiae’ was not based on very secure foundations in the fourth century a.d. The author shields his temerity in proposing reforms to the Emperor behind a curious excuse. The prosperity of the Empire is brought about by divine inspiration, caelesti instinctu,^ and that is precisely why he makes his suggestions in the first place it is divine providence, prouidentia diuinitatis, that has inspired his brain v/ith these ideas,^ and it is by heaven’s leave that he puts them before the Emperor, ‘magnum uobis munus con¬ cessu diuinitatis apporto’.In a word, he presumes to suggest * i. I, ii. 1-3.

2 iii. i, iv. i.

3 Praef. 6.

* Praef. i init. I cannot agree with Neher, pp. 56, 62 £, that caelestis here = ‘Imperial’ and that diuinitatis, praef. 5 and 10, also refers to the Emperor. ® Praef. 2 unde. * Praef 5, xxi. With the phrase at p. 92. i cf. ii. 4 Jin., SHA. Anton. Diadum. ii. 10 ‘puellae quae tarn grati nominis gloriam propagarent’, CIL. xi. 4781 ‘ad aeternam diuini nominis propagationem’ (Constantius andJulian),&c. ^ Praef. 10. It is not suggested, of course, that in putting forward this excuse he wrote with his tongue wholly in his cheek.

26

The Contents of the Book

alterations in the government of the Empire only because he is inspired by heaven! In the Christian Empire, the foimtainhead of what is called the ‘Western Tradition’, freedom of speech for the humbler classes is conspicuously absent. VI. THE COINAGE

It is calamitous that the first sentence of the first chapter following on the Preface should have been transmitted to us imperfectly, for in it the author seems to have had something of exceptional interest to say. His words cannot be restored with certainty, but it is not impossible that the conjectures of Schrijver and Reinach give us the general sense of the original.^ If so, the thought is probably as follows: The Treasury benefits from military victories, but the Emperor must take care not to dissipate such gains by extravagant grants to his soldiers and servants: otherwise, he will have to recoup his losses by engaging in further wars. The vicious circle can be broken if the Emperor cuts down his expenses. Then he will be able to spare the taxpayers the burden of providing for continual campaigns. If, on the other hand, his extravagant expenditure empties the Treasury, our financial position will be very different from what it was in the good old days.^ Since this restoration of the passage is hypothetical, we need not attempt to elaborate it. But on any reconstruction one fact seems to emerge clearly enough: in the opinion of the Anonymus the Emperors sometimes engaged in war in order to replenish their Treasury. The words ne profusa largitio semina magis excitet proehorum’ seem to estabhsh this. It is greatly to be regretted that our author does not expand this statement and cite examples. Reference to the practice of olden days leads him to review the place of the coinage in early Roman history, and he dis¬ tinguishes three periods in its development: (i) In the earhest of these gold and silver were used only for * Reinach, pp. 214 f. See critical note on i. i. ^ i. I. See Addenda.

The Coinage

27

the decoration of public buddings^ and bronze was used in addition for statuary (if that is the meaning suggested by simulacra). For purposes of trade and royal distributions of money earthenware ‘coins’, stamped with definite, recognized types, played the part which was afterwards taken by bronze coins, (ii) With the passage of time men despised the earthen¬ ware coins of their ancestors and used instead leather disks stamped with a little gold. Trade and the royal distributions, in which earthenware coins had been used in the previous age, were now served by these leather disks.^ (iii) In the third period the supply of bronze was greater than ever before and was not all consumed on the ornamentation of buildings. Men there¬ fore coined bronze and stamped it with the king’s head.3 Gold and silver also began to be coined now, and these, too, were similarly stamped. But they did not yet circulate as money; they were ‘sacred to the king’s honour’. Bronze alone circulated and was used for trade and donatives to the troops.'^ Before discussing these three periods we may notice that in the next chapter a fourth period is mentioned, the period which begins with the reign of Constantine. It was in this reign, says the Anonymus, that gold replaced bronze even in small financial transactions; that is to say, gold then became cheap in its turn. Now, an error must not be ascribed to him when he is not guilty. It is unfair to accuse him of saying that gold was coined for the first time in the reign of Constantine. ^ What he says is that the value of gold became so small in Constantine’s reign that it now played a role similar to that played by bronze in the previous age mentioned by him. It is also unfair to accuse him of omitting a very large step in his argument: he is not unaware of the existence of the gold coinage of the Repubhc and Empire down to Constantine’s time.^ His purpose is not to write a * In late Latin moenia = ‘public buildings’ is often distinguished from tnuri = ‘walls’, and here Neher, p. 22, rightly equates the word with Prachtbauten. But at p. 96. 8 moenia appears clearly to mean ‘walls’. 2 i. 2. See Fig. I. ^ p. 94. 18. ♦ i. 3-4. s Neher, p. 64; cf. Reinach, p. 216, who himself avoids the error. * Schneider (1910), p. 328; Neher, loc. cit.

28

The Contents of the Book

complete history of the Roman coinage, but merely to contrast the contemporary scene with uetustas.^ And he makes this con¬ trast by showing that in primitive times kings squandered more or less worthless objects like earthenware, leather, and (when it, too, became cheap) bronze, the expenditure of which did not hurt the taxpayers.^ This state of affairs was very unlike that which has prevailed since Constantine’s reign, when the largitiones of the Emperors by no means spare the taxpayers. The coinage of the earHer Empire is irrelevant to his argument. Let us return now to the first three periods distinguished by our author. What are we to make of his earthenware coins and his leather disks? We shall find the Anonymus’ thought paral¬ leled in some measure if we turn to the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville.^ According to Isidore, too, a gold and silver coinage was not primitive.^ What, then, was used in the place of gold and silver? The word pecunia, says Isidore, is derived from pecus, ‘for coins were cut from the hides of cattle, and were stamped’.5 It will scarcely be doubted that we have here the origin of the behef in leather coins: they were a figment designed to explain the (correct) derivation of the word pecunia from pecus. Now the entire passage of Isidore, which includes a brief history of the primitive coinage, corresponds at more than one point with that of our author; and since the two men are writing independently of one another and since neither is Hkely to have concocted the whole tale out of his head, it is probable that they are both drawing directly or indirectly on a common source. Fortunately it seems possible to identify this source. Some of the information given by Isidore is precisely repeated by John of Antioch and by Suidas, and the latter names his authority: it was Suetonius.^ ’ 2. ^ i. 2 fin. ‘intactis collatoribus’. ^ Etym. xvi. i8. 3 fF. ^ Ibid. 5 ‘antiquissimi nondum auro argentoque inuento aere utebantur’. Isidore also believes (xvi. 20. i) that at an early date bronze was used only for making statues and buildings. 5 Ibid. 18. 3 ‘de corio enim pecudum nmnmi incidebantur et signabantur’. For the derivation of pecunia see also Phny, NH. xxxiii. 3. 43.

* Compare Isidore, Etym. xvi. 18. 10 with John of Antioch, frag. 33 (with

The Coinage

29

The view of early monetary history sketched by our author seems to have originated, then, in a lost work of Suetonius; and it may be that the Anonynius, who was by no means un¬ educated, derived his knowledge directly from Suetonius’ work. It is superfluous, therefore, to point out that according to Nicolaus of Damascus and to Seneca leather coins were in fact used in Lacedaemon, and that according to the author of the pseudo-Platonic Eryxias they also circulated in Carthage.^ Whether Suetonius also discussed earthenware coins we can¬ not tell. Such ‘coins’ have in fact been foimd in several parts of the ancient world;^ but whether or not these were true coins is beside the point, for our author is concerned not with what he had himself observed but with what he had read in his source. We may now note that it is possible to assign an approximate date to the last of the three periods of uetustas discussed by our author. According to the tradition which he is following, metal coins were first made by Numa.^ The third of his periods, then, begins with the reign of Numa, so that his first periods lay in the mythical times of Romulus and his predecessors, a conclusion which receives some sHght confirmation from the Anonymus’ statement that in these early days the Romans were hving in rehus egenis; for this is a phrase used by Virgil of the time of Euander, and the recollection of Virgil’s phrase is doubtless a conscious one.'^ Miiller’s note in FHG. iv, p. 553), and Suidas, s.v. daadpia, where TpayKvXios is named. I am indebted here to Neher, p. 21, Muller (1916), p. 1530, Reinach, p. 216. * Nicolaus of Damascus, frag. 103 2; (Jacoby, FGrH. u a, p. 387); Seneca, de Benefic. v. 14. 4 ‘corium forma pubhca percussum, quale apud Lacedae¬ monios fuit, quod usum numeratae pecuniae praestat’; Eryxias 400 a. For Rome itself see Cedrenus, i, p. 260 Bonn. The coins entitled de corio in the Anonymus’ drawing arc represented by black circles with small gold squares inset at the top: see Fig. I. ^ E. Babelon, Traite' des tnonnaiesgrecques etromaines, i (Paris, 1901), p. 377. On glass coins see A. de Longperier, ‘Monnaies du Serapeum de Memphis’, Revue numismatique, n.s. vi, 1861, pp. 407-28, at pp. 413 f. 3 Isidore, Etym. xvi. 18. 10; Suidas, loc. cit.; and John of Antioch, loc. cit. * i. 2; Virgil, Aen. viii. 365.

30

The Contents of the Book

One or two further points may be briefly considered. The Anonymus’ view that in times before the precious metals were coined gold and silver were used only for decorating buildings while bronze was only employed for that purpose and for making statues is untrue. But perhaps it is in some measure pardonable, for we are told that ‘from prehistoric times Rome, in common with the other tribes of Italy, had been accustomed to the use of metal as a convenient instrument of payment. But gold and silver were as yet rare commodities, instruments of luxury and art rather than of commercial life.’* And even a bronze coinage developed at Rome only at a surprisingly late date. We may therefore perhaps forgive our author for asking how in that case commercial life proceeded at all in primitive Rome, and for suggesting that non-metalHc currencies were used. Again, it should be observed that in the Anonymus’ opinion it was trade and the giving of donatives to the troops which called forth the various issues of coins. This opinion is only partly true, for we are assured that ‘regular issues for pur¬ poses of trade can hardly be proved’ in early Roman times.^ Most issues were brought out, however, because of the exigencies of war, so that to that extent our author is correct. Finally, we must notice that in his view gold and silver when first stamped did not serve as coinage but rather as medalhons.^ Here, too, the error is not a gross one, for ‘the ancient coin had often something of a medaUic character—that is to say, it referred directly to particular historical happenings of the time... . The Roman Imperial coinage is, in fact, a series of medals, narrating the history and suggesting the atmosphere of pohtical hfe, reign by reign.’4 A charitable reader might conclude that some of the Anonymus’ views on the coinage are anachronistic rather than totally erroneous. His merit is that he has seen fit to discuss the coinage at all: he realizes that the coinage, too, has a history ’ H. Mattingly, Roman Coins (London, 1928), p. xvii. Elsewhere (ii. 5) the Anonymus for the sake of an epigram denies that gold existed at all in the Golden Age. 2 Mattingly, op. dt., p. 90. 3 i ^fin. H. Mattingly, Cambridge Ancient History, xii, p. 714.

The Coinage

31

and that it developed with the general developnient of society. Having now estabhshed the point, as he beheves, that the early Romans were spared much hardship by the restrained and harmless character of the early kings’ largitas, the Anonymus proceeds to examine the effects of the lavish expenditure of contemporary Emperors.

VII. THE DECLINE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

With sound historical instinct our author suggests no reforms until he has submitted the contemporary scene to an historical analysis. His analysis amounts to an examination of the reasons for the decline of the Empire. It is the most striking chapter in his book. The question of the decline of Roman power was vigorously debated at the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth, and a wide variety of causes was suggested—the growth of luxury, the rise of Christianity, the continued existence of paganism, and so forth. ^ But Christian and pagan alike agreed on one point: they all suggested psychological, subjective reasons for the decay of the Empire. And their remedies were similar: men’s personal outlook and behaviour must be changed or reversed; they must be content with a more Spartan exis¬ tence; they must alter their rehgious or sectarian principles, and so on. Now the extreme originahty of the Anonymus is that scarcely a hint of such speculations and whimsies on the nature of the decline can be found in his work.^ His theory, despite its in¬ adequacy, has the advantage of being couched solely in terms of economic and social relations, of which in fact the psycho¬ logical phenomena mentioned by other writers are merely * See, for example, S. Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire (London, 1898), cap. ii et al. * One idealistic phrase is a caecitate quadam, ii. i fin., which conceals a process that should have been fiurther analysed: it recalls Diocletian’s quadam animorum caecitate in the Edict on Prices (p. 312, ed. Graser). Note, too, abstinere opibus, ii. 5.

32

The Contents of the Book

the manifestations. The root of the trouble, according to the Anonymus, is the extravagant largitas of the Emperors and particularly of Constantine. His thought may be summarized as follows: In ancient times vast quantities of gold, silver, and precious stpnes were accumulated in the pagan temples. These were confiscated by Constantine and were either put directly into circulation or dis¬ tributed to the public in some other way. The result was inflation and a sharp rise in prices. In consequence, the wealthy became wealthier than ever, and the poor were even more cruelly oppressed and exploited than before. No matter where the poor looked they saw no respect for law, and so they took to crime [as the author puts it] to remedy their phght. Driven off the land altogether they became brigands, desolating the provinces and supporting usurping Emperors.’' In a word, the disastrous condition of the Empire was due, in the opinion of the Anonymus, to what we should nowadays call an intensification of the class struggle, brought about by the inflation of the fourth century. This inflation has attracted much attention from scholars in recent years; it wfll be sufficient for our purpose to note the following points: (i) That the temple treasures were confiscated and spent on a lavish scale by the first Christian Emperor is a fact noted by several fourth-century authors.^ We can scarcely doubt— though no contemporary writer other than our Anonymus ^'^gg^sts this—that these confiscations and Constantine’s abijndant issues of solidi, which resulted from them, added con¬ siderably to the inflation. The Anonymus, in short, has presented us here with a new historical fact, a fact of interest and im¬ portance.'His error is the supposition that the inflation was wholly due to this activity of Constantine.^ In fact, of course, * ii. 1-3^ Eusebius, VC. iii. i; 54; Laud. Const, vii. 13; viii; ix. 6; Julian, Or. vii. 228 b (who says that the process was continued by Constantine’s sons); Libanius, Or. xxx. 6. For a modern view see A. Piganiol, op. cit. (on p. 14, n. 2 above), p. 68. In fact, we know that the reign of Constantine was characterized by an increased emission of gold coinage; see Stevens, n. 26. ^ ii. I. See Addenda.

The Decline of the Roman Empire

33

the inflation had originated in the middle of the previous century and was merely accentuated by Constantine. (ii) Constantine was blamed by more than one pagan for sowing the seeds of the Roman decline;^ and that he (and still more Constantius) distributed vast sums to the troops and to favourites and other minions is attested not only by the Anonymus but also by Ammianus Marcellinus. Ammianus speaks with some bitterness of the huge fortunes which were accumulated as a result of the misguided generosity of Con¬ stantine and his son. ‘There is clear evidence’, he says, ‘to show that Constantine was the first of all [the Emperors] to open the jaws of his favourites, but Constantius stuffed them with the marrow of the provinces.’^ Ammianus says nothing of the inflation, and despite his merits as an historian we may con¬ clude that his view of this question is narrower and more super¬ ficial than that of the Anonymus. W^e cannot doubt the general truth of the Anonymus’ assertion that Constantine’s treatment of the pagan treasures appreciably accelerated the inflation. (iii) Nor can we doubt the truth of liis analysis of the social effects of the inflation. The growth of brigandage during the fourth century can scarcely be questioned, although it was not until the fifth century that the resistance of the oppressed classes reached its maximum extent. But the existence of vast move¬ ments of the dispossessed at the end of the fourth century can be proved in many provinces of the Empire; and the Maratocupreni of Syria, the Scamarae of the middle Danube (whose name does not occur imtd a later period), and especially the Bagaudae of Spain and Gaul are doubtless the kind of outlaw that the Anonymus has in mind. When he adds that these men supported usurping Emperors he presents us with something of a problem; for none of the fourth-century usurpers is known to have based his power even in part on the outlaws or to have * Zosimus, ii. 34. 2, who also comments on the strain placed on the tax¬ payers by Constantine’s gifts to ‘unworthy’ men, ii. 38. i. ^ XVI. 8. 12, xxu. 4. 3, cf. JuHan, Cues. 335 b. On Constantius see espe¬ cially Juhan, Or. i. 16 b, 43 a sq.

6314

D

The Contents of the Book

34

called upon them for support. If we had to choose a usurper who may have been in the Anonymus’ mind, we might follow Stevens in naming the African rebel Firmus;^ but of this there can be no certainty. Perhaps another suggestion may be more acceptable. At the end of the third century we hear that the Bagaudae of Gaul set up some leaders of their own, and of these Aelianus and Amandus are named. ^ It may be that Aelianus and Amandus had successors in the fourth century whom our sources have passed over in silence; for ancient writers are rarely anxious to linger over those who presented so grave a chal¬ lenge to their social position.^ The thesis of this and the preceding chapter is that the decline of the Empire has been brought about by the extravagance of the Imperial expenditure. The Anonymus then draws the con¬ clusion, which is logical enough if the premisses be granted, that the expenditure must be ruthlessly restrained and the tax¬ payer thereby saved from ruin.'^ It may be doubted whether this remedy, if put into practice, would have been very effica¬ cious; but at least it was a more reahstic proposal than the con¬ temporary appeals to rehgious or sectarian opponents to embrace the ‘true faith’, whether that term denoted orthodox Christianity, unorthodox Christianity, or mere heathenism. VIII. THE REFORM OF THE MINT

Both the distribution of the largitiones and the actual minting of the coins themselves were the responsibiHty of one and the same official, the Comes sacrarum largitionum. ^ It is by an easy transition, then, that the audior now passes to the coins and those who make them. The coins are sometimes debased, he ' Stevens, n. 31. 2 For the references to both of these see Seeck, P.-W. i. 482, s.v. Aelianus (4) • The only discussion of the Bagaudae (as distinct from mere collections of references) is the excellent one by A. D. Dmitrev, ‘Dvizhenie Bagaudov’, Vestnik Drevnei Istorii, iii-iv, 1940, pp. 101-14. ^ See especially Paneg. Lat. x (ii). 4. 4; 6. i; Amm. Marc, xxvii. 2. ii, ii. 4. 5 Seeck, P.-W. iv. 674; Miiller (1916), p. 1530.

The Reform of the Mint

35

says very truly, by the officials of the mint.^ This practice not only results in financial loss to the pubfic, but is also an affront to the Emperor s dignity. The pubhc will not accept the debased coins, and they thereby put themselves outside the law, for it had long been recognized as criminal to refuse to accept ‘the divine currency of the Emperors’.^ A difficulty is also caused to business life, where solidi were regarded not only as coins but also as commodities, and were bought and sold for varying quantities of other coins. ^ We can readily beheve that the comphcation of dealing in some sohdi that were debased and in others that were not would indeed tend to remove the simplicitas firom business transactions, as the Anonymus suggests.^i- Indeed, an attempt to remedy the position had already been made byjuhan in 363. His remedy would appear to have been effective to a considerable extent, for it was still in force in the reign of Justinian. Instead of attempting to prevent the manufacture of debased coins, Juhan accepted the position, and his reform consisted of setting up an official to be called the zygostates in each town to act as referee in disputes between the buyers and sellers of sohdi: each sohdus was to be worth what it weighed, and its weight was to be decided in case of dispute by the zygostates.^ The institution of the zygostates thus made it possible in some degree to solve the problem of chpped coins and of coins which had lost weight through wear and tear: neither of these questions would have been solved by the Anonymus’ projected reform. But the fact that he suggests a ^ CTh. ix. 21. 2 (a.d. 321) ‘quoniam nonnulli monetarii adulterinam monetam clandestinis sceleribus exercent’, &c. ^ Cf. Arrian, Epict. iii. 3. 3; POxy. xii. 1411 (a.d. 260); Nou. Valent, xvi, &c. In 317 a vain attempt had been made to stabilize the price of sohdi, ‘in quibus nostri uultus ac ueneratio ima est’, whatever their weight, CTh. ix. 3

22. I. For a later attempt to stabiHze the value of sohdi integri ponderis see Nou. Valent, xvi (a.d. 445). 5

hi. I. On the nummularii see R. Herzog, P.-W. xvu. 1415-56. CTh. XU. 7. 2 (= Clust. X. 73. 2) ‘emptio uenditioque sohdorum, si qui

eos excidimt aut deminuunt aut, ut proprio uerbo utar cupiditatis, adrodunt, tamquam leues eos uel debiles nonnulhs repudiantibus, inpeditur’, &c. (23 Apr. 363).

36

The Contents of the Book

reform at all after JuHan’s institution of the zygostates would seem to show that Julian’s measure, even though it was still in force under Justinian, did not altogether relieve the nummularii and others from their difficulties. Let us turn to the Anonymus’ suggestion. JuHan’s words do not indicate that the solidi were debased by the workers in the mint, the monetarii, or, as our author calls them, the opifices monetaeJ But that the monetarii did in fact do so is stated by Constantine, who suggests that they produced their false coins not in their own workshops but on premises provided for the purpose by confederates.^ This collaboration of the monetarii with sections of the rest of the population prepares us in some measure for the surprising and drastic reform now proposed by the Anonymus. The Emperor’s best course, according to him, is to assemble all the monetarii and banish them to an island, where they will carry on their legitimate duties without any means of communicating with the outside world and hence without any opportunity for criminal practices: ‘nec erit fraudi locus ubi nulla est mercis occasio.’^ This proposal defies com¬ ment. The Anonymus next proceeds to another proposal which in its way is no less surprising than that which we have just dis¬ cussed: he actually suggests new types and sizes for the bronze and the gold coinage.^ I do not know how many centuries we have to wait before we find another commoner suggesting to his monarch that the coin types—the regiae maiestatis imaginem^— are unsatisfactory and ought to be replaced by specified new ones. We can only comment that the suggestion was an auda¬ cious one, and it is regrettable that the details of the accompany¬ ing illustration would seem to have been lost in the transmission (Fig. II).6 * iii. 2; so, too, Aurelius Victor, Caes. xxxv. 6. * CTh. ix. 21. 2, cited by Reinach, p. 218. Add, for the Anonymus’ own time, Libanius, Or. xviii. 138. ^ iii. 3. ^ iii. 4. Nothing is said of the silver. ® iii. i. ^ Such as they are, they are discussed by Reinach, pp. 219 f. Note the techni-

The Reform of the Mint

37

It is interesting to find that this suggestion is ojffered to the Emperor himself. It would seem that we have here some sup¬ port for the view that ‘not infrequently decisions on major points of coinage-pohcy were taken direct by the Emperor’.’' For if such decisions had been relegated to a civil servant, we may be sure that the Anonymus would have hesitated to thrust his advice about them upon the Emperor. Finally, we may notice how httle the Anonymus proposes to change and what a vast moles confusionis, to use a phrase of his own,2 he is prepared to leave untouched. A recent inquirer has summed up the position of the Roman coinage in the late fourth century by saying that ‘the names of the coins have different meanings in different parts of the Empire. Folles, nummi, denarii mean quite different things in Egypt, Africa, Italy, and Constantinople, and have changing rates of exchange with the soHdus.’^ The Anonymus has notliing to say about remedying this state of affairs: he does not go beyond the monetarii and the sizes and types of the coins. Perhaps the great reform of 348, introduced by Constantius II and Constans to celebrate the eleven-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of Rome, a reform which had gone down in utter confusion by 356» had revealed all too clearly how excessively comphcated and difficult the problem was.'^ IX. PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION

No conscientious reformer in any period of Roman history could have avoided the perennial problem of the maladminiscal terms: discussio apparently = ‘an issue’ of coins (iii. 4), though there is no parallel—the usual verbs are percutio and cudo. Forma = ‘type’, cf. SHA. Tyr. Trig. xxxi. 3, CTh. ix. 22. 1. For figuratio see ibid. 21. 8, 38. 7, and for the verb figurare see SHA. Alex. Seu. xxv. 9, CTh. ix. 21. 7, 22. i, &c. * Mattingly, Cambridge Ancient History, xii, p. 716. 2 2. 3 A. Segre, Byzantion, xv, 1940-1, p. 268. For a brief and lucid statement of the problems involved in ‘this painfully difHcult question’ see H. Mattingly, ‘The Monetary Systems of the Roman Empire from Diocletian to Theo¬ dosius r. Numismatic Chronicle, ser. vi. No. vi, 1946, pp. 111-20 (with biblio¬ graphy). On the reform of 348 see ibid., pp. 115 f.

38

The Contents of the Book

tration of the provinces and the extortions of the provincial Governors. A fourth-century reformer who was prepared to take his courage in his hands, might perhaps have been expected to say something of the activities of the Praetorian Prefects— in the seventies of the century, for instance, Sextus Petronius Probus was in full career—but in fact the Anonymus confines himself to the Governor, index, as he calls him, and the Exactor. The latter official had come into existence at the beginning of the fourth century in each duitas in order to collect arrears of taxes outstanding in the duitas and perhaps also to supervise the general collection of the current taxes. ^ He was thus particularly hable to work hand in glove with the Governor, for, as Deleage remarks, ‘a la fin du IV® siecle, la veritable direction de I’impot foncier appartient au gouvemeur de province’.^ At the time when the Anonymus is here assumed to have been writing (366-75) the Exactor was appointed by the central govern¬ ment, and so can fairly be described by our author as ‘directed’ by the Governor in his work.^ We have no lack of evidence to show that the Exactor could easily engage in extortionate practices. Indeed, in 386 the Emperors refer to the Exactors as being ‘in continuata uexandorum prouinciahum potestate, ueluti concussionum dominatione’and in the middle of the century men were willing to expend a certain amount of money in order to be appointed to the office.^ Their extortions are described by the Anonymus in general terms: in raising the taxes and in collecting arrears they never fail to enrich them¬ selves at the expense of the taxpayers.^ But not long after the I On the Exactor see Seeck, P.-W., s.v.; A. H. M. Jones, The Greek City, (Oxford, 1940), pp. 86 f., 152, 332; A. Deleage, La Capitation du Bas-Empire (Macon, 1945), pp. 134-42. ^ Ibid., p. 142. 3 iv. 1.1 have ventured to diifer from Jones, op. cit., p. 332, n. 104 Jin., in supposing that POxy. 2110 (a.d. 370) is not conclusive evidence that the office was then curial. CTh. xdi. 6. 22, cf xi. i. 3, 7. i. See. 3 PLond. ii. 223, with Jones, op. cit., p. 152. iv. I. Cf a very similar passage of Salvian, de gub. Dei, v. 17, quoted below, p. 85, n. 2.

Provincial Administration

39

Anonymus had written, the government sought to deprive the Exactors of their opportunities. By a law issued in 386 the Exactors were nominated by the curials themselves, and the names thus nominated were forwarded to the provincial Governors.^ And in that same year the Exactor, in Egypt at any rate, was allowed to hold his office only for a year, or, if the number of curials in the ciuitas were very small, for two years.^ Thenceforth the Exactor’s fellow curials were col¬ lectively responsible for his financial duties, and the ofEce lost much, though by no means all, of its significance. The methods of extortion employed by the provincial Governor are described in phrases which present considerable difficulties of interpretation, and Professor A. H. M. Jones has kindly contributed the following comments: Tironum comparatio (iv. i): the Codes in general know nothing of the buying of recruits but only of tironum praebitio (e.g. CTh. vi. 30. 20; vii. 13. 7) or conlatio iuniorum (ibid. 15, 18). This was undoubtedly a levy or tax either in actual men or in cash, the corpora being commuted into pretia at a fixed tariff (e.g. ibid. 13). The only allusion to purchase is in the opening and veryobscure sentences of a law of Valens (ibid. 7 of a.d. 375), which abohsh the ‘proto *★**★* munus, quod prouinciarum interna depascitur’, and state that its two main faults were ‘quod aurum saepe pro corporibus immane deposcitur atque aduenarum coemptio iuniorum insolentius quam conuenit aestimatur’. I think this means that the provincial Governor, instead of exacting corpora, obtained voluntary recruits by offering bounties, and then made the tax¬ payers, to whom he had remitted the corpora, pay large sums to cover the bounties and his own rake-off. I think the Anonymus must be alluding to this abuse: the date fits nicely. Equorum coemptio: the Codes again know only of equorum prae¬ statio (ibid. vi. 23. 2; 26.14; xiii. 3. 2) or exactio (ibid. xi. 16.12), &c. There seem to have been two forms of this, a regular levy on every¬ one, and special levies on honorati. The le-vy might be commuted 1 CTh. 701. 6. 20 (27 Oct. 386): the Anonymus must surely have written before this law was issued. 2 Ibid. 22.

40

The Contents of the Book

for cash at a regular tariff (CT/j.xi. 1.29; i7.2and3).The Anonymus’ language implies that the government sometimes supplemented the levy by compulsory purchase. Frumenti coemptio: (or rather comparatio) is mentioned in the Theodosian Code only, I think, in xi. 15. i (a.d. 361) and 2 (a.d. 384): the second law gives details. It comes more into prominence in the sixth century, when most of the taxes in kind had been commuted to cash. The locus classicus on the system is Procopius, HA. xxiii. 9-14, cf. Clust. X. 27 (three laws of Anastasius), Cassiodorus, Var. xii. 22. 3, Ennodius, Vita Epiphan., p. 358, ed. Hartel. Expensa quoque moenibus profutura: the rebuilding of walls is much in evidence under Valentinian and Valens, who allocated for this purpose one third of the civic revenues which had been seized by the State and incorporated in the res priuata (Bruns 97®, CTh. xv. i. 33). There is a good deal of evidence for the fifth century which shows that the execution of pubhc works in the cities was a regular method of extortion for provincial Governors and the Praetorian Prefects, cf. Clust. 1. iv. 26. 4-5; viii. 12. i; x. 30. 4; Nou. xvii. 4; xxiv. 3; XXV. 4; xxvi. 4; xxx. 8; cxxvui. 16.* On all this we may comment that the Anonymus appears to regard the various abuses from the point of view of a curial. He is certahily not one of the great senatorial possessores, from whom he dissociated himself earher (p. 5 above): such men would not have cared, for instance, if the funds earmarked for building city walls were embezzled, nor would an Exactor have had dealings with them. On the other hand, it is to be noted that the Anonymus has nothing to say about the office of Defensor ciuitatis, which was reconstituted by Valentinian and Valens in 364.^ The function of the Defensor was to pro¬ tect the tenuiores or minuscularii against the outrages offered to them by the potentes, a term which includes the curials, who were themselves forbidden to hold the office.^ Our author says ^ See, too, Miiller (1916), pp. 1586 f. 2 On these defensores see Seeck, P.-W., s.v.; A. Hoepffiier, ‘Un Aspect de la lutte de Valentinienl®r contrele senat’. Revue historique, clxxxii, 1938, pp. 22537 (to be read with caution); A. H. M. Jones, op. cit., pp. 150 f. and his Index, s.v. ^ CTh. i. 29. I, 3, &c.

Provincial Administration

41

nothing of this office presumably because its institution did not affect the abuses which concerned him, that is, the wrongs suffered by the curials. Again, if the Anonymus were indeed a curial, or closely associated with curials, we have perhaps in that fact the reason why he concerns himself so closely with ad¬ ministrative abuses and says nothing of economic ones. For in the economic life of the times the curials were at least as op¬ pressive to the classes below them as they were themselves oppressed by those above. Prosperous curials probably had much to fear from economic reforms; and we can well under¬ stand why, if our author belonged to their ordo, he preferred to concentrate on the wickedness of the Imperial bureaucracy rather than on the malpractices of landowners which were later to be of such interest to Salvian. His remedy for these abuses is disappointing and is much less drastic than his proposal for dealing with the monetarii. He simply expresses the wish that only men of integrity should be appointed to the office of Governor.^ This is mere idealism. X. THE MILITARY BUDGET

From the civil service the Anonymus turns ratione non incongrua to that other militia, the army. It is interesting to observe that he has no complaint to make of the vast cost of the civil service. In his opinion it is the cost of the upkeep of the army which crushes the taxpayer; and this behef was shared by more than one middle-class writer of the later Empire. For example, one of the authors of the so-called Augustan History recalls the alleged remark of the Emperor Probus, that he would soon be able to dispense with the army altogether. He comments on that remark as follows: ‘Whsit felicitas would have shone forth then if there had been no soldiers and Probus were Emperor! No provincial would furnish an annona, no mihtary pay (stipendia) would be distributed from the largitiones, the Roman commonwealth would have everlasting treasures, nothing * iv. I Jin.

42

The Contents of the Book

would be paid out by the Emperor or paid in by the landowner (possessor). It was a golden age that he was promising.’^ If we may generaUze from such expressions of opinion, it would seem to follow that middle-class taxpayers attributed their burdens largely to the existence of the army and were pre¬ pared to put up with that of the civil service. This opinion is expressed again in the sixth century by another anonymous author, the so-called ‘Byzantine Anonymus’, who says roundly that the greater part of the annual revenues of the State is expended on the army.^ The reform proposed by the Anonymus is designed to cut down the enormous expense of maintaining the army and at the same time to preserve its efhciency.^ The nature of his reform is obscure, but his words have been elucidated as fol¬ lows by Professor A. H. M. Jones; The word ordo in v. 2 means a ‘rank’ or ‘grade’, and is sometimes used concretely, as in primi ordines (cf. English ‘other ranks’). Militaris ordo here must mean an N.C.O.; the Anonymus’ idea is to discharge individual soldiers when they rise to ranks which earn several annonae, and thereby to reheve the finances of the unit, numerus, and speed up promotion.'^ The sentence beginning quod si numerosior in v. 3 is very obscure. Different grades of officiales were grouped in scholae, and the words de sequentibus scholis suggest that the same apphed to the militia armata: cf. Vegetius, ri. 19 and 21. The sentence, then, means that if there are more men in the lower grades than there are vacancies to fill in the upper grades these * SHA. Probus, xxiii. 2, and the whole chapter. See also Zosimus, iv. 16. i, referring to the reign of Valentinian I. ^ Text in Kdchly and Riistow, n. ii, p. 46. On the very interesting discus¬ sion at the beginning of this work on the social classes of which the State is composed see Miss N. V. Pigulevskaya, Vizantiya i Iran na rubezhe VI i VII vekov (Moscow and Leningrad, 1946), pp. 114 ff., who dates the work to the sixties of the sixth century. See also Amm. Marc. xx. ii. 5. ^ V. 5. ^ Stipendiorum tarditas, v. 3, as Jones points out, means ‘slowness of pro¬ motion’ rather than ‘arrears of pay’, as Schneider (1910), p. 329 takes it. On what is known of the rates of pay in the army at this period see A. Segre, ‘Essays on Byzantine Economic History, i: the Annona Ciuica and the Annona Militaris', Byzantion, xvi (1942-3, published 1944), pp. 393-444, at pp. 406 ff.

The Military Budget

43

extra men should, be discharged without ever reaching the top grades or else should be transferred to some other post—ordinem in V. 3 must mean a post in some other unit. The first effect of this comparatively rapid promotion and discharge will be to attract more men to the colours^ and at the same time to spare the government the expense of paying the higher salaries. It will also have a social effect. The discharged soldiers will invest their money in land, and settle down as disciplined and energetic farmers on the frontiers on which they had served; and they vd!! then become taxpayers in their tum.^ The proposal to settle veterans on the land was in har¬ mony with the practice of the Emperors since Diocletian’s time. But what was usual in the case of limitanei during their years of service is extended by the Anonymus to all troops after their retirement from the army. It is to be observed, how¬ ever, that whereas the lands of the limitanei were held free of tax^ it is an integral part of the Anonymus’ plan that veterans should pay the usual taxes and so increase the Imperial revenues, which were never far from his thoughts.^ No Emperor is known to have put the Anonymus’ plan into practice; but Justinian did something not altogether dissimilar, though one may doubt whether his action would have won the approval of the Anonymus any more than it won that of Pro¬ copius. Justinian, too, observed the expense of paying the higher ranks in the army, and proceeded to save money not by instituting a process of rapid promotion and retirement but by blocking promotion altogether. He kept on the books the names of many senior men who had retired or had fallen in the long wars of his reign, and then omitted to promote junior men into the vacancies. The total number of troops thereupon decreased, but considerable sums of money were saved. This ^ V. 3 Jin. * V. 4. 3 Mommsen, Ges. Schr. vi, p. 211. * V. 4. Jin. Reinach, pp. 223 £, would seem to be in error when he says that the Anonymus considered the total number of troops in the Empire to be

excessive.

44

The Contents of the Book

was an attempt to have it both ways: Justinian kept his soldiers for long terms of service, but saved money as he would have done if he had adopted the Anonymus’ plan.^ XI. SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY IN THE LATER EMPIRE

Throughout the whole period of their greatness the Romans produced not a single mechanical invention of major im¬ portance; and the Anonymus is the only Roman who is known to have made a conscious and serious attempt to improve the technology of his day over a wide field. Why the Romans, who never sank to the futihty of studying art for art’s sake, displayed this inaptitude is still a matter of debate.^ Why the Anonymus came to form so striking an exception will doubt¬ less be explained when we have a definitive edition of the de rebus bellicis. It will be sufficient here merely to illustrate one or two of his statements. The Anonymus points out in his Preface^ that the high nobihty do not concern themselves with technical inventions. Now we know that even though the institution of slavery had declined by the fourth century, the mental attitude which it had engendered was still flourishing: slavery, as Engels says, in dying ‘left behind its poisoned sting—the stigma attaching to the productive labour of freemen’.'*' And we know also that the coming of Christianity tended, if anything, to confirm the age-old prejudice amongst the ruling classes against manual labour and scientific inquiry. For Christians of the upper classes scientific inquiry was, at best, of little interest and less impor¬ tance. At worst, it was blasphemy. ‘We do not know the * Procopius, HA. xxiv. 2-6, cited by Neher, p. 71. Justinian also failed, of course, to secure the taxes which retired soldiers would have paid on the Anonymus’ plan. ^ See B. Farrington, Science and Politics in the Ancient WorW (London, 1946); F. W. Walbank, The Decline of the Roman Empire in the West (volume 3 in the series ‘Past and Present’), London, 1946, pp. 22 ff. 3 Praef. 4. ♦ F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (English translation, London, 1940), pp. 169 f

Scientijic Inquiry in the Later Empire

45

secrets of the Emperor’, cries St. Ambrose, ‘and yet we claim to know those of God’. Ambrose does not even spare the study of astronomy and geometry, which Plato himself had been willing to admit on certain conditions. ‘Quid tarn obscurum’, writes the Saint, ‘quam de astronomia et geometria tractare ... et profundi aeris spatia metiri, caelum quoque et mare numeris includere: relinquere causas salutis, errores quaerere?’* Eusebius, at the end of his Praeparatio Euangelica, observes that the failure of the philosophers to agree among themselves on scientific questions proves that Christians do well to take no interest in this lost labour.^ Quotations could be multiphed, but the atti¬ tude of these two men, one writing in the West and the other in the East, was typical of that of Christian elements in the governing class and will serve here to illustrate the Anonymus’ point. We may agree with him that if technical advances were made by the Romans they were not usually due to the weUto-do, those with leisure to experiment and capital to invest in their experiments.^ It is interesting to have the point made explicitly by a contemporary. Our author goes on to say that ‘the barbarian nations are by no means accounted strangers to invention’There seems to be no general study of the technical debt of the Romans to the barbarians during the period of the later Empire. But a list has recently been compiled of the inventions, discoveries, and the like borrowed by the Romans from the barbarians during their history as a whole. 5 The hst is a curious one. It includes not only such valuable contrivances as trousers and fur coats but also ‘cloisonne jewelry, felt-making, the ski, the use of soap * Migne, PL. xiv. 809, xvi. 64. ^ Quoted by A. Piganiol, op. cit. (onp. 14, n. 2 above), p. 391, who observes that Eusebius was probably the last of the Christian fathers who dared to assert that the earth was round. ^ For an example of a machine in which some of the great landowners invested and which was not generally used by the rest of the population see pp. 80 f. below. * Praef. 4 Jin. Slave labour was not yet typical of northern barbaria. 5 Lynn White, ‘Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages’, Speculum, XV,

1940, pp. 141-59, at p. 144. But note Tacitus, Germ. xlv. 5.

^

46

The Contents of the Book

for cleansing and of butter in place of oHve oil, the making of barrels and tubs, the cultivation of rye, oats, spelt, and hops’, to say nothing of the heavy plough. References to falconry in Roman hterature become frequent soon after the Huns first made their appearance on the northern frontier, and it seems to have been they who first popularized it (in so far as falconry ever became popular in Europe).^ The stirrup and the horse¬ shoe are said to have been introduced from the wide steppelands of southern Russia long after the Western Empire had collapsed. We can have no hesitation in agreeing with the Anonymus: ‘barbarae nationes minime a rerum inuentione habentur ahenae.’ We must be careful to notice, however, what precisely the contrast is to which he is drawing attention in this passage. He is not contrasting the inventiveness of the barbarians with any lack of inventiveness on the part of the Romans as such. StiU less does he imply that the Romans were inferior in technique generally to their barbarian neighbours.^ His contrast is between the Roman leisured classes, who make no contribution to technical progress, and the barbarians, who do make such a contribution. It is not easy to find another author of this period who is willing to recognize the technical achievements of the so-called barbarians. We may refer, however, to a curious passage in which Procopius draws attention to the fact that as time goes on new devices are continually being foimd out by human ingenuity. But he'illustrates this statement, not by pointing to a Roman invention, but by telling how the Sabirian Huns devised a kind of battering-ram of which the Romans and the Persians had stood in need for centuries on end. ‘Not a single one of them’, he says, ‘thought of this device which was thought of now by these barbarians.’^ But his point of view is ^ On falconry see H. J. Epstein, ‘The Origin and Earliest History of Falconry’, Isis, xxxiv. vi. No. 98 (1944), pp. 497-509; but his references to late Roman hterature are not quite complete. ^ See Vegetius, iii. 10, for one or two matters of mihtary technique in which the barbarians were superior to the Romans (the Persians’ use of sandbags, the carrago of the northern barbarians). ^ ^G. vhi. ii. 27 f.

Scientific Inquiry in the Later Empire

47

rather one of wonder that barbarians should have thought of such a thing at all and of puzzlement that the Romans and Persians had not already done so. A more relevant passage, perhaps, is one found in Zosimus, where we are told how the Visigoth Gainas was confronted in the year 400 with the task of transporting an army across the Hellespont without ships. Zosimus describes how he contrived to make rafts: he im¬ provised them, says the historian, with no techne but with barbarike epinota, ‘the inventiveness of a barbarian’, an illu¬ minating phrase. ^ It is greatly to be regretted that the Anonymus does not expand this incidental statement of his and illustrate it. Let us consider now the immediate reason why our author invented his machines. In the late fourth century there was one factor in operation which was making for an improvement of technique in general. Slaves were no longer available on the lavish scale of former times, and the Roman Empire was suffer¬ ing from an acute shortage of labour. The cause of this shortage of labour has not been completely explained even yet; but one of its results is plain enough and can be nicely illustrated by the history of a device to which we shall have occasion to return later—the watermill.^ The watermill was invented at the beginning of the first century b.c. in the eastern Mediterranean, and is mentioned very occasionally in the years that followed its invention. But there is no evidence that it was used on a large scale for many hundreds of years.^ For instance, when the Emperor Cahgula * Zosirmis, v. 21. 2. For the incident see J. B.

History of the Later

Roman Empire^ (London, 1923), i, pp. 134 f. ^ For what follows see M. Bloch, ‘Avenement et conquetes du moulin a eau’. Annales d’histoire economique et sociale, vol. vii. No. 36 (1935), pp. 538-63 (with references), and on the significance of the watermill see the quotation from Karl Marx on p. 82 below. 3 Except perhaps in Italy: see Pliny, NH. xviii. 97 ‘maior pars Itahae nudo utitur pilo, rotis etiam, quas aqua uerset, obiter et mola’, which does not, how¬ ever, necessarily imply a very widespread use of the watermiU throughout the maior pars Italiae. See M. P. Charlesworth, The Lost Province (University of Wales Press, 1949), pp. 53 £, to whom I owe this reference: in my view he somewhat overstates the position.

48

The Contents of the Book

confiscated all the horses in the bakeries at Rome, a bread famine resulted: the mills could not be worked without the horses. It was not until the middle of the fourth century that the watermill began to be used in the city of Rome (for which we have abundant inscriptions and other texts). References to its use in Rome increase in the later fourth century and keep on increasing until the seventh century. In Gaul the watermill was still something of a rarity at the end of the Roman period, and it was only in Frankish times that it was used on a wide scale. The explanation of these facts has been pointed out by Monsieur Bloch. There was no widespread social need for the watermill when it was first invented. There was such a need in the later Empire, when a substitute had to be found for the great abundance of manpower which had been available in earlier times.’' The old invention thereupon came into its own, and was applied in some measure by the Roman government, though it was only exploited fully under the barbarian kings. Now the business of supplying bread to the population of Rome belonged to the State. So in one great governmental enterprise we find some measure of technical improvement. The question now arises. Can we find a second example? Did the shortage of manpower produce an improvement in other techniques besides that in the milling of flour There is in fact a second example, and it, too, is to be found in a field in which * In the fourth century criminals convicted of minor offences were sent to the mills at Rome; CTh. ix. 40. 3, 5, 6, &c. It is said that the delay in intro¬ ducing the watermill into Rome itself was in part due to the opposition of vested interests and the owners of the old type of mill: see E. C. Curwen, Plough and Pasture (vol. 4 in the series ‘Past and Present’), London, 1946, p. 112. ^ It would be interesting to know whether the government introduced any technical improvements into mining in our period, for the shortage of man¬ power was also felt in the mines; the evidence is discussed by C. E. N. Bromehead, ‘The Evidence for Ancient Mining’, The Geographical Journal, xcvi (Aug. 1940), pp. 101-20, esp. p. 117. The view that there was an actual decline in mining technique in our period is considered probable in the unsigned article, ‘The Ancient Art of Fire-Setting’, Mine and Quarry Engineering, vol. xv. No. 9 (Sept. 1949)» PP- 283-8, at p. 284. But the study of Roman mining is still in its infancy, and at present it is perhaps too early to decide our problem one way or the other.

Scientific Inquiry in the Later Empire

49

the State was deeply involved—the defence of the frontiers. We cannot discuss here the spasmodic but (in the Eastern Empire) on the whole effective improvements introduced into the equipment of the late Roman armies. What concerns us is that the problem was recognized and an ingenious attempt was made to solve it by our Anonymus, who comes forward with the striking suggestion that the shortage of manpower from which the army suffered could be overcome by mechanizing the army’s equipment.’' In his Preface he more than once claims that his macliines will not consume much manpower. The Libuma will overwhelm ten ordinary warships sine auxilio cuiusquam turbae. Even the portable bridge can be carried by Very few’ men and about fifty pack-horses (see p. 58 below).^ In the body of the work he draws attention to the fact that the Tichodifrus and the BaUista quadrirotis can be serviced by two men only,^ whereas we know that the torsion baUista currently used by the Roman army required one ‘gunner’, artifex, and several ualidi iuuenes to twist the ropes indeed, the scorpio or onager required nine men and the carroballista no fewer than eleven.^ The BaUista fuhninahs of the Anonymus, on the other hand, can be fired by a crew of three men; and our author states exphcitly that if a large number of men is found to be necessary the invention wUl have lost much of its point, ‘uideHcet ne si hominum turba huius ministerio inseruiret, minueretur artis inuentio’.^ Elsewhere he says that the fewer the number of men required to fire this machine, the more remarkable is the invention. And when he adds, ‘quidquid enim opis in ea numerosior manus afferre potuisset, id sibi artis ingenio dotata largitur’,'7 he gives us beyond doubt the immediate reason for his inventions: they are designed to save manpower in the army ^ ^ ^ ^ ® ® ®

Cf. Reinach, p. 225. See, for example, Amm. Marc. xix. 3. 2. Praef. 7 Jin. and 9. vii. ijin., xix. 3. Amm. Marc, xxiii. 4. 2, who has artifex in this sense again in xxiv. 4. 28. Idem, xxiii. 4. 6; Vegetius, ii. 25. xviii. 4. 7 xviii. 9. It is not contended, of course, that the mere existence of a social need

6314

E

50

The Contents of the Booh

Let us consider the machines in the order suggested in the author’s Prefaced The question of their originahty will con¬ cern us later. XII. THE INVENTIONS

[a) The Warship (see Fig. XI). Oxen walk round in a circle

turning capstans which by means of a simple piece of gearing rotate six paddle-wheels on the outside of the ship. Two oxen turn each of the three pairs of paddle-wheels.^ It seems to the present writer unlikely that this idea was sug¬ gested to the Anonymus by a study of a contraption described by Vitruuius as fitted to the side of a ship so as to measure the distance traversed by that ship.^ The resemblance is in fact very slight. Rather, our author’s invention is based on a combina¬ tion of two types of mill, the old miU rotated by oxen, horses, or more usually asses, and the new undershot vertical watermill.4 It may be, too, that our author had seen a watermill mounted on a boat hke those later used by Behsarius during the siege of Rome in 537-8.5 When the Ostrogoths cut the aqueducts outside Rome the corn-mills in the city could not be turned. Behsarius met the difficulty by placing a row of boats side by side across the Tiber in a place where the current was rapid. He then put two mills in each boat, and suspended a water wheel between each pair of boats. The current turned would in itself call forth the required invention; if that were so, why did not the later Romans invent the windmill or find out an efficient method of harnessing a horse ? Whether or not the required technical improvement is in fact made depends on the class-structure of the society in question. ^ Praef 7 f. ^ Cap. xvii. 3 Vitruuius, x. 9. 5 ff. Contra, Neher, p. 44; Oehler (1909), p. 877. We must concede that there is some similarity between xvii. 2 and Vitruuius, X. 9. 2 (cf. 5) ‘habens extra frontem suae rotunditatis extantem denticulum unum’. The ‘exstantes radii’ of the Anonymus, xvii. 2, are called pinnae by Vitruuius, x. 5. i, 9. 5 and 7. On the character of the watermill in antiquity see an illustrated article by E. C. Curwen, ‘The Problem of Early Water Mills’, Antiquity, xviii, 1944, pp. 130-46, and p. 47, n. 2 above. 5 Procopius, BG. v. 19. 19 ff.

The Inventions

51

these wheels, and the mills worked satisfactorily. A recent writer,^ apparently without knowledge of the Anonymus’ work, has said of Behsarius’ mills tliat ‘with their undershot wheels these boats must have looked rather like paddle steamers, except that the water was giving motion to the paddles instead of vice versa . Something like this same thought may have occurred to the Anonymus, for we have no proof that BeHsarius’ idea was an original one. On the other hand, if such mills had been in common use, Procopius presumably would not have been so impressed as he in fact was by Behsarius’ ingenuity. However that may be, it seems reasonable to suggest that the principle of the Libuma is based on a combination of the old mill and the new; and the gearing by means of cog wheels would present httle difficulty to engineers accustomed to making the vertical waternuU. If this be granted, an interest¬ ing hypothesis arises for our consideration. We saw above (pp. 47 f.) that the watermill was only coming into use on a large scale at the very time when our author was writing his book. If he had hved fifty years earher it is unhkely that the idea would have occurred to him, for he would then have had little opportunity of seeing a watermill at work. He made his inven¬ tion during the overlapping period when both types of mill were in comparatively common use, and the new mill had not yet ousted the old one. On this supposition is it likely that the invention was forestalled by an earher inventor ? In other words, is it hkely that the Anonymus was here using a source? We shall return to this question later (pp. 75 ff. below).^ That he should have concerned himself at all with improving the equipment of the Roman fleet is in no small degree sur¬ prising. The reason why the Romans in the heyday of their civihzation did so little (comparatively speaking) to improve the construction of the ship and its rigging is to be found in the abundance of their slaves at that time: ‘slavery removed the ^ Curwen, art. cit., p. 133. ^ Both Neher, loc. cit., and Reinach, p. 248, believe that he was in fact using a source.

52

The Contents of the Book

social incentive which could have prompted an enquiry into labour saving methods’.^ But in the Anonymus’ time, as we have seen, the Empire was suffering from a shortage of labour; and our author recommends his craft on the ground that it will give a striking performance sine auxilio cuiusquam turbae.^ It is true that several naval battles were fought in the Mediterranean during the fourth century; but many of the ships which took part in them do not appear to have been drawn from a regular war fleet—they were hastily assembled from neighbouring maritime cities for the purpose of the engagement, and after the battle were sent back to their home ports. In the fifth century, when Vegetius speaks of the Imperial navy in the past tense, the Vandals presented the Roman Empire with a naval enemy; but even then, although several fleets of transports were sent out by the Roman government, no war fleet capable of meeting the Vandals on equal terms ever made its appearance. It was not imtil the seventh century, when Constantinople it¬ self had to be defended against the Arabs, that a Roman war fleet worthy of the name came into existence. The society of the Arabs, at the time when their great conquests began, was one in which slavery was not by any means so highly and so disastrously developed as it had been in Greco-Roman society. The Arab rulers, therefore, ‘although themselves at first imversed in sea lore, took the best from the seafaring races around them, combining Syrian shipbuilding with the lateen sail of their kinsmen to the south’ in the Arabian gulf and the Red Sea.3 It was by the Arabs and not by the Romans that the lateen sail was introduced into the Mediterranean in the seventh century a.d. Nevertheless, Vegetius, who appears to have written in the reign of Valentinian III, includes some chapters on naval affairs in his mihtary handbook.^ He says that he does so on the * C. Gibson, ‘The Ship and Society’, Modern Quarterly, n. ii (Spring, 1947), pp. 163-8, at p. 164, where the innovations introduced by the Romans, which are not negligible, are briefly discussed. ^ Praef. 7 fin. ^ Gibson, art. cit., p. 165. * iv. 31 ff.

The Inventions

53

Emperor’s own instructions, but that his treatment of the sub¬ ject will be brief because the sea has long since been pacified and the struggle with barbarian nations is now waged on land’.^ What naval enemies the Anonymus had in mind we do not know, but, if a guess be allowed, we may follow M. Reinach in supposing that they were pirates.^ The Anonymus can claim the credit of being the first man to proclaim the possibiHty of propeUing a ship without the use of oars and without the use of sails; and he can also claim to have invented the paddle-wheel. During and after the Renaissance, when the needs of the new bourgeoisie of many maritime cities of Europe demanded improved ships, the Anonymus’ sug¬ gestions attracted considerable attention in Italy (where Leo¬ nardo da Vinci toyed with his idea), Spain, and France. Designs of paddle-ships continued to be made throughout the seven¬ teenth and eighteenth centuries until at last the steam-driven paddle-ship made its appearance in the nineteenth century. The entire process was inspired directly in the earher centuries and indirectly in the later by the drawings of the Anonymus.^ In eastern Asia paddle-ships, in which the paddles were turned by human power, are said to have been used successfully in battle by the Chinese in the twelfth century;^ but the present writer can form no opinion on the value of the Chinese autho¬ rities for this invention, which, if genuine, is the only paddleship invented without any assistance, direct or indirect, from the Anonymus.5 It is possibly worth adding that a ship which appears to have conformed in almost every detail to the design of the Anonymus was actually built and used at no more * iv. 31 init. ® Reinach, p. 243. It is clear that the Anonymus is not thinking of river fleets, which were kept in varying states of repair during the later Empire; cf. xviii. 7 maria. 3 Muller (1916), pp. 1525 £; Reinach, pp. 243-50; Horwitz, pp. 311 ff., 356 f. Horwitz unhappily did not know of Reinach’s work, and so under¬ estimates the influence of the Anonymus. * Horwitz, pp. 359 f. 3 Horwitz, loc. cit., does not seem to doubt the authenticity of this ship.

54

The Contents of the Book

distant spot than Great Yarmouth in the county of Norfolk. The following description of it was given by one who saw it at work in i8i8, Robert Stevenson, the well-known hghthouse engineer and uncle of Robert Louis Stevenson: At Yarmouth the Horse Packet is about 6o feet in length and i8 feet beam. It is worked by four horses in a file which walk in a circus of 18 feet diameter by which they are too much confined and so do only half work. The driving-shaft has two bevelled wheels, one at each end, by which the motion is communicated from the horses to the axle of the paddle wheels of 7 feet diameter. The boat goes at the rate of about six miles an hour.^ Whether the reader will now subscribe to Horwitz’s judge¬ ment that the Anonymus’ invention was a practical proposi¬ tion for the Roman government of the fourth century is more than the present writer can say.^ But some may doubt whether Schneider has said the last word about it when he writes: ‘Die Libuma ist geradezu verriickt.’^ (b) The Scythed Chariots (see Figs. VT-VIII). The Anonymus describes three scythed chariots. One is drawn by a single horse, on which the warrior rides. Another is drawn by two horses with a rider on each. The third is drawn by two horses, but only one of them carries a rider. In all three cases the main features of the chariots are the same. The scythed chariot appears to have been used only by Near Eastern powers: it was never employed in Europe—^not even in Britain.'^ It was famihar to the Ten Thousand, who en¬ countered it in Persia,^ and was beHeved to have been the invention of Cyrus. Alexander also encountered it in Asia,^ ‘ D. Alan Stevenson, English Lighthouse Tours (London, 1946), pp. 59 f. The passengers in this ship foiuid that it had one advantage over some con¬ temporary craft—there was no boiler to blow up! Horwitz, p. 311. 3 Schneider (1908), p. 33. ^ T. Rice Holmes, Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar (Oxford, 1907). pp- 674-6; R. Till, Klio, xxxvi, 1944, pp- 238-50. 5 Xenophon, Anab. i. 8. 10 (cf 7. 10 f); Cyrop. vi. i. 29 f. 6 Diod. Sic. xvii. 53- i; Q- Curtius, iv. 9. 4, 15. 4, et al. (see Critical Ap¬ pendix, p. 124 ad fin.); Suidas, s.v. drepanephora tethrippa, &c.

The Inventions

55

and his successors there made occasional use of it. The Romans made its acquaintance in the battle of Magnesia in 189 b.c., where it was employed by the Seleucid king Antiochus.^ The only other occasions on which it was used against them seem to have been in Sulla’s wars against Mithridates^ and in Caesar’s operations against Pharnaces.^ Our sources enable us to form a fairly clear picture of what the scythed chariot was like. The pole of the chariot projected well beyond the horses’ heads and ended in a sharp iron point designed to transfix anyone who stood in its way. Scythes were sometimes attached to the ends of the yoke also. But the most characteristic equipment of the chariot was the two iron scythes which were fastened to each end of the axle, one projecting outwards from the wheel, the other pointing downwards so as to dispatch anyone who had stumbled and was lying on the groimd. The purpose of this machine, as several of our sources point out, was not to slaughter the enemy: it was simply to cause a panic among the opposing ranks and thereby to provide an opening for the infantry or cavalry. On very rare occasions the scythed chariot met with a Hmited and momentary success;'*' but no competent general ever found it difficult to counter, and it quickly became an object of derision among the Romans. ^ The fact was that it had two grave short¬ comings. First, it required an absolutely level plain if it was to move aroimd at aU: the shghtest impediment was sufficient to upset it or to break the scythes. Such a plain was rarely forth¬ coming, and, even if it was, the enemy could easily drive in stakes or the like which would reduce the chariot to helpless¬ ness.^ Besides, if the ground were wet, the chariot was bogged down and became immobile.'^ Secondly, the horses were very * Livy, xxxvii. 41; Vegetius, iii. 24. * Ibid.; Plutarch, Sulla, 15; Frontinus, Strat. ii. 3. 17. 3 Bell. Alex. bcxv. 2. * See, for example, Appian, Mithr. xviii. 66 £, Bell. Alex. Ixxv. 2. 5 Vegetius, loc. dt., doubtless referring to the inddent recounted in Plutarch, Sulla 15. ® Vegetius, loc. dt.; Frontinus, loc. dt. ’ Q. Curtius, viii. 14. 4.

56

The Contents of the Book

vulnerable, and could easily be slaughtered or diverted on to their own ranks by Hght-armed troopsd Indeed, they were sometimes driven back into the ranks of their own supporting infantry by the mere shouts of the enemy.^ Were these facts known in the fourth and fifth centuries? It is true that Seruius, a contemporary of our Anonymus, seems to have known Httle about the scythed chariot except that Livy and Sallust had mentioned its use many centuries before.^ Another contemporary, one of the authors of the Augustan History, alleges falsely that scythed chariots were captured by the Emperor Alexander Seuerus during his Persian campaign of 232.4 The statement is of httle historical value except in so far as it tells us that the scythed chariot had caught the fancy of an author who was an exact contemporary of the Anonymus. But Vegetius thinks the scythed chariot worthy of mention in his mihtary handbook, and, although he dismisses it in three or four sentences, he is by no means ill informed about its history and its drawbacks.® We cannot, therefore, but admire the audacity of the Anonymus in advising the Emperor to revive a weapon which had not been used for some four centuries, which was wholly ahen to the traditions of the Roman army, which had repeatedly proved a failure and even a danger to the side that used it, a weapon which contemporary students of the mihtary art regarded with contempt. But when we turn to examine the Anonymus’ text we find that he has made a careful study of ancient accounts of the scythed chariot in action and that he has suggested a striking series of improvements in the structure of the machine designed to coimter each and all of the weaknesses which we have indi¬ cated above. The most notable of these improvements is that by means of a rope attached to the outer end of the scythe the horseman can raise up the scythe when he approaches an obstacle * See, for example, Appian, Syr. xxiii. 172 f. In Lucian, Zeux. 8 and 10, they are driven back by elephants. ^ Frontinus, Strut, ii. 3. 17. ^ On Aen. i. 476. * SHA. Seu. Alex. Iv. 2, Ivi. 4. ® iii. 24.

The Inventions

57

and can lower it again when the obstacle has been passed: there is evidently a hinge of some kind on the scythe near the axle, though this hinge is not mentioned in the text or illustrated in the pictures.^ Again, although no provision is made against marshy ground, the author appears to assume that his scythed chariots will be used only on the dry Eastern frontier.^ Secondly, there is no car and no driver. There is instead one or alternatively two riders on the horses themselves; the inventor thus assures greater control of the machine, and gives the enemy less op¬ portunity to turn it back on to its own supporters. The chance of the horses or riders being slaughtered is also reduced, for they are to be heavily clad in mail: they are, in fact, the catafractarii so frequently found in the fourth-century army, here put to a new use.^ The knives which project from the back of the vehicle prevent the warrior from being attacked from the rear.'^ Finally, the Anonymus has grasped the fact that the scythed chariot must be used when the enemy’s ranks are broken and he is in full flight.^ ‘Tout cela’, says Monsieur Reinach, ‘n’est pas si mal imagine.’^ That the proposed chariot was impracticable goes without saying; but that scarcely detracts altogether from the ingenuity and imaginative power displayed by the author. Many an engineer at the end of the Middle Ages and even later toyed with the same idea again; and even after the invention of gun¬ powder more than one experimenter sought to design a chariot fitted with scythes or with cannon or with both.'^ Most of them were inspired by the Anonymus’ drawings; but that cannot be * Observe that the chariot must have a fixed axle. I confess that I do not know why the rider in Fig. VIII should have wings. 2 xii. I init., cf. xix. 4. 3 xii. I, xiv. 2. Vegetius, iii. 24, telling of how the Romans dealt with Pyrrhus’ elephants, says: ‘bini catafracti equi iungebantur ad cumrni, quibus insidentes chbanarii sarisas ... in elefantos dirigebant;’ cf. Xenophon, Cyrop. vi. I. 29. * xii. I, xiv. I. ® xii^«., xix. 4, cf xviii. 6. * Reinach, p. 236. But how will the automatic whips (praef. 8, xiv. i) affect a horse which is clad in mail armour ? 7 Berthelot (1900), p. ii; idem (1902), p. 118.

58

The Contents of the Book

said with certainty of an eminent theorist who arose in the eighteenth century. For years on end Voltaire sought to induce Catherine the Great and the ministers of Louis XV to equip their armies with scythed chariots, and several extracts from his letters on the topic have been reprinted by Reinach.^ His efforts were unsuccessful, ‘Nos gens de guerre’, wrote Catherine, ‘ressemblent ^ ceux de tons les autres pays; les nouveautes non eprouvees leur paraissent douteuses.’^ Valens was no ex¬ ception. (r) The Portable Bridge (see Fig. X). The use of inflated skins to support swimmers when crossing a river was known in the Near East at least as early as Assyrian times, and was famihar to many a Greek and Roman army.^ That a bridge made of inflated skins would not have surprised an army engineer of the fourth century a.d. would seem to be indicated by certain pas¬ sages of Ammianus Marcellinus and Zosimus, all of which relate to the Persian campaign of 363."^ Now the Anonymus does not in any way suggest that his idea of a bridge formed out of skins was a new one. Nor was the Roman army a stranger to the practice of carrying about with it as a permanent piece of equipment the materials for making a bridge. According to Vegetius, the army used to carry about on carts monoxyli, boats hollowed out of tree trunks, together with long ropes and chains, which could be fitted up to form a bridge. ^ And when JuHan set out on his Persian campaign in 363 he brought with him no less than fifty merchant ships to be used for making * Reinach, pp. 234 ff. ^ Idem, p. 235. * Neher, p. 35, n. 5; see an illustrated article by J. HomeU, ‘Floats and Buoyed Rafts in Military Operations’, Antiquity, xix, 1945, pp. 72-79. Amm. Marc. xxiv. 3. ii ‘imperator ipse praegressus, constratis ponticuHs multis ex utribus et *, exercitum npn sine difficultate traduxit’, xxv. 6. 15 ‘ardens ad transitum miles ea mora tantummodo tenebatm, quod utribus e caesorum animalium coriis coagmentare pontes architecti promittebant’, and, in reference to this last event, xxv. 7. 4 ‘haec inter cum neque pontes conpaginari paterentur tmdae torrentis’, &c. With conpaginari here cf. Anonymus, xvi. 3. See, further, Zosimus, iii. 30. 5. 5 Vegetius, ii. 25, iii. 7.

The Inventions

59

bridges.^ The novelty of the Anonymus’ idea, then, must lie solely in the method of constructing liis bridge. We may safely conclude that his invention was ultimately based on the practice—or at any rate, on the theory—of the Roman army of his day. Indeed, the second and third passages quoted on p. 58, n. 4 from Ammianus Marcellinus possibly refer to the very event which suggested to the Anonymus the necessity of explaining that his bridge must be thrown across the river obhquely, so as not to be swept away by the force of the cur¬ rent.^ For on that occasion Jovian’s army spent two days vauily trying to overcome the strength of the waters.^ It is perhaps worth adding incidentally that the Roman army in the late fourth century included a special corps of ascarii, who are mentioned in Ammianus and in the Notitia Dignita¬ tum. Mommsen suggested that the name may have been formed from the Greek askos, and so may have been a half-Greek equivalent of some such Roman term as utricularii^ But on the one occasion on which we catch a ghmpse of the ascarii in action^ we find Httle to bear out the suggestion, and we would do well to reserve our judgement on their function. However that may be, we may agree that the Anonymus is here improving upon the technique of the Roman army of his day. We need not suppose that his entire conception had been suggested to him by a passage of Xenophon’s Anabasis.^ Xenophon teUs how a certain Rhodian offered to transport the Ten Thousand across the Tigris on a bridge made out of 2,000 inflated skins. But the Rhodian’s method of constructing his ^ Amm. Marc, xxiii. 3. 9 ‘onerariae naues... ad conpaginandos necessariae pontes’, cf. Zosimus, iii. 13. 2. ^ xvi. 2, cf. Miiller (1916), pp. 1588 f. ^ Amm. Marc. xxv. 7. 4. Neither Julian nor Jovian seems to have had difficulty in obtaining an adequate supply of skins. * Mommsen, Ges. Schr. vi, p. 216. See the Thesaurus, s.v. ascarii. For a different guess at the etymology of the word see R. Much, Zeitschrift fiir deutsches Altertim, xli, 1897, pp. 94 f. ® Amm. Marc, xxvii. 2. 9. * That he derived the whole idea of the bridge from Xenophon, Anab. iii. 5. 7-12, is the view of Neher, p. 37; contra, Reinach, pp. 240 f.

The Contents of the Book

6o

bridge was quite different from that of the Anonymus. He merely proposed to place the skins side by side in the river and to hold them in position by anchoring them to large stones lying on the river-bed. (The stones were to be attached to the skins by means of ropes and then allowed to sink to the bottom.) In only one respect do the two plans coincide. The Rhodian proposed to cover his bridge with earth and wood to prevent the men from shpping on the smooth, wet leather surfaces: the Anonymus suggests that cilicia, mats of goat-hair, should be strewn over his bridge for the same purpose.^ But this is merely a coincidence of minor importance. There is no reason to sup¬ pose that the Anonymus had studied the Anabasis. There is, however, one point of interest to us in the narrative of Xenophon. The Ten Thousand, we are told, rejected the Rhodian’s offer, but they did not do so because they thought the construction of such a bridge to be in itself impossible— indeed, they thought the idea an attractive one. They rejected it because in their opinion the budding of the bridge would be prevented by the large numbers of the enemy’s cavalry who were patrolling the opposite bank of the Tigris. Now this is precisely a difHculty which the Anonymus has foreseen and for which he has exphcitly made provision: manuballistae are to be deployed in such a position as to provide a covering fire for the troops engaged in constructing the bridge.^ Whatever we may think of the judgement of Xenophon’s officers, we may note that in the opinion of at least two modem scholars the Anonymus’ bridge could probably have been made and used with profit by the Roman army.^ Their opinion may have been shared by Leonardo da Vinci, for some of his drawings show that he, too, examined the possibilities of the Anonymus’ Ascogefyms.^ * XVI.

3.

2 xvi. 4.

3 Neher, p. 39 ‘die ganze Briicke ist durchaus brauchbar imd niitzlich’; cf. Miiller (1911), p. 232. * Reinach, pp. 241 f. The Anonymus’ drawing shows not only the com¬ pleted bridge but also the bellows by which the skins were to be inflated. Students of the history of the bellows, which was invented c. 3000 B.c., will notice the very modem design of those represented in our author’s picture.

The Inventions

6i

Finally, we may add a word about this form Ascogefyrus. The manuscripts in the main give the form ascogefrus, which reflects httle credit on the Anonymus’ knowledge of Greek. Schrijver sought to rescue him by conjecturing that the Anonymus had in fact written ascogefura, and there seems no reason to doubt that this conjecture is on the right lines; for in xix. I jin. M reads ascogephyri, PV have ascogejiri, while C has ascogefrri. This last reading, ascogefrri, would seem to lend some support to Seeck’s view that the archetype of the Spirensis was written in Anglo-Saxon minuscules, for in that script the letter y is very easily confused with r.^ However that may be, the reading of the Spirensis in this passage would seem un¬ doubtedly to have been ascogefyrr, and the present writer has little hesitation in beheving that the Anonymus wrote the form ascogefyrus throughout, and that the strange name, hke the equally strange thoracomachus,^ proved too much for the imhappy copyists. (d) Artillery (see Figs. Ill and XII). The author discusses two baUistae which he names the Quadrirotis and the FulminaHs.^ The latter is to be moimted on a city- or fortress-waU and used for defensive purposes:'^ the former is a piece of mobile fieldartillery. ^ It is very difficult to form an estimate of the value or even the nature of the Anonymus’ baUistae, for here more than anywhere else he has failed to make his meaning clear; and indeed it may be that his ideas were not precisely formu¬ lated even in his own mind. Here more than anywhere else he rehes on the iUustrations. When introducing the BaUista qua¬ drirotis he says expUcitly that it is an ‘exemplum balHstae cuius fabricam ante oculos positam subtflis pictura testatur’.^ Again, * Seeck (1875), pp. 228 fF., 231; cf. Schnabel, pp. 252 f. Note V’s correction of trrannos into tyrannos in ii. 3. ^ See critical notes on cap. xv. 3 With quadrirotis Schneider (1908), p. 31 compares quadriforis, quadriremis, and the Greek tetrakuklos. For fulminalis see p. 65 below. * xviii. I and 9. ® vii. i. ® vii. I init. The relevant illustrations from the second series in M (pp. 15 f. above) are reproduced by Schneider (1910).

The Contents of the Book

62

in his introductory note on the inventions in general he under¬ takes to illustrate the tomenta only, although in fact he includes pictures of many other things besides.^ Indeed, several features shown in the illustrations of the baUistae are not mentioned in the text, and, on the other hand, more than one matter described in the text does not appear in the drawings. The Quadrirotis, as its name imphes, is mounted on four wheels.^ A few other ancient baUistae were also wheeled. Vegetius speaks of onagri which were carried around on wagons; and the carroballistae, which are also mentioned by Vegetius, were superpositae curriculis.^ There is no evidence, however, that in these cases the wheels were an integral and permanent part of the machine itself. The only ancient baUista outside our author’s text which seems to have been permanently mounted on wheels is one iUustrated on Trajan’s column: we shaU return to it in a moment. Presumably the Anonymus caUed his machine by the name of Quadrirotis because the mounting of a baUista on four wheels was more or less unknown in his own day; clearly the four wheels were in his view a significant and important innovation. The trajectory of the Quadrirotis could be increased or decreased by means of a screw, cochlea, set in front of the machine, and the missile could be fired not only straight ahead but also to the right or left because of an increase in the num¬ ber of foramina, the slots in the frames through which in a torsion machine the twisted ropes were stretched.^ But in fact the Quadrirotis was not based on the principle of torsion. The striking suggestion of the Anonymus is that the torsion cata¬ pult, ‘the high-water mark of ancient mechanics’, as it has been called,^ is to be abandoned. He exphcitly says, ‘hoc baUistae *

4-

2

J

^ Vegetius, ii. 25 ‘decern onagri... in carpentis bubus portantur armati’, iii. 24 carroballistas aliquanto maiores . . . superpositas curriculis cum binis equis uel mulis post aciem conuenit ordinari’. Vitruuius, x. 10. i, Amm. Mare, xxiii. 4. 4, who calls them cauernae. ^ W. W. Tam, Hellenistic Military and Naval Developments (Cambridge, 1930), p. 112, where the principle of torsion is briefly and lucidly described.

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63

genus . . . sagittas ex se, non ut aliae funibus, sed radiis intorta iaculatur

What the function of the foramina was to be, then,

and where they were to be situated is difficult to decide. The Fulminahs is no more lucidly described.^ It, too, has a

cochlea in front and is not based on the principle of torsion. Instead of the twisted ropes of the traditional Roman artillery it has an iron bow, resting horizontally on two uprights, over the groove from which the arrow is to be fired. The uprights are drawn back by ropes attached to windlasses; but how tbis is intended to affect the bow and what relation there is between the horizontal bow and the arrow lying beneath it in the canalis^ are questions to wliich no certain answer can be given. When we turn to the illustrations we find that the mysterious iron bow is present not only in the Fulminahs but in the Quadrirotis as well, and in each case it forms one piece with the up¬ rights. Now this bow is found again on the baUista which we have already mentioned as depicted on Trajan’s column.^ We there see two pieces of artillery mounted on two wheels each: the wheels and framework do not raise the machines high off the ground, and the soldiers working them have to kneel as they operate them. From the sides of each frame or chassis rise two wooden uprights which support a wooden bow. Under¬ neath the bow lie two lances, which the kneeling soldiers are putting into place. Beside one of these balhstae stands another soldier holding the handle of what appears to be a winch. In all, Trajan’s picture is extraordinarily like that of the Anonymus, and the horizontal bow forms one piece with the uprights, as in the case of the Fulminahs. The foramina are not visible in either of our author’s draw¬ ings, though the cochlea can be clearly distinguished. Again, the two men who, according to the text,^ are required to turn ' vii. I fin. 2 Cap. xviii. xviii. 1: the w^ord is similarly used by Arum. Marc, xxiii. 4.2; cf. Vitruuius, X. 10. 3 canaliculus, who says that the Greek equivalent was syrinx. * For what follows see C. Cichorius, Die Reliefs der Traiansdule (Berlin, 1896-1900), Erster Tafelband, Plate XL, sections 104-5, with Textband ii, p. 199® xviii. 2. 3

64

The Contents of the Book

the windlasses of the FulminaHs are seen to be enclosed inside two octagonal frames of trellis-work, the existence and func¬ tion of which are not revealed by the text.* The ropes which these men wind back are attached to the two uprights of the bow, but the method of releasing the tension and so of dis¬ charging the missile is explained by neither text nor illustration. In spite of these obscurities several attempts have been made to describe the manner in which the ballistae of the Anonymus worked;^ but in fact all attempts to explain these machines should start from the assumption that in practice they would not have worked at aU. The Greco-Roman baUista based on the principle of torsion, for all its ingenuity, was by no means a perfect engine of war. At least one hour was required to mount a small one and make it ready for action, so that its use was almost confined to siege warfare.^ Moreover, the ballista sometimes managed to kill its own ‘gunner’—and loll him so definitively ‘ut ne signa quidem totius corporis noscerentur’.'^ Yet it was one of the triumphs of ancient appHed science. It had reigned unchallenged in Greco-Roman armies since the fourth century B.C., and its achievements were not matched until the fifteenth century a.d.^ It is indeed surprising, therefore, to find that the Anonymus is prepared to jettison the very principle of torsion. Vegetius says expHcitly: ‘onagri uel balHstae ceteraque tormenta nisi funibus neruinis intenta nihil prosunt.’^ The Anonymus’ break with contemporary theory and practice is dehberate and complete: * It is dear from the Munich illustration reproduced by Schneider (1910) that the trellis is not itself part of the windlass. ^ The reader may be referred espedally to Reinach, p. 230, and Schneider (1910), p. 341. 3 Tam, op. dt., p. 120; J. Kromayer and G. Veith, Heerwesen und Kriegfiihrung der Grkchen und Romer (Munich, 1928), p. 217. The carroballista and the manubalUsta had at one time been used in the field: Vegetius, ii. 25, iii. 14; the former required a very highly skilled crew, idem, iv. 22, * Amm. Marc. xxiv. 4. 28. ® On its accuracy see Tam, op. dt., p. 115. * iv. 9, cf iv. 22 ‘his duobus generibus [sc. baUista and onager] nulla tor¬ mentorum species uehementior inuenitur’.

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65

sciendum est autem quod hoc ballistae genus . . . sagittas ex se, non ut aliae fumbus, sed radiis intorta iaculatur.’^ Is he there¬ fore to be condemned? The Alexandrians made one or two attempts to improve upon the balhstae of the fourth century B.C., but in fact no major improvement was ever made upon

those of Demetrius Poliorcetes,^ and the Romans with their traditional indifference to technical advance are not known even to have tried to better them. In fact, the Romans took over the fourth-century Greek torsion balhsta and used it with decreasing efhciency for century after century.^ Indeed, the balhsta, onager, and scorpio may have been dropping out of use altogether in Vegetius’ time; for he describes these machines at some length, and goes on: ‘fustibalos arcubaUistas et fundas describere superfluum puto quae praesens usus agnoscit.’^ The time had come for a fresh start to be made, and the Anonymus deserves the credit of having tried to do precisely this and of not being afraid to throw off the shackles of tradition. At the time when he was writing Valens was rebuilding the Danube forts and equipping them with military machines,^ and Valentinian was refortifying the Rhine frontier. Unhappily, it is difficult to believe that the Anonymus had anything better to put in the place of the traditional torsion machine. Vegetius says that the onager will hurl its missHesfulminis morel' Whether the Fuhninalis of our author would have justified its name if it had ever been constructed and put to use must remain very doubtful.^

{e) The Tichodifrus (see Fig. IV). We need not spend much time over the minor inventions of the Anonymus, for they have httle interest in comparison with the four elaborate machines * vii. 1 Jin. ^ Tam, op. cit., pp. 117 f. The point is made with much exaggeration by E. Sander, ‘Der Verfall der romischenBelagerungskunst’, Historische Zeitschrift, cxhx, 1934, pp. 457-76. * iv. 22. s Themistius, Or. x, p. 162. 14 f. Dindorf. ® iv. 22 and 29. 7 Cf. Muller (1916), p. 1527. The fact that the word fulminalis occurs in a late glossary (see Thesaurus, s.v.) and elsewhere (Schneider (1908), p. 32) is no proof that it was not coined independently by the Anonymus. 3

5314

F

66

The Contents of the Book

already discussed. The Tichodifirus^ was intended, it seems, to solve the old problem of how to enable men and machines to approach the walls of a besieged city or fort in safety. In size the Tichodifrus has little in common with the huge Helepoleis of the Hellenistic kings, which, according to Ammianus, were still in use in the Roman army in the fourth century a.d.^ These enormous machines, which were sometimes as much as 6o feet in height,^ were drawn along, according to Ammianus, by numerosus intrinsecus miles, and will therefore have made Httle appeal to one as economical of manpower as the Anonymus was (p. 49 above). The Tichodifrus seems rather to have resembled a type of uinea described by Vegetius, which had acquired a barbarian name in the fifth century, a name which has unfortunately been corrupted in the manuscript tradition of Vegetius."^ This machine was made of hght timbers, and was about 8 feet broad by 7 feet high by 16 feet long. The troops sheltered in this uinea were able to approach the enemy’s wall so as to undermine it. A similar machine, the pluteus, is also described by Vegetius. It was mounted on three wheels—two in front and one in the middle—and seems to have been of even frailer construction than the uinea. The Tichodifrus seems to have differed from these only in being of a more substantial budd and in having some defensive armour. Thus, the great iron nads which held the Helepohs together^ are found in our author’s Tichodifrus too; and the very sharp tridents which projected in front of the Helepohs may have suggested to the Anonymus the idea of attaching tridents and lances to the axles and to the front and top surfaces of his Tichodifrus.^ The temo mentioned in the text is clearly shown in the dlustration; yet the whole contraption is to be drawn by two men.^ Un^ Cap. viii. 2 Amm. Marc, xxiii. 4. 10-13; but Sander, art. cit., pp. 464 £, doubts whether in fact these huge machines were still used. 3 Tam, op. cit., p. no. * iv. 15, where C. Lang, the Teubner editor, prints causias. 5 Amm. Marc, xxiii. 4. ii. ® viii. I Jin. ^ xix. 3.

The Inventions

67

fortunately, the illustration is not very helpful, and seems to show the chassis of the Tichodifrus alone. But Cadwallader Bates is not wholly fair to the Anonymus when he says that the illustration ‘looks like a cross between a hay-tedder and a turnip-driir.^

if) TheClipeocentrus (see Fig. IV). One function of the Ticho¬ difrus was to act as a shield to an advancing ballista. It is some¬ what disconcerting, however, to find that the Tichodifrus in its turn could also have a shield hung in front of it. This shield, the Clipeocentrus, would seem to differ from the ordinary Roman service shield (nearly always called scutum by Vegetius) in that it has a number of small nails driven into it so as to lend it strength.^ The illustration shows the Chpeocentrus as a bright red circle with a white centre and sixteen rows of blue

jixoria radiating from the centre to the circumference. (g) The Plumbata et tribulata (see Fig. V). This, as its name im¬ plies, is a combination of two weapons, both of which were in use in the Roman army of the Anonymus’ time. The plumbata (sc. sagitta or hastaY was currently called the mattiobarbulus in the days of Vegetius.^ Vegetius classes it with the uerutum,^ which was a short spear; so that presumably the plumbata or

mattiobarbulus was a kind of spear weighted with lead. The same author implies that it was a weapon of the light-armed troops;^ and some men carried no less than five of them in the hollow of their shields, and were thus almost able to fulfil the functions of an archer. The tribulus, formerly known as the * Bates, p. 450, cf. Reinach, p. 231. ^ Cap. ix. Evidently Jixorium = Greek kentron. 3 This must be distinguished from the plumbati gladii ■with which almost all soldiers were armed in the time of Vegetius, ii. 15. i. 17, cf. ii. 15. The etymology of the name is unknown: for a curious medieval effort to discover it see the schoHast on Vegetius pubhshed by M. Manitius, ‘Aus Dresdener Handschriften’, Rheinisches Museum, n.f. Ivii, 1902, pp. 392-421, at p. 3945 iii. 14, cf. iv. 21. ® iii. 14. For its use by the louiani and Herculiani see idem, i. 17. What appears to be a specimen of a mattiobarbulus has been found at Mainz: Neher, p. 26; Lammert, P.-W. xiv. 2323 f.

68

The Contents of the Book

murex, is thus described by Vegetius: ‘tribulus autem est ex quattuor palis confixum propugnaculum, quod, quoquomodo abieceris, tribus radiis stat et erecto quarto infestum est.’^ They were designed for use in fortifying a camp, and resembled Julius Caesar’s cippi and lilia.^ Sometimes, however, they were set on fire and were then hurled blazing at the enemy. ^ It may be that these last were always hurled from tormenta, for the Anonymus is curiously insistent that his weapon is to be thrown by hand: his words suggest that this is an innovation.'^ Other¬ wise, his Plumbata et tribulata is simply a tribulus made of wood (as were those in common use),^ but weighted with lead and not intended to be set on fire. Vegetius’ plumbata has no tribuli; the tribuli of the army had no plumbum; our author’s weapon has both tribuli and plumbum. As for the beHef that the feathers attached to it will lend it speed, this, as Reinach says, is a ‘scientific heresy’: the feathers would merely serve to keep it steady on its course.^

(h) The Plumbata mamillata (see Fig, V) differs from the fore¬ going in two respects. It has no aculei uelut tribuli, and the spear¬ head is shaped like a minaret—though this feature is not shown in the illustration—so as to have more penetrating power. The mamiUata has the lead and feathers of the previous weapon to lend it weight and—as the author thought—speed.'^ It is not easy to see what Roman weapon this can have been modelled on.

(J) The Thoracomachus (see Fig. IX) is an article of clothing made out of soft felt. Its primary purpose is to protect the body of the wearer against the friction of his mail armour and against * iii. 24. See, too, Procopius, BG. vii. 24. 16-18. ^ Bell. Gall. vii. 72 f. ^ References in P.-W. {Zw. R.), vi. 2413-15. * X. I. 5 Vegetius, iii. 8 ‘sudes uel tribuli lignei’. There seem to be few parallels to our author’s use of the word fistula = ‘socket’ or ‘sleeve’ (Neher, p. 25 ‘TiiUe’). * Reinach, p. 232. 7 Cap. xi, Neher, p. 27. This scholar (p. 28, n. 2) compares Isidore, Etym. xi. 74 ‘mamillae uocatae, quia rotundae simt, quasi malae per diminutionem scUicet’. The word mamillata itself is found in Augustine: see Thesaurus, s.v.

The Inventions

69

cold weather.^ Its secondary value is that it will help to defend the wearer against hght missiles even if he is not wearing his mail armour. A passage of Julius Caesar shows that the idea was not an original one (though the Anonymus may have been unaware of this): ‘atque oimies fere imlites aut ex coactis aut ex centonibus aut ex coriis tunicas aut tegmenta fecerunt quibus

tela uitarent’^ The garments described here by Caesar formed no regular part of a late Republican soldier’s equipment: they were made ad hoc by Caesar’s men in a particular emergency. What seems to the present writer a more likely source for the suggestion of the Anonymus has been pointed out by Muller— the practice of the fourth-century army itself.^ We are told by Ammianus Marcellinus of an acquaintance of his who wore a cento under his helmet, which, when lowered into a well, soaked up water like a sponge, aquasque hauriens ad peniculi

modum.^ With this soldier, however, we find two others (one of them Ammianus himself) who appear to have had no such

cento. The cento, then, may have been devised by some Roman troops on their own initiative for their personal comfort, with¬ out being issued regularly by the authorities. If so, the Anony¬ mus’ idea is to transfer the cento from the head to the body and to have it issued to all troops as part of their regular equipment. It is regrettable that we do not know of what material Am¬ mianus’ friend had made his cento\ but there is no reason to beheve that it was stout enough to ward off the missiles of the enemy. 5 So much for the individual inventions of the Anonymus. We shall try to discuss them in a more general way in the con¬ cluding section of this Introduction. * XV. I, xix. I, cf. Vegetius, ili. 2 ‘nec sanitati enim nec expeditioni idoneus miles est qui algere conpellitur’. 2 Bell. Ciu. iii. 44, quoted by Neher, p. 51. 3 Muller (1916), p. 1528. * Amm. Marc. xix. 8. 8. The indumenta linea, also mentioned in that passage, are probably irrelevant to our purpose, as they were simply light clothing worn when on service on the hot Eastern frontier. 5 xix. I, Muller (1911), p. 232 refers to Not. Tir. 97. 18 thorax coactilis.

70

The Contents of the Book XIII. THE LINE OF MARCH

The Anonymus says little of tactics except in reference to the use which the Emperor ought to make of the new equipment which he has just described. Thus, the Thoracomachus must be worn when on service in cold chmates;^ the scythed chariots must be thrown into battle when the enemy’s line has already been broken;^ and so on. He adds one or two instructions of a more general character: twice the necessary number of draught animals should be brought on a campaign to draw the hurling engines, so that no delay will be caused by casualties or acci¬ dents; when the nature of the terrain does not allow the men to deploy easily from the agmen into the acies, baUistae should be posted on either flank to prevent the crowded columns from being taken at a disadvantage by the enemy;^ and so on. But it is more important to observe that, when discussing the Thoracomachus, the Anonymus insists that the infantryman as he enters battle must be equipped not only with the Thoraco¬ machus but also with boots, iron greaves, helmet, shield, sword, and lances; and elsewhere we are told that he should have a

lorica uel cliuanus too."^ This catalogue suggests that all the items in it were not always worn or carried by the foot-soldier of the Anonymus’ own time. Now Vegetius in a famous passage tells us that the Roman infantrymen of Gratian’s day asked that Emperor for permission to leave olf their catafractae and cassides, with the result that, when their request was granted, their heads and chests had no defence against the arrows of the Goths.^ It would seem that the process of disarming the Roman soldier, which thus reached a climax in Gratian’s reign, had already begun in the reign of Gratian’s father. But if he has httle to say about the acies, our author evidently had views of some strength on the agmen. One may conclude from his words^ that troops on the march were apt to be throvm * xix. I. ^ xix. 4. 3 xix. 5. ^ XV. 3, cf. I. The centurion was responsible for seeing that his men were adequately clothed and shod: Vegetius, ii, 14. s i. 20. * xix. I init.

The Line of March

71

into confusion by marching in no regular formation. Now although Vegetius also has a word to say about the necessity for marching in disciplined agmina our authorities for the history of the Anonymus’ age give no examples of the ill effects of what our author is pleased to term the compressa populositas of an army on the march. ^ It is not easy to see what the Anony¬ mus has to say that the Emperor did not know already. Thus, we hear that in 356 JuHan marched through hostile country from Rheuns to Dieuse densatis agminibus, and his procedure does not seem to have been unusual or to have brought his men into any danger from their own populositas.^ We also hear of armies moving in closely packed cunei‘, but again the formation does not appear to have been regarded as a hazardous one.^ At any rate, the Anonymus’ plan is that armies should march in three agmina, each of which should comprise no more than 2,000 men. What the arrangement was to be if the army in question numbered more than 6,000 men is not stated. Against the Persians a different formation is to be employed in view of the ingenuity and physical courage of this nation, which had deeply impressed our author.'^ When operating against them a Roman force must march in square formation, he says; but again it is not easy to see the novelty of the pro¬ posal. In fact, the agmen quadratum was often employed in open country such as might be found on the Eastern frontier. Indeed, a very few years before the Anonymus wrote, JuHan’s army had marched in precisely this formation after entering the Persian Empire. In view of the Anonymus’ statement that the Persians more than any other people loved ‘gude’, dolus, it is interesting to frnd that on the two occasions when Juhan ordered his men to march agminibus quadratis he did so because he feared immediate ambushes by his Persian foe.^ And in fact we * xix. I, Vegetius, i. 26, cf. iii. 6, 19 ‘populosior globus’. ^ Aimn. Marc. xvi. 2. 9. 3 xxxi. 9. 3. * xix. 2. ® Amm. Marc. xxiv. i. 2 ‘utque ductor usu et docilitate firmatus, metuens ne per locorum insolentiam insidiis caperetur occultis, agminibus incedere quadratis exorsus est’, cf. xxv. 3. 2. On the agmen quadratum see the passage cited by Neher, p. 67, n. 8.

72

The Contents of the Book

frequently find in the pages of Ammianus that Roman generals throw their men into this formation when marching through country where they are Hable to sudden and unexpected attacks. We hear, for instance, of Jovinus and again of Valentinian doing so when they penetrated Alamannic territory across the Main; and of the Comes Theodosius as he expected an attack by the rebel Firmus in Africa; and of Valens as he marched into the close proximity of the Visigoths at Adrianople. ^ Indeed, through¬ out the entire narrative of Ammianus we never hear of a general suffering defeat because Ins men were marching in a disorderly agmen. XIV. FRONTIER FORTIFICATIONS

The last proposal made by our author in connexion with purely mihtary affairs concerns the fortification of the frontiers,^ He suggests that every frontier should be surrounded with strongly built forts equipped with towers, and that these forts should be constructed at intervals of one mile along each limes. These projected mile-castles at once remind us of Hadrian’s Wall, and indeed the similarity between the two was noted by Wilham Camden as long ago as the year i6oo.3 As CadwaUader Bates says, the passage ‘at first sight reminds us more of the line of mile-castles and turrets along the crags from Walltown to Sewingshields than does anything else to be found in classical hterature’.'^- Had the Anonymus travelled to northern Britain? Or had he spoken to some officer who had once been stationed on the Wall? If so, what of the events of 368 ? Unhappily, these are questions to which we can give no answer. If in fact our author was thinking of Hadrian’s Wall when he made this ^ Amm. Marc, xxvii. 2. 8, 10. 6, xxix. 5. 39, xxxi. 12. 4. ^ Cap. XX. 3 See Bibliography, s.v. Camden; Stevens, passim. Bates, p. 447» who points out (p. 448) that ‘one reason for this passage having been allowed to drop out of the series of stock quotations on the sub¬ ject, appears to have been the difficulty writers experienced of finding where it actually came from’. Some thought, for instance, that it was an extract from Ammianus.

Frontier Fortifications

73

proposal, it is interesting to find that he or his informant or both considered the Wall to be so efficacious as to wish to see one of its features reproduced on every other limes of the Empire. Two further points connected with this tantahzmg suggestion deserve attention: (i) We have seen (p. 49 above) that the cliief aim of our author in recommending the mechanization of the army was the saving of manpower. It is a curious lapse on his part to suppose that the Emperor would have sufficient men at his disposal to garrison forts built at intervals of one mile along each of the limites of Europe, Asia, and Africa, (ii) Either it is very umocent or else it is not at all innocent (p. 87 below) to suppose that these forts could be constructed without any outlay of public money, and that the government would be able to induce the local possessores to budd the forts on their own respective parts of the frontier at their own expense. At any rate, that the Anonymus should have wished to see the possessores expend their money on the generous scale which he has in mind here is yet another indication that he was not himself one of their number. This entire chapter of the de rebus bellicis was quoted by Camden, and consequently it was translated by Philemon Holland in his English version of Camden’s work. It may be of interest to readers to see how he turned it: Among the commodities of State and Weale publike, right behovefuU is the care concerning the Hmits, which in all cases doe guard and enclose the sides of the Empire: The defence whereof may bee best assured by certain castles bmlt neare together, so that they be erected with a steedy wall & strong towres a mile asunder one from another: Which munitions verily the Land-lords ought to arreare without the pubhcke charge, by a distribution of that care among themselves, for to keep watch and ward in them and in the field forefences, that the peace and quiet of the Provinces being guarded round about therewith, as with a girdle of defence, may rest safe and secure from hurt and harme.^ * See Bibliography, s.v. Camden.

74-

The Contents of the Book XV. THE CODIFICATION OF THE LAW

The most noteworthy characteristic of late Roman law was its tendency to become codified and stabihzed, to lose its adapta¬ bility and elasticity, to cease to be an instrument of reform even for those whose interests it was designed to serve. Accordingly, c. 291 the Codex Gregorianus was published, containing a col¬ lection of constitutions dating back to the reign of Hadrian. Its omissions were supplied a couple of years later by the Codex Hermogenianus, which was pubhshed in the Eastern Empire and was added to and supplemented as the years went by. But after the lapse of seventy or eighty years, at the time when our author was writing, the law was in as profound a state of con¬ fusion as ever. Quite apart from the words of the Anonymus, there is no lack of evidence relating to the repugnantes sibi leges. We know that the existence of contradictory laws had given rise to a crop of lawyers who professed to have an inti¬ mate knowledge of ‘Trebatius and CasceUius and Alfenus and the long since forgotten laws of the Aurunci and Sicani, which were buried many centuries ago along with Euander’s mother’. Indeed, says a contemporary of the Anonymus who had had first-hand experience of the law-courts and the lawyers and the repugnantes sibi leges, if you pretended to these lawyers that you had wilfully murdered your mother, they would promise that their recondite studies would secure you an acquittal—si te senserint esse nummatum.^ The condition of the law eventually interfered even with the interests of the governing classes who made it, for they produced a general codification of the law in the reign of Theodosius II (a.d. 438), who pointed out that numbers of laws were still vaHd although the later among them contradicted the earher.^ One of the chief purposes of the Theodosian Code was to abohsh the ambiguity of the law, and the compilers were given authority to remove inconsistencies * Amm. Marc. xxx. 4. ii f. ^ See the Gesta Senatus in Mommsen’s edition of the Theodosian Code, p. 2, § 4 = CTh. i. I. 5, cf. i. 4. 3.

The Codification of the Law

75

and contradictions.^ The reader will observe that all this was only done some seventy years after the Anonymus had sug¬ gested the reform and Ammianus had illustrated the middle class s need for it. Evidently the abuses had made themselves felt progressively higher and higher up the social scale until at last they affected the ruhng class itself Then, and only then, was action taken. XVI. CONCLUSION

We may now proceed to form, if we can, one or two judge¬ ments of a more general nature on the Anonymus and the value of his work. It will be convenient to begin by considering his mihtary equipment. To what extent are these inventions original ? Did the Anony¬ mus himself think them out, or are his ideas derived from written sources? Modem critics tend to adopt the view that the Anonymus owed his ideas to earher writers, some of whom, it is beheved, can be identified. Thus, the Liburna is said to have been an adaptation of an instrument described by Vitruuius which could measure the distance travelled by a ship (p. 50 above). The idea of the Ascogefyrus is said to have been sug¬ gested by a passage of Xenophon’s Anabasis (pp. 59 £ above), the Thoracomachus by a passage of Caesar (p. 69 above), and so on. If the precise source cannot be identified in the case of some of the inventions, that is doubtless due, so it is argued, to the imperfect preservation of Greek and Roman literature.^ This leaves some scope for conjecture, and Bidez and Cumont conjecture that one source of the Anonymus may have been the lost Mechanica of the Emperor Juhan, pubhshed a very few years before the Anonymus wrote. They urge, for instance, * Ibid. i. I. 6. The Code of Justinian has much to say of contrariae sententiae and constitutiones confusae: see the passages cited by Neher, p. 72, n. i. * Neher, pp. 49, 64, 72, holds this extreme view, and even supposes that the Anonymus’ balHstae are identical with those described by Ammianus Marcellinus and Procopius, which is certainly not the case. On the other hand, Miiller (1916), p. 1589 allows the Ascogefyrus to be an original invention of the Anonymus.

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The Contents of the Book

that the very names of the Anonymus’ inventions show him to have used a Greek sourced This last suggestion may be dismissed without much ado. It is well known that Roman writers are continually driven to have recourse to the Greek language for technical terms and for the means of coining technical terms with which their own language was so ill equipped. As Miiller says, our dictionaries contain very many Latin words of Greek formation which occur only once or twice in literature, and then in technical writers alone. New inventions demand new words to describe them, and a Roman inventor—^particularly one who had styhstic ambitions—could not do other than turn to the Greek for help with his nomenclature.^ As for JuHan’s Mechanica, so httle is known about this work that the suggestion of Bidez and Cumont can neither be proved nor disproved: in the opinion of the present writer the suggestion is far from per¬ suasive. What we hear of the work does not in the least indi¬ cate that it contained ideas for new machines; and what we know of Juhan himself does not suggest that he had ambitions to win fame as a mechanical inventor. Moreover, the short interval which had elapsed since Julian’s work was pubhshed makes it unlikely that the Anonymus re-hashed it for the benefit of JuHan’s next successor but one. What are we to say of Xenophon, Caesar, and Vitruuius as sources of the Anonymus’ ideas? It is undeniable that the Anonymus had studied some ancient writers when consider¬ ing one at least of his machines. There can be no doubt that he had never seen a scythed chariot in action; yet he knows very well the difficulties which a scythed chariot would en¬ counter if it were used, and this information must have reached him from books. Moreover, he tells us expHcitly that the Thoracomachus was invented in ancient times: he includes it inter omnia quae . . . prouida posteritatis cogitauit antiquitas.’ Of the Ballista fulminalis he states that its efficiency has already ' See Bibliography, s.v. Bidez. == Miiller (1911), p. 233,

Conclusion

77

been tested in practice, usu compertum est.^ Now this last asser¬ tion gives us food for reflection: perhaps it provides us with a clue to the value of such statements. It is exceedingly difficult to believe that this baUista had ever in fact been made and used, and still more difficult to believe that it had been found efficient. This claim, indeed, goes some way towards discrediting the author s hints about the ^antiquity’ of the machines. These remarks may well be merely a device to lend authority to his inventions: if the army of the good old days had used these machines, the Emperor could have no excuse for refusing to equip his armies with them now. That this conclusion is in fact the correct one would seem to follow from a passage in wliich the Anonymus says with equal distinctness that his machines are new ones, nouis armorum machinis.^ It is by no means impossible, of course, that the relevant passage of Caesar did in fact suggest the idea of the Thoracomachus to the Anonymus. But in view of the facts that the Anonymus’ Libuma and Ascogefyrus are so very different from the device described by Vitruuius and from the bridge of Xenophon’s Rhodian; that his proposals are based so closely on the techniques of his own day (as we saw particularly in the case of the Libuma); and that they are designed so clearly to remedy the maladies of precisely the fourth century—^in view of these facts it seems to the present writer safest to suppose that the Anonymus’ ideas in this part of his work are altogether, or almost altogether, his own, and that his statements about the ‘antiquity’ of his inventions should be written off as fictional, as a hterary device intended to impress the Emperor. But if we agree that the machines are the work of the Anonymus him¬ self, we must hasten to add that he invented them on paper only. We cannot believe that he followed the example of * XV. I, xviii. I.

2 vi. 3. The phrase ‘utiha uestrae fehcitati undique redacta conferre gestiui’, praef. lo, is indecisive and refers to his proposals in general, not to the machines alone. From the sentence ‘[currodrepanum] . . . repperit Parthicae pugnae necessitas’, xii. i, Reinach, p. 251 concludes that the Currodrepanus was invented by the Persians; but that is not the meaning of the words.

78

The Contents of the Book

Callias of Aradus or of Apollodorus’' and made working models of his machines before submitting them to the Emperor with a confident promise that they would lay the barbarians low. To that extent he shares the attitude of the summa nobilitas towards manual labour, and that in turn is the reason why he is so uncritical of the efficiency of his inventions; if he had set about making models of them he might liave been more diffident. Could the machines have been made and used? If they could, what would have been their value ? The balhstae and the scythed chariots may be ruled out as totally impracticable in the form in which the Anonymus describes them, however striking a tribute they may be to the inventor’s ingenuity and imagina¬ tive power. On the other hand, if the Liburna could be made and used with satisfactory results in twelfth-century China, there is little reason to doubt that it could have been made and used by the Romans. Whether it would ever have won them a sea-battle is another question. The Ascogefyrus has been pro¬ nounced possible by modern students, and we may suppose that the officers of the Ten Thousand would have agreed with the judgement. We are on more debatable ground when we come to the lesser inventions, the Tichodiftus, the CHpeocentrus, the Plumbata et tribulata, the Plumbata mamdlata, and the Thoracomachus. Muller allows that only the last of these would have been of value to the fourth-century army;^ but perhaps it is legitimate to be somewhat more generous. The present writer must confess that he would not have relished the task of brandishing and hurling a Plumbata et tribulata; but the Chpeocentrus, the Plumbata mamiUata, and the Tichodifrus (if we can be sure of what it was) might have been an improvement on the corresponding weapons actually in use c. 370. We must confess, however, that the improvement would have been a negHgible one. If the Emperors had promptly issued all these pieces of equipment to their armies they would ' Vitruuius, x. 16. 3 f., Apollodorus, Poliorc. init. 2 Miiller (1911), p. 232.

Conclusion

79

not thereby have quelled the circumlatrantium ubique nationum insania, nor would they have eased the burden of the taxpayer. But these questions about the practicability and hypothetical value of the inventions are unreal. The fact is that the machines were never made by the Romans, in spite of the Anonymus’ request that they should be. Even if we admit for the moment that the practical value of the inventions was nil, it still remains extraordinarily meritorious to have conceived the idea that the barbarians could be kept out of the Empire if the Roman army were mechanized. Not many Romans looked to machines for their salvation. It would have been better for them if they had— but then they would not have been Romans. Moreover, the Anonymus’ attitude towards the army must be distinguished clearly from that of Vegetius, whose quixotic wish it was that a type of army which had passed out of existence some two centuries earher should be resurrected in the age of Valentinian III. Except in the case of the scythed chariots the Anony¬ mus has freed himself from the past: his concern is with the present. He accepts the position as he fmds it, and tries to improve upon it. To that extent his feet are firmly planted on the ground. And there is another significant contrast with Vegetius. The methods of warfare recommended by the latter (and other Imperial mihtary writers) are predominantly defen¬ sive. When discussing siege operations, for example, in his fourth book Vegetius writes almost exclusively from the point of view of the besieged. That the Roman army might attack and besiege a city of the foe is a contingency scarcely worth taking into account.^ This is not the spirit of the Anonymus. With the exception of the BalHsta fulminalis, which is intended for muralis defensio,^ all his weapons are weapons of attack. We shall perhaps take a more sympathetic view of the Anonymus’ major machines—the Liburna, the scythed chariots, ^ The best, and indeed the only, account of Roman strategy in the fourth century is that of V. I. Kholmogorov, ‘Rimskaya strategiya v IV v. u Ammiana Martsellina’, Vestnik Drevnei Istorii, 1939, pp. 87-97. Much still remains to be done. ^ xviii. I.

8o

The Contents of the Book

and so on—if we glance at a contrivance which was actuallymade by the Romans and was in use at the time when he was writing, a contrivance of which some Romans thought highly. The reaping machine described by the elder Pliny in the first century a.d., and again more fully by Palladius in the fifth, has been studied by A. Nachtweh, and his illustration of what the machine looked like is reproduced as Fig. XIII, ^ The unhappy ox was expected to push the cart forwards so that the row of knives in front of it scraped off the ears of com, which there¬ upon proceeded to fall back into the cart. One would not have expected the efficiency of this contraption to have been impres¬ sive even on the level ground on which alone it was used. Yet according to Pliny it was employed by the owners of the lati¬ fundia of Gaul (men who cannot be suspected of a sentimental and altruistic interest in the advancement of technical science), and, as Palladius’ reference to it seems to show, it continued to be used there for some three or four centuries. And that is not its whole history. Palladius’ description of it was translated and a substantially accurate reconstruction was illustrated in J. C. Loudon’s Encyclopaedia of Agriculture in 1825.^ This caught the eye of a Hampstead man named John Ridley (1806-87), and inspired him with the idea of his reaping machine, called ‘Ridley’s stripper’, which he invented in South Austrafia in the summer of 1843-4 hi order to meet an acute shortage of labour in that colony.^ It is worth adding that Ridley ‘did not * Pliny, NH. xviii. 296; Palladius, Agric. vii. 2. 2. A. Nachtweh, ‘Rekonstruktion der iiltesten gaUischen Mahmaschine’, Journal ftir Landwirtschaft, lix, 1911, pp. 1-8, 367-70. Note that, according to Pallachus, this machine was used so as to save manpower. ^ London, 1825, p. 26. This Loudon’s practical interest in the housing condi¬ tions of EngUsh peasants has eamedhim the high distinction of being mentioned in George Ehot’s Middlemarch, cap. iii. 3 See Annie E. Ridley, A Backward Glance: the Story of John Ridley a Pioneer (London, 1904), p. 382, with a photograph of Ridley’s original machine facing p. 94: the reader who compares this photograph with Nachtweh’s reconstruction of Palladius’ machine will see the difference between the fourth century a.d. and the nineteenth century a.d. I owe the reference to Miss Ridley’s book to R. L. Dunbabin, ‘Notes on Lewis and Short’, Classical Reuiew, xlix, 1935, pp. 9-12, at p. 9, n. i.

Conclusion

8i

take out a patent for his invention, but gave it freely and gratuitously to the colonists’. At any rate, that is what he intended to do; but he forgot that he was hving in a capitahst world, and we are told that the machine was being manu¬ factured in Austraha with great profit to the makers’ as late as 1885 siitl probably later.^ Now if the machine of Pliny and Palladius were not known to have been successfully used— if, for example, it had merely been described as one of our Anonymus inventions—^we may be sure that scholars would have dismissed it as far-fetched, wrong-headed, and impracti¬ cable. It is not suggested, of course, that any of the Anonymus’ inventions (apart from the paddle-wheel) had the actual or potential value of the harvester described by Pliny and Pal¬ ladius. Our point here is that, when judged by the standard of the exceedingly primitive machines in use in his own day and not by the standard of twentieth-century industriaHsm, the Anonymus inventions are by no means so bizarre and other¬ worldly as they might at first sight appear. The reason why he failed as an inventor is not to be ascribed to any lack of imaginative power on his part or of initiative: as we have seen, he was nothing if not ingenious and bold. Nor can we blame his failure even upon his undeniable lack of self-criticism, the ultimate source of which we have indicated above (p. 78). The reason for his failure hes rather in the fact that he was (as far as we know) an isolated phenomenon: even though Valentinian toyed with new weapons, the Anonymus can scarcely be said to have had either forerunners or disciples in the period of the later Empire. The very imiqueness of his efforts doomed them to failure at the outset. ‘A critical history of technology’, writes Karl Marx, ‘would show how httle any of the inventions of the eighteenth century were the work of one single individual’;^ and what apphes to eighteenth-century ^ Miss Ridley, op. cit., p. 380. ^ Capital, i, p. 392, n. 2 (Everyman edition). Marx goes on to say that ‘hitherto no such book has been published’, and it cannot be said that the gap has been filled in the meantime, at any rate in Enghsh, although the trail has 5314

G

82

The Contents of the Book

mechanical inventiveness applies even more forcibly to the mechanically primitive Roman Empire, where discovery and invention were much less purposive and self-conscious than they are in industrialized societies like eighteenth-century England. Finally, if we try to find out the reason why the Anonymus stood alone in his age, we shall have to look to the social structure of the Roman Empire itself.^ The value of an invention must be measured not in terms of any innate quahties in that which is invented but in terms of the use to which the invention can be put by the society which produces it. We have seen that the Roman Empire could make only a very unsatis¬ factory use of so ingenious and potentially useful a device as the watermill, ‘an invention’, as Marx says, ‘that is the ele¬ mentary form of all productive machinery’.^ In the time of Lucretius, who mentions it, the watermill had not much more social value than had the steam engine of Hero or the flyingmachines of Leonardo at the time when they were invented: it acquired value only when the structure of society had changed in such a way that it could be put to use on a socially beneficial scale. The Roman Empire, which came so dismally near to failure in the case of the watermill, could derive no profit at all fiom the Anonymus’ efforts. No attempt was made to follow up his ideas, to modify and develop them, to make them the startingpoint for new ideas imtil he had been a thousand years in his grave and until the structure of society had so radically altered that, as our quotation from PanciroH shows (p. 19 above), his ideas about tormenta were on the point of passing out of date.^ been blazed by S. Lilley, Men, Machines, and History (vol. 7 in the series ‘Past and Present’), London, 1948. ^ See the works cited on p. 44, n. 2 above, and especially Engels, cited on p. 44, n. 4. ^ Op. cit., p. 434, where the reader wiU find an amusing and very penetrating comment on the celebrated epigram of Antipater of Thessalonica {A.P. ix. 418) in which the watermill is first mentioned. Marx, op. cit., p. 367 n., observes that ‘the whole evolutionary history of machinery can be traced in the history of corn mills. In England a factory is still called a “miU”.’ 3 On the relation between the structure of society and the rate of mechanical invention see Lilley, op. cit., cap. xi.

Conclusion

83

Let us turn to the parts of our author’s work which are not directly concerned with the equipment of the army. It is, of course, indisputable that if the reforms which he considers desirable had been felt to be necessary and in their own interests by the governing classes of the Empire attempts would have been made to carry them through even without the advice of our anonymous curial. One of them, in fact, did closely affect the interests of the possessores, who were far from indifferent to the currency. Consequently, we find that the problem of the debasement of the coinage by the monetarii had been tackled by Constantine many years before our author put pen to paper (p. 35, n. I above). As the condition of the Empire deteriorated, the other proposals also became relevant in a greater or lesser degree. The Exactors were shorn of some of their opportunities for extortion by the legislation of 386, a score of years or less after he had written his book. The law was codified by Theo¬ dosius II in 438 and again on an even vaster scale by Justinian; and we have seen how Justinian tried to have the best of both worlds in the matter of reducing expenditure on the army. But the system of distributing capital sums to certain favoured sections of the population, which in the opinion of the Anonymus lay at the heart of the problem—this, needless to say, was never abohshed: it was part of the process by which the spoils of exploitation were distributed among the ex¬ ploiters and their henchmen. There can be no doubt, on the other hand, that a systematic and simultaneous attack upon all the problems which our Anonymus specifies, if it had been carried out in the later fourth century, would have alleviated in some measure the distress of the middle-class Roman population. The specific reforms pro¬ posed by the Anonymus, of course, would have remedied little. The merit, such as it is, of his prescriptions lies in the fact that they foUow logically enough from his premisses and that they are all consistently directed towards one end; the Emperor must look to the utilitates collatorum^ or dantium, as he crisply * iv. I

init.

«4

The Contents of the Book

calls them in one passage.^ Just as he invented his machines to achieve one end, the saving of manpower in the army, so he offers his other suggestions with one aim in mind, the restora¬ tion of the prosperity of middle-class taxpayers.^ But the mihtary reforms themselves are designed to save public expenditure,^ so that, in fact if not in intention, the whole treatise is a plea to the Emperor collatori prospicere. This brings us to a part of the work which we have not yet discussed, the title de rebus bellicis. Schneider urges that the author’s entire concern is not with mihtary affairs at all but with lowering the rate of taxation, and that therefore the title de rebus bellicis cannot be genuine: the scribe of the Codex Spirensis or of some earHer manuscript found no title attached to the work, and himself inadequately supphed the omission.'’’ If this argument were correct, it would supply a precedent of sorts for the editors of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, who reject the traditional title outright, and refer to the work by the head¬ ing of one of the chapters, de bellicis machinis (cap, vi). It will be observed, however, that this new and arbitrary title does not meet Schneider’s objection to the traditional title, which demands some such phrase as de utilitatibus collatorum. Now the title de rebus bellicis is found in all the extant manu¬ scripts, and therefore it stood in the Codex Spirensis. So much is not in dispute. But the consequence which we draw from this fact is that the title de rebus bellicis cannot be abandoned unless we can show that it is either impossible or so improbable as to be all but impossible. This, however, is not the case, and Schneider’s view is scarcely convincing. To suppose that the Anonymus had simply chosen an inadequate title for his book is to give way to despair. In the opinion of the present writer the explanation is this: the Anonymus included social and administrative reforms under the title de rebus bellicis because * Praef. 7 ‘sine dantium poena’. The word is nowhere else used thus = col¬ latores: it may have been a slang expression. ^ Praef. 6 fin., 7, i. i, ii. 4, iv. i, cf. i. 2 fin. ^ V. I. * Schneider (1910), p. 327.

Conclusion

85

he beheved that social justice and administrative honesty were themselves a necessary condition of the successful defence of the frontiers; if the taxpayers were reasonably content and prosperous, Roman defence against the barbarians would be strengthened. Such a belief is by no means unique in the litera¬ ture of the later Empire: something very like it, for instance, forms the theme of the fifth book of Salvian’s de gubernatione Dei written c. 442. In that book Salvian analyses the social conditions prevail¬ ing in his time in Roman Gaul, and contrasts them with those obtaining in the barbarian kingdoms. He contrasts the com¬ parative social soHdarity of the barbarians with the class war which was raging fiercely among the Romans.^ He stresses the merciless and unjust taxation of the Roman poor, the un¬ scrupulous extortions of the bureaucracy,^ and the refusal of the wealthy to pay their due share of the taxes. Hence many people—and not always the ‘lowborn’ and uneducated—flee to the barbarians or to the Bagaudae. For the oppression of the many by the few is a purely Roman phenomenon: it is un¬ known among the Franks, Huns, Vandals, or Visigoths—so much so, indeed, that the one prayer of aU Romans Hving in barbarian territory is that they may never be compelled to return in ius Romanum. After a long and splendid passage, of which this is a jejune summary, Salvian exclaims: ‘et miramur si non uincuntur a nostris partibus Gothi, cum malint apud hos esse quam apud nos Romani!’3 The only wonder, he goes on, is that all the poor have not fled long since with their families ^ Salvian, v. 15 fF. ^ See, for example, ibid. 17 (which may be quoted because of the resemblance of its language to that of the Anonymus, iv. i): ‘iUudest grauius quod plurimi proscribimtur a paucis, quibus exactio publica pecuHaris est praeda, qui fiscahs debiti titulos faciimt quaestus esse priuatos, et hoc non summi tantum, sed paene infimi, non indices solum, sed etiam indicibus obsequentes.’ 3 Salvian, v. 37. The Anonymus does not mention this flight of the oppressed classes to the barbarians because {a) he is speaking for a higher social class than Salvian, for whom curiales are tyrants, and {b) the flight of peasants and others to the barbarians did not reach extreme proportions until after the crossing of the Danube by the Visigoths in 376.

86

The Contents of the Book

and resculae. ‘Et miramur, he repeats, ‘si nos barbari capiunt, cum fratres nostros faciamus esse captiuos! Nil ergo mirum est quod uastationes sunt atque excidia ciuitatum. Diu id plurimorum oppressione elaborauimus ut captiuando alios etiam ipsi inciperemus esse captiui.’’' Now if for the sake of the argument we disregard the different class bases of the two works, it is clear that this description of Salvian’s is complementary to the argument of our Anonymus. According to Salvian, mihtary disasters are inflicted by the barbarians because of the social and administrative iniquities of the later Empire. According to the Anonymus, social and administrative wrongs must be righted before the barbarians can be brought to defeat. That is why he refers to his reforms as ‘defences’ which must be made ready at home and abroad,^ and that, it may be suggested, is why he called his treatise de rebus bellicis. The wrongs which our author has in mind are those of the collatores, the taxpayers. He is not so naive as to suppose that ‘the Romans’ are a homogeneous people, all with identical interests, a sort of mystical unity, holy and class-undivided for ever. On the contrary, he is well aware of their class divisions, and he is not altogether unaware of the fact that the in¬ terests of at least some of these classes are not identical but conflicting. The class for which he speaks is, as we have repeatedly sug¬ gested, the ordo curialis and its associates. He calls for the reform of certain abuses which weigh heavily upon the curials, but he is silent about the wrongs which the curials themselves inflict upon others. He would doubtless have frowned if he had hved to read Salvian’s discussion of the activities of the curials, and ^ Salvian, v. 46. Elsewhere, of course, Salvian does not shrink from wrapping up his arguments in reHgious language, and he is by no means free from that type of ideahstic argument which we noted on p. 31 above, e.g. vii. 25 ‘et miramur si terrae uel Aquitanorum uel nostrorum omnium a deo barbaris datae simt, cum eas, quas Romani polluerunt fornicatione, nunc mundent barbari castitate!’ ^ xxi. I ‘domi forisque Reipubhcae praesidiis comparatis’.

87

Conclusion

he would have been none too pleased at the judgement: quot curiales tot tyranni.’^ We have already noticed the somewhat ironical remarks in his Preface about the summa nobilitas and their universally admitted indifference to the technology of their day, to which he beheves that he himself will make a substantial contribu¬ tion. The nobles are lacking in‘the mother of every excellence’,

ingenii magnitudo, which even barbarians sometimes possess. We have also noted the casual-seeming proposal that the expense of erecting frontier forts at intervals of one mile along all the limites of the Empire might well be left to the possessores. Is it possible to believe that he had no inkling of the crippling outlay which would have been involved in such construction? We shall notice in a moment his treatment of the exploitation of the poor by the possessores. This writer was no friend to the great landed gentry. Interesting, too, is his attitude towards the merchant class. His reforms are intended in part to benefit their interests, and indeed the reform of the currency is primarily designed to remove difficulties from the commercial fife of negotiatores,

nummularii, and other businessmen.^ It may be that he had his doubts about the morality of those who enpge in trade— nec erit fraudi locus ubi nulla est mercis occasio

and this attitude

was shared by many members of the summa nobilitas and others irrespective of their refigion. It is a mistake, according to the Caesar Juhan, to accustom the young to the pofit-making and the trading activities of merchants and retailers; such matters are not fit for a free-born youth to speak of or even to hear mentioned by others, and if he finds out about them they win leave many blemishes upon his soul. Again, an Arian Christian, preaching to congregations which included estate-owners, says bluntly: ‘A merchant can rarely or never please God, and that is why no Christian ought to be a merchant; and if he wishes to be one, let him be cast forth from the church of God. .

He

who buys and sells cannot five without lying and perjury , &c. 1 Salvian, v. 18.

2 Praef. 6, iii. 1-2.

88

The Contents of the Book

The orthodox Salvian, whose excellent work, as we have seen (p. 86, n. I above), is not without its blemishes, asks, ‘What else does the life of all traders consist of except cheating and perjury?’^ What is interesting about the Anonymus’ attitude is that it is not confined to such sentiments as these. To a greater extent than many of his educated contemporaries he sees the place of the traders and others in society. He has their interests at heart when he proposes to prevent the monetarii from debasing the coinage. Mere contempt for trade did not exhaust his thought on the subject of commercial hfe. Most interesting of all is his attitude towards the poorer classes. It is true that he regards the efforts of the dispossessed to regain their inheritance as ‘crimes’: at any rate, that is what he calls them. It is equally true, however, that he does not dis¬ miss these classes as being innately wicked, or as lacking in a ‘sense of responsibility’, or such-like. It is the upper classes which set them the example of acting without reuerentia iuris and with¬ out pietatis affectus. He sees the phght of the poor as the result of an historical process. Their desperation is one aspect of a set of circumstances of which the increasing wealth of the ruling classes is another: ‘ex hac auri copia priuatae potentium repletae domus, in perniciem pauperum clariores effectae’, and this intensified exploitation by the rich was ‘of course’ carried out by violent means, tenuioribus uidelicet uiolentia oppressis, and so the oppressed classes reacted with violence.^ We do not know whether the Anonymus Hved to see the events which followed upon the crossing of the Danube by the Visigoths in 376. If he did, he may have concluded that barbarian successes were only possible because of the revolutionary activities of the exploited classes among the Romans themselves.^ As it is, he greatly oversimplifies the complexity of the social scene in his day, Julian, Or. i, p. 15 Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum, Homily xxxviii (Migne, PC. Ivi. 839 f., an interesting passage); Salvian, iii. 50. 2 ii. 2 f. 3 It is hoped to discuss the point at length elsewhere. I regret that I have not access to M. Alpatov’s article in Voprosy Istorii, No. 7,1949, which I know only from The Modern Quarterly, vol. 5, part 4 (Autumn, 1950), p. 383.

Conclusion

89

but fundamentally his method of analysing it is sound and materiahstic (pp. 3iff. above). It is easy enough to see the shortcomings and inadequacies of the anonymous author of the treatise de rebus bellicis. But we cannot dismiss as a mere crank inventor or as ‘ein phantastischer Weltverbesserer’ a man who beheved, however crudely, that social problems can be solved by the use of reason, that the splendour of the rich involves the violent oppression of the poor, and that social justice is a main and integral part of mihtary defence.

SIGLA C

Cod. Oxoniensis Canonicianus lat. misc. 378, ante a. 1436.

M

Cod. Monacensis lat. 10291, a. 1542.

P

Cod. Parisinus lat. 9661, ante a. 1443.

V

olim Cod. Vindobonensis lat. 3103, hodie in Sopraintendenza ai Monumenti, Tridenti, a. 1484.

Gelemus

ed. Notitiae Dignitatmn, &c., Basileae, 1552. Vide p. V supra

DE REBVS BELLICIS PRAEFATIO

Caelesti semper instinctu felicis Reipublicae uestrae commo¬ ditas, sacratissimi principes, opportunis est suggerenda tempori¬ bus, ut diurna consilia diurnis successibus conualescant. 2. Vnde, pro ingenii facultate, unum capitulum de largitionum utilitate in hoc libello composui, non quod istud tam inmensae utilitati 5 sufficiat, sed ut ex hoc mediocritatis meae documento praemisso in reliquis utihtatis possit fides ostendi. Proinde, ne promissioni fides accommodata uelut fallacem in posterum grauet, pro conscientia ueritatis ipse mihi poenam, praemii loco, si pro¬ missio secus cesserit, posco: ne me laus aut * prosequatur, cum IO abunde sit in hac parte indignationem pro audacia declinare. 3. Sed fas erit Reipublicae praesulem a priuato desiderata cogno¬ scere, cum rerum utilitas interdum eum lateat inquirentem. 4. Ergo nonnunquam inuitandi sunt qui recte quicquam sentire fuerint approbati. Nam ut ait optimus orator: ‘ad illum maior 15 pars hominum decurrit quem ingenio natura donauerit.’ In qua re est considerare semper quid unusquisque magis sentiat quam loquatur. Constat enim apud omnes quod nec summa nobihtas nec opum affluentia aut subnixae tribunalibus potestates aut eloquentia htteris acquisita consecuta est utihtates artium 20 in quibus etiam armorum continetur inuentio: sed ingenii tantummodo magnitudo, quae uirtutum omnium mater est, naturae fehcitate subnixa: quod quidem sine personarum electione uidemus accidere. Nam cum barbarae nationes neque facundia polleant aut dignitatibus illustrentur, minime tamen 25 a rerum inuentione, natura opitulante, habCntur alienae. 5. Quamobrem, clementissimi principes, qui gloriam bonae opinionis perpetua fehcitate diligitis, qui Romano nomini I.

7-10 uid praef p 24. n 2 10 aut CMPV om Gelenius ante Schneider lacunam statuit Maas qui praeniiiun uel honor ex gr supplet 14 nec te CMPV Gelenius corr Maas mente Schneider 26 alieni CMPV corr Gelenius sed cf Ind uoc et loc not s u generum inconcinnitas

92

5

10

15

20

25

30

de rebus bellicis

debitos affectus propagatis in filios, respicere dignemini quae nostris sensibus commoda prouidentia diuinitatis intulerit. 6. Vniuersis igitur seu militiam clementiae uestrae tractanti¬ bus, seu otio priuato contentis, uel terrae cultoribus, siue negotiatoribus mercium lucra tractantibus, pro saeculi uestri felicitate gaudentibus, consequemini ex hoc opere commoda singulorum, quorum species diuersis titulis opportunis quibus¬ que locis oratio subiecta testabitur. Referemus enim quemadmodum, remissa tributorum medietate, in robur proprium prouinciarum cultor habeatur: 7. unde etiam, ratione exactionum *, cessante contumeha hmitum, sohtudinem, erectis castrorum munitionibus, incola securus illustret: quo etiam pacto auri argentique modus sine dantium poena duphcetur, uel quo argumento, extra sohtam largitatem cumulatus honoribus, miles exultet. His etiam adnectenda credidi¬ mus quae bellorum necessitatibus terra uel mari in acquirendis uictoriis procurentur. Ex quibus, fastidii leuandi gratia, pauca machinarum inuenta referemus. Docebimus igitur uelocissimum hburnae genus decem nauibus ingenii magisterio praeualere, ita ut hae peream sine auxiho cuiusquam turbae obruantur. 8. In terrenis uero congressibus tahs est excogitata sollertia ut equMS siue aciem rupturus inuadat siue fugientibus ingerat se, tah arte muniatur ut semetipsum uerberans, sine cuiusquam magisterio, efficiat magnas hostium strages. 9. In fluuiorum quoque difficultatibus exquisita est noui pontis inuentio minime subuectioni onerosa. Hunc enim pontem, amnibus paludibusque necessarium, perpauci homines aut quinquaginta fere numero iumenta portabunt. 10. Ex his igitur quae rettulimus, iam futuris ut arbitror designatis, pace uestra dixerim, magnum uobis munus concessu diuinitatis apporto, asserens prouidentia pietatis uestrae armo¬ rum uigorem et cxmctam Rempubhcam praedictis remediis 6 consequimini PV 9-10 Referemus... habeatur om M 10 habeatur uid praef p $ n 2 ii lacunam statuit Maas qui deminuta ex gr supplet et post cessante Reinach 14 argumento MV Gelenius argento C argumenta P 21 turbae om C 22 eques CMPV Gelenius corr Reinach

de rebus bellicis

93

subleuandam; quae quidem non ignota stmt proximis uestrae clementiae, quos alia plura sollicitant a nobis aliena. Verum quia illos multa occupatos effugiunt, otio persuasus, non adeo a rerum commoditatibus peregrinus, utilia uestrae felicitati undique redacta conferre gestiui. Si quid uero liberius oratio mea pro rerum necessitate pro¬ tulerit, aestimo uenia protegendum, cum mihi promissionis implendae gratia subueniendum est propter philosopliiae libertatem.

5

DE INHIBENDA LARGITATE

Bellicam laudem et gloriam triumphorum utilitas semper IO imitatur aerarii, * ne profusa largitio semina magis excitet proeliorum. Quae si prouidentia maiestatis imperatoriae reprimatur, non ampHus bellorum florebit improbitas, sed collatorum potius defecta subsidia recreantur. Quod si largitio immoderata seruanda profuderit, opum delectabilitas nullo 15 uetustatis more poterit iam necessitatibus subuenire. 2. Quamobrem patrum nobis est pauHsper prouidentia referenda quam in rebus egenis habuerint, uel quae nunc in tanta facultatum Hcentia uideatur. Rectores superioris uitae non otiosis opibus, sed condendis potius moenibus laetabantur, 20 in quorum decorem uniuersam auri argentique materiam con¬ ferebant. Aeris quoque copiam in simulacris propriis ad uirtutis suae testimonia figurabant. Vt uero emendi et uendendi utihtas et ut facultas regiae largitati suppeteret, in aeris usum excultam pohtius terram et igne sohdatam, certis quoque expressionibus 25 figuratam, auro argento que reposito usui habuerunt; sed posteriores fastidientes priscae uflitatis inuentum formatos e coriis orbes auro modico signauerunt, quibus regum muni¬ ficentia et commutationum necessitas intactis collatoribus ute¬ batur. 3. Sequentior uero aetas, aeris redundante materia, 30

1

I.

2 uobis C Gelenius 8 prope CMPV corr Gelenius ii imitatur CMPV comitatur Scriuerius post aerarii lacunam statuit Reinach qui cauendum uero ex gr supplet 14 recreantur CMPV Gelenius ret Maas clausulae causa cf Veget mulomed I 50 i recreabuntur Reinach 19 uideantur (sc egenae) sugg Maas

de rehus bellicis

94

quam publicus iam moenium recusabat ornatus, diuturna ut prior monumenta meditata, aes ualidum ipso pondere pretiosius flgurauit: cuius species pro qualitate, ut diximus, ponderis diuturnior fuit, sed potentia regalis pro licentia speciem suam 5 tantum in auro argentoque signauit, quae pro reuerentia figurae, nullis usibus proficiens, ad honorem regium sacrata permansit. 4. Aeris autem materia, quae iam pro copia uiHor erat, ad dona militaria et uaria populorum commercia signa¬ batur. Sed ut uera fides dicta facilius prosequatur, formas et 10 species commodas atque pro temporibus diuersas, uariasque ueterum prouisiones exprimi colorum quahtatibus properaui. EX QVIBVS TEMPORIBVS PROFVSIO VEL AVARITIA COEPERIT

II

15

20

25

30

Constantini temporibus profusa largitio aurum pro aere, quod antea magni pretii habebatur, uilibus commerciis assignauit; sed huius auaritiae origo hinc creditur emanasse. Cum enim antiquitus aurum argentum que et lapidum pretio¬ sorum magna uis in templis reposita ad pubhcum peruenisset, cunctorum dandi habendique cupiditates accendit. Et cum aeris ipsius—quod regum, ut diximus, fuerat uultu signatum— enormis iam et grauis erogatio uideretur, nihilominus tamen a caecitate quadam ex auro, quod pretiosius habetur, profusior erogandi diligentia fuit. 2. Ex hac auri copia priuatae poten¬ tium repletae domus, in perniciem pauperum clariores effectae, tenuioribus uidelicet uiolentia oppressis. 3. Sed afflicta pau¬ pertas, in uarios scelerum conatus accensa, nullam reuerentiam iuris aut pietatis affectum prae ocuhs habens, uindictam suam mahs artibus commendauit. Nam saepe grauissimis damnis affecit imperia populando agros, quietem latrociniis perse¬ quendo, inflammando odia, et per gradus criminum fouit tyrannos quos ad gloriam uirtutis tuae produxit magis quam succendit audacia. 4. Erit igitur curae prudentiae tuae, optime I.

tit CEPERIT CMPV COEPERIT Gelenius COEPERAT Reinach praef p $ n 2

29 uid

de rebus bellicis

95

imperator, repressa largitate et collatori prospicere et in poste¬ rum nomims tui gloriam propagare. 5. Denique paulisper felicium temporum reuolue memoriam et antiquae paupertatis famosa regna considera, quae agros colere et abstinere opibus norant, qua haec honoris laude per onme aeuum frugahtas incorrupta commendet. Certe aurea nuncupamus quae aurum penitus non habebant.

5

DE FRAVDE ET CORRECTIONE MONETAE

III

Inter damna ReipubHcae non ferenda, sohdorum figura, aliquantorum fraudibus deprauata, diuersa populos ratione solhcitat et regiae maiestatis imaginem, dum per monetae 10 culpam refutatur, imminuit. Ementis enim eundem solidum fraudulenta calhditas et uendentis damnosa necessitas difficulta¬ tem quandam ipsis contractibus intulerunt ne rebus possit interesse simphcitas. 2. Ergo huic quoque parti maiestatis uestrae est ut in oirmibus adhibenda correctio, ita ut opifices 15 monetae redacti undique in unam insulam congregentur, nummariis et sohdorum usibus profuturi, a societate uidehcet in perpetuum contiguae terrae prohibiti, ne commixtionis hcentia fraudibus opportuna integritatem publicae utilitatis obfuscet. 3. lUic enim sohtudine suffragante integra fides 20 monetae praestabitur, nec erit fraudi locus ubi nuUa est mercis occasio. 4. Verum ut qualitas futurae discussionis appareat, formas et magnitudinem tam aereae quam aureae figurationis pictura praenuntiante subieci. I.

DE IVDICVM PRAVITATE

IV

Ad haec igitur incommoda, quae prouincias auaritiaeas artibus uexant, accedit etiam iudicum execranda cupiditas, collatorum utilitatibus inimica. Nam hi, despecta reuerentia dignitatum, uelut mercatores in prouincias se missos existi¬ mant, eo grauiores quod ab his procedit iniquitas unde debuit I.

17 nummariis . . . usibus cf Ind tioc et loc not s u et

96

de rebus bellicis

sperari medicina; et tanquam sua [rebus] sufEcere non possit iniquitas, exactores in profligandis rebus buiusmodi dirigit unusquisque, qui diuersis rapinarum artibus collatorum uires exhauriant; uideHcet quasi parum notabiles haberentur si soli 5 peccarent. Quae enim ab his occasio fiscahum titulorum ilhbata peracta est? Quae conuentio sine praeda discessit? Ilhs tiro¬ num comparatio, equorum uel frumenti coemptio, expensa quoque moenibus profutura, sollemnia lucra sunt et uotiua direptio. Quod si prouincias casti et integritatis cupidi mode10 rentur, nec fraudi usquam relinquetur locus et Respubhca moribus ditata firmabitur. DE RELEFANDO MILITARI SVMPTV

15

20

25

30

Vl. Relatis, ut uisum est, ReipubHcae incommodis augustis prouisionibus merito repellendis, ad enormia mflitum alimenta ratione non incongrua prohibenda ueniamus, quorum causa totius tributariae functionis laborat illatio. 2. Sed ne tantae confusionis molem occupatio augusta fastidiat, breuius tam diuturni erroris exitum declarabo. Mihtaris ordo, stipendiis ahquot peractis, ubi ad quinque uel eo ampHus annonarum emolumenta peruenerit, ne haec diutius percipiens Rempubhcam grauet, honesta missione donatus uacans sibi otio gaudeat absolutus. In cuius locum posterior succedens totum numerum per certa temporum spatia expensis grauissimis releuabit. 3. Quod si numerosior miles de sequentibus schohs in decedentium locum uocatur, hic quoque pari HberaHtate faHo donatus abscedat, uel ad ahum ordinem cui irules deest locum supple¬ turus accedat. Quae res non solum expensis grauidam Rempublicam recreabit, sed etiam curas imperatoriae prouisionis imminuet. Animabit etiam plures ad mflitiam, quos ab ea stipendiorum tarditas prohibebat. 4. Huiusmodi igitur prouisionis utihtas in augmentum prouinciahum habet ueteranos regiis donis opulentos et ad colendos agros adhuc praeualentes I seclusi tit REVELANDO CMV 24 alio CMPV Geleniu aliorum Schneider sed cf Mulier (1911) p 231 alimonio Flower fort recte

de rehus hellicis

97

agricolas. Habitabunt limites, arabunt quae dudum defenderant loca, et laborum desiderio potiti, erunt ex milite collatores. 5. Verum quia nonnunquam bellorum ruina aut fastidio castrensium munerum deserta militia de summa integritatis intercipit, tab. remedio huiusmodi damna supplenda sunt, 5 scibcet ut centeni aut quinquageni iuniores, extra hos qui in matricubs continentur, habeantur in promptu armis exerciti et minori [ut minori], utpote tirones, stipendio subleuati, in locum amissorum, si res ita tulerit, subrogandi. His ita prouisis, et integritas secura manebit exercitus, et damnis non deerunt 10 matura et parata [in primis] subsidia. DE BELLICIS MACHINIS

VI

I. In primis sciendum est quod imperium Romanum cir¬

cumlatrantium ubique nationum perstringat insania et omne latus limitum tecta naturabbus locis appetat dolosa barbaries. 2. Nam plerumque memoratae gentes aut siluis teguntur aut 15 extoUuntur montibus aut uindicantur pruinis, nonnuUae uagae sobtudinibus ac sole nimio proteguntur. Sunt quae paludibus fluminibusque defensae nec inueniri facile queunt et tamen quietem pacis lacerant inopinatis incursibus. 3. Ergo huiusmodi nationes, quae aut tabbus subsidiis aut ciuitatum casteUorum- 20 que moenibus defenduntur, diuersis et nouis armorum sunt machinis prosequendae. 4. Verum ne qua difficultas in excitandis armorum generibus oriatur, imaginem tormentorum nihil a uero distantem coloribus adumbratam orationi subieci, ut sit facibs imitandi confectio. 25 EXPOSITIO BALLISTAE QVADRIROTIS

VIII. Exemplum babistae cuius fabricam ante oculos positam subtibs pictura testatur. Subiecta namque rotarum quattuor facibtas, duobus subiunctis et armatis equis, ad usus hanc I arabunt CMPV Arabum Gelenius

8 ut minori CMPV om Gelenius Reinach 22 exercitandis PV Smith (f titt seqq 6314

7 exercitii CMPV corr Gelenius ii seclusi 18-19 queant.. . lacerent tit EXEMPLVM CMPV corr W R H

de rebus bellicis

98

bellicos trahit, cuius tanta est utiHtas pro artis industria ut omni latere in hostem sagittas impellat, sagittarii libertatem et manus imitata. Habet foramina per quattuor partes, quibus pro com¬ moditate rerum circumducta et flexa, faciUime ad oirmes 5 impetus parata consistat. Quae quidem a fronte cochleae machina et deponitur celerius et erigitur subleuata. Sed huius temo, in quamuis partem necessitas uocet, cita et facfli conuersione deflexus erigitur. Sciendum est autem quod hoc ballistae genus duorum opera uirorum sagittas ex se, non ut aHae funi10 bus, sed radiis intorta iaculatur. EXPOSITIO TICHODIFRI

VIII

Tichodifrus quod est genus machinae, ex rei suae commoditate graeca appellatione uocabuli sumpsit exordium, eo quod per hunc facflior in murum paretur ascensus, ante baUistae semper ducendus incessum quo protectior eadem 15 balhsta operetur. Erit ergo huius quoque compositio uel fabrica utili et commoda inuentione praeparanda. Ergo hic idem tichodifrus non altior sed humihor fabricatur, ut intra se possit latenter incedentium celare uestigia. Qui duabus superimpositis cratibus fixoriisque confixis intra se tectos ab omni incursione 20 defendit, duabus sane rotis ad promonendam machinam latenter impulsus. Cuius axium extremitate(s) et frons necnon et su¬ perior latitudo fuscinis et lanceis armatur diligenter aptatis, ne aggrediendi cuiquam per uacantia defensore loca, id est su¬ periorem partem, tribuatur facultas. I.

EXPOSITIO CLIPEOCENTRI 25

IX

Parma, hoc est modicus chpeus, fixoriis minutis ad soliditatem sui dfligenter munitus, uarie habetur idoneus. Inter¬ dum enim operit gestientem, nonnunquam in fronte tichodifri oppositus, uel in temone suspensus, munit inferius latitantes ab incursu comminus uenientum. 6

I.

eregitur PV lo intorta CP in auram M intoxta V radiis eiaculatur Gelenius 2i extremitate CMPV Gelenius corr Scriuerius apuenientium CMuidpraefp 12

de rebus bellicis

99

EXPOSITIO PLVMBATAE ET TRIBFLATAE

Hoc iaculi genus, quod in modum sagittae pennis uidetur instructum, non arcus neque ballistae pulsu consueuit emitti, sed manus impetu et uiribus elisum in hostem comminus uadit, quod excipienti gemina ratione uidetur afferre perniciem. Aut enim perimit mfixum aut sine uulnere dilapsum et in terram 5 positum plantae calcantis infigitur, eo quod in partem quam¬ libet si fuerit conuersum, ex latere aculeo ex se eminente inferat uulnus. 2. Fit autem ex ligno in modum sagittae facto, cui ferrum subtiliter in formam uenabuli aptatum infigitur, fistula eiusdem ferri parumper extensa; supra quam modico interiecto 10 spatio, plumbo adhaerentes aculei, uelut tribuh, emergunt. 3. In summa autem parte eiusdem iaculi affiguntur pennae celeritatis causa, tanto uidehcet super easdem pennas rehcto spatio quantum digiti potuerint tenentis amplecti. X I.

EXPOSITIO PLVMBATAE MAMILLATAE

XI

Bene extensa et directa uirga accipiet in extremitate sui rotundum et in acumen deductum ferrum, simihbus locis in tribulata plumbo et pennis adhaerentibus, ut plumbi pondere et pennarum celeritate adiuta rotunditas teli facilius clipeos aduersarii et simihter obstantia ualeat penetrare. I.

15

EXPOSITIO CVRRODREPANI

XIII . Huiusmodi pugnacis uehicuh genus, quod armis praeter 20 morem uidetur instructum, repperit Parthicae pugnae necessitas. Sed hoc singuHs bene munitis inuecti equis duo uiri, uestitu et armis fferro dffigenter muniti, citato cursu in pugnam rapiunt, cuius posterior supra currum pars cultris in ordinem exstantibus communitur, uidehcet ne facilis a tergo cuiquam praebeatur 25 ascensus. Falces uero acutissimae axibus eiusdem currus aptan¬ tur, in lateribus suis ansulas habentes, quibus innexi funes pro tit otn P ET om Gelenius TRIBOLATAE CMV corr Scriuerius cf l 17 infra tit CVRRI DREPANI PV 22-23 uestitu ferreo et armis sugg ex gr W S Maguiness

de rebus bellicis

100

arbitrio duorum equitum laxati quidem explicant, repressi autem erigunt falces. QuaHa uero huiusmodi machinae funera hostibus immittant uel quas turbatis ordinibus strages efhciant, dicent melius qui usu bella cognoscunt. EXPOSITIO CVRRODREPANI SINGVLARIS 5

XIII I . In hoc curriculo, quod singularis equi tractu discurrit

quodque unius hominis arte regitur et uirtute protegitur, eadem est quae in priori curru armorum facies et ad repellenda tela et ad inferenda pericula. Nec distat a superiore quicquam machina nisi quod superior currus pro magnitudine sui duobus equis 10 tractus, a duobus etiam bellatoribus gubernatur. EXPOSITIO CVRRODREPANI CLIPEATI

XIVI . Machinae huius admiratio habet nouitatis ahquid: est enim a superioribus curribus quadam parte dissimilis. Hic enim posterior uehicuh pars uerberibus spontaneis ad incitandos equos et clipeis acuto ferro circumdatis uelut in propugnaculo 15 positis communitur. Et est priori quidem currui hac ratione dissimilis, quod hic non ut ibidem duos equos duorum etiam hominum, sed unius tantum sagacitas regit. A secimdo uero curru hac diuersitate secernitur, quod in iUo unus equus et pondus bellatoris subit, [dum ipsum equitem portat] * et 20 occulto temone iugum trahente minus amplectitur. 2. Hic etiam licet conuertere laxatis funibus exphcatas falces et ad perniciem hostium longius ab axe porrectas. Funis uero, quo laxato aut exphcantur falces aut represso super eosdem axes eriguntur, hgatur circulo haerenti catafracto in posterioris 25 lateris parte exteriore, per quod uestiti equi ad omnes telorum muniuntur incursus. EXPOSITIO THORACOMACHI

XV

I.

Inter omnia quae ad usum beUicum prouida posteri¬ tatis cogitauit antiquitas, thoracomachum quoque mira utOitate 19 seclusi et lacunam indicaui: uidpraefp 15 tit TORACOMACHI C 28 torachomacum C torachomachum P toracomachum V

de rebus bellicis

lOI

ad leuamen corporis armorum ponderi et asperitati subiecit. Hoc enim uestimenti genus, quod de coactdi ad mensuram et tutelam pectoris humani conficitur, de mollibus lanis timoris soUicitudo sollertia magistra composuit ut hoc inducto primum lorica uel cliuanus aut his sirruha fragilitatem corporis ponderis 5 asperitate non laederent; membra quoque uestientis inter armorum hiemisque discrimen tah solatio adiuta labori suffi¬ ciant. 2. Sane ne idem thoracomachus pluuiis uerberatus ingrauescente pondere adficiat uestientem, de Libycis bene confectis peUibus ad instar eiusdem thoracomachi faciem con-10 ueniet superinducere. 3. Hoc igitur, ut diximus, thoracomacho inducto, qui graeca appellatio(ne) ex tuitione corporis nomen assumpsit, soccis etiam, hoc est calciamentis, et ferratis ocreis inductis, superposita galea et scuto uel gladio lateri aptato, arreptis lanceis in plenum pedestrem subiturus pugnam miles 15 armabitur. EXPOSITIO ASCOGEFYRI

XVII.

Ne interdum necessario itineri exercitus fluuiorum, quod plerumque euenit, occursus impediat, remedium ad hanc rem et compendio facile et usu praecipuum repperit ingeniosa necessitas, quod tali ratione componitur: 2. uitulinis pellibus 20 Arabica arte moUitis—est enim apud eos praecipua confectionis cura propter aquam de puteis folhbus hauriendam—^his igitur, ut dictum est, dibgenter sutis, fiunt utres in magnitudinem trium et semis pedum, ita ut cum idem utres spiritu inflati tumuerint non extollant uterum, sed aequahtate quadam pleni- 25 tudo ipsa utrium spatia plana perficiat, ex quorum lateribus, loris subter adnexis, inuicem coUigantur, desuper autem una parte circulis exstantibus, ex altera immittuntur uncini. Et ita 4 scripsi inducta CMPV induto Scriuerius 5 clibanus Scriuerius 8 torachomachus CP toracomachus V 10 torachomachi CP toracomachi V II torochomacho C thoracomachus M toracomacho V thoracomacho P

tandem recte 12 appellatione M (coniectura ut uidetur) appellatio CPV Gelenius tit ASCOGEFRI CMPV correxi uid praef p 61 ASCOGEFURAE Scriuerius 21-22 sic interpunxi codd secutus

102

de rebus bellicis

in formam pontis adsociata partibus explicatur integritas. Sed hoc idem opus obliquo fluuio propter impetum meatus facilius usque ad alteram explicabitur ripam: quod, fixis in utraque ripa ferreis palis, et funibus ualidis in medio quidem sub ipsis 5 utribus propter incedentium sustinendum pondus in margini¬ bus autem firmitatis gratia desuper extensis, transeundi per fluuium nouo quodam et peregrino itineris apparatu intra breue temporis spatium praebebit liberam facultatem. 3. Admo¬ nendi praeterea sumus quod super utrium compaginationem IO cilicia sunt incedentium substernenda uestigiis, ne lubrica pelhum confectio insistendi deneget firmitatem. 4. In utraque tamen ripa erunt manuballistae dispositae, ne hostilis manus pontem operantibus impedimento consistat. EXPOSITIO LIBVRNAE

XVIII . Liburnam naualibus idoneam bellis, quam pro magnitudine sui uirorum exerceri manibus quodammodo imbecilhtas humana prohibebat, quocunque utihtas uocet, ad facihtatem cursus, ingenii ope subnixa, animahum uirtus impelht. 2. In cuius alueo uel capacitate bini boues machinis adiuncti adhae¬ rentes rotas nauis lateribus uoluunt, quarum supra ambitum 20 uel rotunditatem exstantes radii currentibus iisdem rotis in modum remorum aquam conatibus ehdentes miro quodam artis effectu operantur, impetu parturiente discursum. 3. Haec eadem tamen liburna pro mole sui proque machinis in semet operantibus tanto uirium fremitu pugnam capescit ut omnes 25 aduersarias liburnas comminus uenientes facili attritu com¬ minuat. 15

EXPOSITIO BALLISTAE FVLMINALIS

XVIIII . Huiusmodi ballistae genus murah defensioni neces¬ 30

sarium supra ceteras impetu et uiribus praeualere usu com¬ pertum est; arcu etenim ferreo supra canalem, quo sagitta exprimitur, erecto, ualidus nerui funis ferreo unco tractus 20 hisdem CP Gelemus hiisdem V

de rebus bellicis

103

eandem sagittam magnis uiribus in hostem dimissus impellit. 2. Hunc tamen funem non manibus neque uiribus militum trahi fabricae ipsius magnitudo permittit, sed retro duabus rotis uiri singuh radiorum nisibus adnitentes funem retrorsum tendunt, pro difficultate rei uiribus machinis adquisitis. 3. Bal- 5 listam tamen ipsam ad dirigenda seu altius seu humilius tela cochleae machina, prout uocet utilitas, nunc erigit nunc deponit. 4. Hoc tamen mirae uirtutis argumentum, tot rerum diuersitate connexum, imius tantum otiosi, ut ita dicam, hominis ad offerendam tantummodo impulsioni sagittam opera 10 gubernat; uidehcet ne si hominum turba huius ministerio inseruiret, minueretur artis inuentio. 5. Ex hac igitur ballista, tot et tantis ingenii artibus communita, expressum telum in tantum longius uadit, ut etiam Danubii, famosi pro magni¬ tudine fluminis, latitudinem ualeat penetrare; fulminalis etiam 15 nuncupata appellatione sua uirium testatur effectum. 6. His igitur, inuicte imperator, machinarum quoque inuentionibus communitcim potentiam inuicti duplicabis exerci¬ tus, hostium incursibus non ui solum et uiribus obuiando, sed etiam artis ingenio, maxime cum animi sagacitate per omnia 20 elementa machinas reppereris uahturas. Nam siue terra sint subeunda discrimina contra desperati hostis audaciam, falcatis curribus per aperta camporum fugientium agmina persequeris; siue murum subire temptauerit occulta temeritas, experietur balhstae fidem ante quam ueniat; aut si uictricem exercitus 25 cursum fluuiorum uspiam meatus impediet, ■[■ portanti pontis pecuharis succurret inuentio. 7. Quod si nauali bello terras fugiens maria hostis obsideat, nouo celeritatis ingenio terrestri quodammodo ritu rotis et bubus subacta fluctibus hbuma transcurrens restituet sine mora uictoriam. 8. Quis enim huius 30 uiribus resistet, quae et terrestris uehiculi nititur firmitate et habet de nauigii facflitate remedium? 9. Erit praeterea fulminahs balhsta fehcium limitum custos, quae quanto minus ad 18 communite CMPV corr Gelemus 26 portanti pontis peculiaris CP portanti ponti speculiaris MV portatilis pontis peculiaris Gelenius fort portati p p Maas

de rebus bellicis

104

armandam se uirorum ministerium quaerit, tanto est ingenii uirtute praestantior. Quicquid enim opis in ea numerosior manus afferre potuisset, id sibi artis ingenio dotata largitur. DE BELLICO APPARATV

XIXI .

5

10

15

20

25

30

Cum bellicus apparatus prouocet certamina, ne turba militum confusis ordinibus uirtus compressa minuatur, conueniet ducem spatia ternis agminibus ordinare, ita ut singula quaeque agmina duobus tantum uirorum milibus instruantur, ne compressa populositas, in perniciem propriam auxdiis abundans, suis copiis opprimatur. Conueniet tamen per glaciales euntem militem plagas et thoracomacho muniri et reliquis ad tutelam pertinentibus rebus, prout membrorum poscit utilitas, armari, ut et frigoribus sufficiat et telis possit occurrere, minori¬ bus sane clipeis assumptis: ne sit, quod usu plerumque euenit, pro armorum latitudine siluarum densitas inaccessa, et amittatur armorum mormitate refugium. Ad omnia tamen repentina subsidia militarem uiam leuibus portatum uehiculis ascogefyri comitetur auxilium, quo facilius et latior fluminum superetur occursus, et effugiendi trans fluuium, si res ita tulerit, facilitas offeratur. 2. Persarum sane gens, cui praeter ceteras nationes et dolus cordi est et corpori suppetit uirtus, quadratis est agmini¬ bus et maiori bellorum apparatu superanda. Vbi etiam machi¬ narum est omnis quam rettuHmus industria proponenda, quae et uiribus resistat et dolos callidae gentis refutet. 3. In huiusmodi igitur congressibus tichodifrus duorum gestatus ministerio uirorum protegat baUistam multum bellicis subsidiis pro¬ futuram. Sub ipsius ergo tichodifri tegmine latentes scutati usque ad uiciniam pugnaturi hostis adueniant, qui post detecti protegendi sunt ab omni telorum nube, eiusdem tichodifri tabulatis, ut meminimus, acutis ferreis commimitis. 4. Cum uero inclinatum hostium pondus fugae praesidia meditetur, falcatis curribus exercenda uictoria est, quibus fugientium 6 ducum CMPV correxi

13 sane CMPV ret Maas sine Gelenius

15 inormitate CMPV corr Gelenius 16 ascogephyri Mascogefiri PV ascogefrri C uid praef p 61 29 fort aculeis

de rehus bellicis

105

poplites incidantur. 5. Vbi tamen angustiora loca agmen nequaquam explicari permiserint, coartatam aciem longus machinarum siue tormentorum ordo circumdet, ne constrictum latus Uberior hostis infestet. Erit tamen utilior cura, si duplex animahum numerus ad subuectionem tormentorum ducatur, ut sit copia in dubiis rebus uel lassitudini uel casibus subuenire.

5

DE LIMITVM MVNITIONIBVS

XX I. Est praeterea inter commoda Reipublicae utihs limitum cura ambientium ubique latus imperii, quorum tutelae assidua melius castella prospicient, ita ut millenis interiecta passibus stabiH muro et firmissimis turribus erigantur, quas quidem munitiones possessorum distributa solhcitudo sine publico sumptu constituat, uigiliis sane in his et agrariis exercendis, ut prouinciarum quies circumdata quodam praesidii cingulo inlaesa requiescat.

10

DE LEGVM VEL IVRIS CONFVSIONE PVRGANDA

XXI

I. Diuina prouidentia, sacratissime imperator, domi

forisque Reipublicae praesidiis comparatis, restat unum de tua serenitate remedium ad ciuilium curarum medicinam, ut con¬ fusas legum contrariasque sententias, improbitatis reiecto Htigio, iudicio augustae dignationis illumines. Quid enim sic ab honestate consistit aHenum quam ibidem studia exerceri certandi ubi iustitia profitente discernuntur merita singulorum? 16 comparatis Gundermann apud Neher p 59 n i componatis CMPV (-na- P) compositis Gelemus

15

20

A TRACT ON DEFENCE PREFACE

Most Sacred Emperors: In order to ensure the successful reahzation of your divine poHcies, proposals should be put forward on suitable occasions for the profit of your Common¬ wealth, ever flourishing under Heaven’s inspiration. 2. Hence, in so far as my ability allows, I have composed a chapter in this tract on the subject of the Public Grants—not that this is an adequate treatment of that vast institution, but I hope by placing first this specimen of my modest talents to win your confidence in the utflity of what follows. Accordingly, to ensure that the confidence you repose in my promise may not become a burden on my conscience for the future, I claim no reward if my promise should not be fulfilled but rather a penalty instead, so certain am I that I speak truth. Let no praise or reward^ be bestowed upon me, for in this part of my work it is more than enough to escape your indignation at my presumption. 3. How¬ ever, it will be fitting for the Head of the State to learn ofdesirable reforms from a private person, as useful measures sometimes escape his inquiries. 4. That is why persons who have been proved to have correct ideas on any subject should occasionally be called upon, for, to quote an excellent orator, ‘It is to the man of natural gifts that the majority of men turn for counsel’. In this connexion one has always to examine what a man means rather than what he says; for it is universally agreed that in the technical arts (among which we include the invention of weapons) progress is due not to those of the highest birth or immense wealth or pubhc office or eloquence derived from hterary studies but solely to men of intellectual power (which is the mother of every excellence), depending as it does on a happy accident of nature. And in fact this is a quahty which we I.

^ A word with something like this meaning has dropped out of the Latin text.

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see granted without respect of persons; for although the bar¬ barian peoples derive no power from eloquence and no illus¬ trious rank from office, yet they are by no means considered strangers to mechanical inventiveness, where nature comes to their assistance. 5. Wherefore, Most Merciful Emperors, who in your ever¬ lasting fehcity esteem the glory of good repute, and transmit to your sons the affection due to the Roman name, deign to regard the useful projects with which Divine Providence has inspired my mind. 6. While, therefore, all men, whether they are members of the Imperial services,^ or persons content with the leisure of a private station, or tillers of the soil, or engaged as businessmen in the pursuit of commerce, ahke rejoice in the felicity of your age, you will learn from this work of mine the interests of each, the details of which interests you will fmd set out at the appropriate places under various headings in the subjoined discourse. I shall in fact describe how the taxes can be reduced by a half, thus restoring^ the provincial farmer to the strength that was his; 7. how, too, by bringingdown^ the imposts and halting the outrage offered to our frontiers the settler may be enabled, once fortifications have been erected, to develop uninhabited lands without anxiety; how, further, the amount of your gold and silver may be doubled without hardship to the taxpayer, and the soldier gratified by the heaping on him of rewards beyond your customary lavishness. To these suggestions I have felt it necessary to add the prerequisites for victory on land and sea amid the exigencies of war. From these I shall select for description a few mechanical inventions so as to sustain your interest. 1 shall, in fact, demonstrate how a particularly fast type of warship is able through a brilliant invention to outmatch ten ^ The word militia includes the civil service as well as the armed forces. 2 See Introduction p. 5, n. 2. 3 A word seems to have fallen out of the Latin text here.

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other ships, sending them to the bottom without the aid of a large crew. 8. Again, an ingenious contrivance has been worked out for use in engagements by land: a horse, when charging the line in order to break it or pressing upon fleeing troops, is equipped with a device by which he lashes himself on indepen¬ dently of any human control, thus wreaking great havoc among the foe. 9. Further, to counter the difficulties caused by rivers, a new type of bridge has been invented which is not at all burdensome to transport, for, essential as it is for negotiating rivers and swamps, it can be carried by a very small number of men and about fifty pack-horses. 10. The foregoing account having now given, I tliink, some indication of what is to follow, I beg leave to say that I am bringing you by divine permission a great boon, and I declare that through the foresight of Your Pious Majesties the vigour of your arms together with the entire State will be sustained by the above-mentioned remedies. True, these are not imknown to those closest to Your Clemencies, men harassed by many other cares to which I am a stranger. But preoccupied as they are, many points escape them; whereas I, prompted by my leisure and not being entirely unversed in the subject, have been anxious to collect and assemble from all sources what can be of use to your felicity. But where the exigencies of the case have forced me to speak somewhat freely on any point, I think I should be protected by your indulgence, for if I am to carry out my promise I must be assisted for the sake of the freedom of science. THE REDUCTION OF PUBLIC GRANTS 11.

The Treasury always imitates martial praise and the pomp of triumphs ★★★★★★ lest extravagant grants should rather arouse the seeds of war.^ If the foresight of the Imperial Majesty restrain these grants, the evil of war will flourish no longer, and the enfeebled resources of the taxpayers will be restored. * There is a lacuna in the text of this sentence, and the meaning of what remains is not clear; see Introduction, p. 26.

Translation

109

‘If, however, unrestrained grants dissipate what ought to be conserved, the ever welcome aid of riches will no longer be able to relieve our needs as it did in ancient times. 2. We must therefore recall for a moment the prudence exercised by our forefathers in their needy circumstances—or what seems prudence nowadays amid our unbridled resources.^ During our early history our rulers rejoiced not in riches left to he idle but in the construction of buildings, to adorn which they contributed their entire supply of gold and silver. Their stock of bronze, too, they fashioned into their own likenesses to testify to their worth. But in order that the convenience of trade and the means of royal largesse might be suppHed, in place of bronze they made use of clay skilfully refined and hardened by fire and stamped with recognized types: their gold and silver they laid aside. Later generations, however, dis¬ dained the inexpensive measures of olden times, and fashioned disks of leather which they stamped with a thin coating of gold. These disks served the bovmty of kings and the needs of com¬ merce without detriment to the taxpayers. 3. But in the follow¬ ing age the stock of bronze became abundant and was now rejected as a decoration for pubhc buildings. The men of this period, like their predecessors, had durable specimens in mind, and consequently at greater expense they coined bronze, whose very weight lent it strength. As we have remarked, coins of this sort were more durable because of their weight; but mighty kings, in their prodigal way, stamped their own portrait only upon the gold and silver, which portrait, inspiring awe for the figure it represented, served no useful purpose, but remained a perpetual tribute to the royal glory. 4. The stock of bronze, however, which was now cheaper owing to its abundance, was stamped for use in donatives to the troops and in the various commercial transactions of the peoples. In order that the truth which I have told may be more readily beheved I have caused the appropriate types and denominations of the various periods * A slight alteration of the text would make this sentence mean: ‘or what appear nowadays to be needy circumstances amid our imbridled resources’.

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together with the different devices of the ancients to be depicted in a variety of colours. THE DATE OF THE ORIGIN OF EXTRAVAGANCE AND GREED

II I. It was in the age of Constantine that extravagant grants assigned gold instead of bronze (which earlier was considered of great value) to petty commercial transactions; but the greed I speak of is thought to have arisen from the following causes. When the gold and silver and the huge quantity of precious stones which had been stored away in the temples long ago reached the pubhc, they enkindled all men’s possessive and spend¬ thrift instincts. And while the expenditure of bronze itself— which, as I have said, had been stamped with the heads of kings —^had seemed already vast and burdensome enough, yet from some kind of blind foUy there ensued an even more extravagant passion for spending gold, which is considered more precious. 2. This store of gold meant that the houses of the powerful were crammed full and their splendour enhanced to the destruc¬ tion of the poor, the poorer classes of course being held down by force. 3. But the poor were driven by their afflictions into various criminal enterprises, and losing sight of all respect for law, all feehngs of loyalty, they entrusted their revenge to crime. For they often inflicted the most severe injuries on the Empire, laying waste the fields, breaking the peace with out¬ bursts of brigandage, stirring up animosities; and passing from one crime to another supported usurpers, whom they brought forth for the glorification of Your Virtuous Majesty: it was not bravado that inspired them.^ 4. Therefore, Most Excellent Emperor, you will take care in your prudence to Emit public grants and thereby look to the taxpayers’ interests and transmit to posterity the glory of your name. 5. Wherefore, do you reflect for a httle on the story of those happy times, and ponder upon those famous kingdoms of antique poverty, which had learned to till the fields and abstain ^ The antithesis in this sentence is very obscure: see Introduction, p, 5, n. 2.

Translation

iii

from riches: remember how their uncorrupted frugaHty com¬ mends them to all history with honour and praise. Assuredly we term ‘golden’ those realms which had no gold at all. THE FRAUDULENT PRACTICES OF THE MINT AND THEIR CORRECTION

III

Among the intolerable mischiefs from which the State suffers is the debasement of the sohdus arising from the frau¬ dulent practices of certain persons. This inflicts hardship in various ways on the peoples of the Empire, and diminishes the prestige of the Sovereign’s likeness in that coins are repudiated through the fault of the Mint. For the unscrupulous cunning of the purchaser of the solidus and the pernicious dilemma of the seller have combined to introduce considerable difficulty into the actual contracts, so as to preclude the possibihty of straight dealing in business transactions. 2. Therefore Your Majesties’ correction must be apphed in this matter, too, as in all others: I mean, the workers of the Mint must be assembled from every quarter and concentrated in a single island so as to improve the utflity of the coinage and the circulation of the sohdi. Let them, in fact, be cut off for all time from association with the neighbouring land, so that freedom of intercourse, which lends itself to fraudulent practices, may not mar the integrity of a pubhc service. 3. Confidence in the Mint will there be maintained unimpaired thanks to its isolation; there will be no room for fraud where there is no opportunity for trade. 4. But so that the character of a future issue may be made clear, I have subjoined an illustration showing the types and sizes of the bronze as well as of the gold coinage. I.

THE CORRUPTION OF THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNORS

IVI . Now in addition to these injuries, wherewith the arts of avarice afflict the provinces, comes the appalling greed of the provincial Governors, which is ruinous to the taxpayers’

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interests. For these men, despising the respectable character of their office, think that they have been sent into the provinces as merchants, and are all the more burdensome in that injustice proceeds from the very persons from whom a remedy should have been expected. And as if their own iniquity were not enough, every one of them directs in the work of ruin Exactors of such character that they completely exhaust the resources of the taxpayers by various methods of extortion—evidently the Governors assume that they would be insufEciently dis¬ tinguished were they alone to transgress. For what opportunity afforded by the collection of the taxes remains unexploited by the Exactors ? When do they enforce payment of arrears with¬ out filling their own pockets ? As for the Governors, the buy¬ ing of recruits, the purchase of horses and grain, the monies intended for city walls—aU these are regular sources of profit for them and are the pillage for which they long. But were the provinces to be governed by spotless men, jealous of their integrity—then there will be no room left anywhere for fraud, and the State will be strengthened by new reserves of morahty.

METHODS OF ECONOMY IN MILITARY EXPENDITURE

Vl. I have now described, as I intended, the distresses of the State, which should rightly be removed by Imperial measures. Let us turn now to the vast expenditure on the army which must be checked similarly, for this is what has thrown the entire system of tax payment into difficulties. 2. But in case one as busy as Your Majesty should be wearied by such a mass of confusion, I shall explain the solution of this chronic problem briefly. A member of the forces, after completing some years’ service and attaining to a rate of five annonae or more, should be granted an honourable discharge and go into retirement to enjoy his leisure, so that he may not burden the State by receiving these annonae any longer. The next in rank will take his place, and at fixed intervals will save the whole company

Translation

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very heavy expenses. 3. But if the troops of the following drafts, who are summoned to take the place of those retiring, prove too numerous, let them also go into retirement with an equally hberal gratuity'^ or be attached to some other company where troops are lacWg, so as to bring it up to strength. This procedure will not only reheve the State, oppressed as it is by its expenditure, but will also diminish the worries of the Imperial Foresight. Further, it will encourage more men to enter the service, men who were formerly deterred by the slowness of promotion. 4. A provision of this kind will increase the population of the provinces by supplying veterans enriched with Imperial gifts who will still be strong enough to cultivate the land. They will hve upon the frontiers, they will plough the areas which they recently defended, and having won what they longed to obtain from their toil they will be taxpayers instead of soldiers. 5. But since the total strength is sometimes reduced by mihtary disaster or by desertions from the service arising from boredom with camp duties, such losses must be made up by some such remedy as the following: groups of 100 or 50 yoimger men, over and above those listed in the registers, should be held in readiness with some training, and maintained on a lower rate of pay (seeing that they are new recruits), to make up losses if circumstances should so require. When these provisions have been put into effect, the army will be maintained at full strength without difficulty and at the same time losses will be replaced in good time by trained reserves. MILITARY MACHINES

VI

Above all it must be recognized that wild nations are pressing upon the Roman Empire and howling round about it everywhere, and treacherous barbarians, covered by natural positions, are assailing every frontier. 2. For usually the afore¬ said nations are either covered by forests or occupy commanding mountain positions or are defended by snow and ice, while I.

^ The Latin word has been corrupted, but this was presumably its sense. 5314

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some are nomadic and are protected by deserts and the burning sun. Others are defended by marshes and rivers and cannot easily be tracked down; yet they mutilate our peace and quiet by unexpected forays. 3. Nations of this kind, then, which are protected by such defences or by city- and fortress-walls, must be attacked by means of a variety ofnew mihtary machines. 4. But in case any difficulty should arise in constructing these types of weapon I have attached to my discourse a very accurate coloured picture of the hurling engines, so that the task of imitating them may be easy.

SPECIFICATION OF THE BALLISTA QUADRIROTIS

VII

I. A type of balhsta the construction of which is visibly

revealed to your eyes by the accurate picture. It is mounted on four smoothly running wheels, and is dragged into action on them by two caparisoned horses yoked to it. Its utility is such, owing to its skilful design, that it is able to discharge arrows against the foe on every side with the free movement of an archer’s hands. It has slots in its four sides by which it is revolved and drawn round, as circumstances demand, and so with the utmost ease it remains ready for aU attacks. By means of a screw in front it is quickly lowered or elevated. But its pole is turned round by a rapid and smooth revolution to face what¬ ever direction is required and can then be elevated. It must further be recognized that this type of baUista is serviced by two men and fires arrows propelled, not by torsion, as in the case of other ballistae, but by a windlass.

SPECIFICATION OF THE TICHODIFRUS

VIII

The type of machine called Tichodifrus has derived its name from the Greek because its function corresponds with the meaning of that word: that is to say, a wall can easily be chmbed by means of it, and it should always be drawn in front of an advancing balhsta so as to give the balhsta in question I.

Translation

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more protection while it is working. Its assembly or con¬ struction, too, must therefore be based on a useful and fimctional invention. Accordingly, this same Tichodifrus is so constructed that it does not stand high off the ground, but quite the reverse, so that it can conceal the feet of those walking unseen inside it. It protects those covered within it from all attack by means of two fascines placed on top of it and the nails fixed in it, and is invisibly propelled by two wheels designed to move the machine forward. The ends of its axles and its front and upper surfaces are armed with tridents and lances carefully attached, so that no one is ojffered a chance of attacking through the places where there is no defender, i.e., the upper part,

SPECIFICATION OF THE CLIPEOCENTRUS

IX

A buckler, that is, a small shield, carefully strengthened with short nails to lend it soHdity, is considered serviceable in a variety of ways; sometimes it covers him who wields it, and sometimes it is set in front of the Tichodifrus or hung from the pole to protect those concealed below from attack by assailants at close quarters. I.

SPECIFICATION OF THE PLUMBATA ET TRIBULATA

X

This type of javelin, which the illustration shows fitted with feathers hke an arrow, is not discharged by the impulse of a bow or a baUista, but is hurled powerfully by hand and comes among the enemy at short range. The illustration shows that it brings destruction to the opponent in two ways. It either lodges in him and kills him or, if it misses and falls to the ground without causing a wound, it pierces the foot of anyone who treads on it, because no matter in what direction it is turned it inflicts a wound by means of a prong projecting from its side. 2. It is made from a length of wood fashioned hke an arrow. A piece of iron is fastened accurately on to it to I.

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Ii6

give it the general appearance of a hunting spear, except that the sleeve of this iron blade is somewhat longer. A short wayabove the sleeve prongs are affixed with lead, and project like caltrops. 3. At the other end of this javelin feathers are attached so as to lend it speed, as much space being left above these feathers as can be clasped by the fingers of him who wields it.

SPECIFICATION OF THE PLUMBATA MAMILLATA

XI

To the end of a trued and straightened rod attach a spherical piece of iron drawn out into a point, ^ with lead and feathers affixed to the same places as in the case of the Tribulata, so that the weapon, because of its spherical shape reinforced by the weight of the lead and the speed lent by the feathers, may be able to penetrate easily the shields of an opponent and such¬ like obstacles. I.

SPECIFICATION OF THE CURRODREPANUS

XII

This type of combat vehicle, armed as you see in an unusual manner, owes its invention to the exigencies of battle with the Parthians. This car, then, is swept into battle at full speed by a crew of two men, carefully protected by mail cloth¬ ing and weapons, and each mounted on a well-caparisoned horse. Its rear part above the chassis is defended by knives pro¬ jecting in a row, so that no one can easily mount it from behind. Further, very sharp scythes are attached to the axles of the afore-mentioned chassis, with rings upon their sides to which ropes are tied: these ropes are slackened to let down the scythes and tightened to raise them, at the two riders’ will. Those who know warfare from personal experience will describe better than I can what losses machines of this kind inflict upon the enemy and what slaughter they cause among broken ranks. I.

^ i.e. minaret-shaped.

Translation

117

SPECIFICATION OF THE CURRODREPANUS SINGULARIS

XIII

I. This chariot, which is drawn by a single horse and

guided by the skill and defended by the valour of a single man, carries the same armament, both offensive and defensive, as the previous chariot. It does not differ from the above machine at aU, except that the latter owing to its size is drawn by two horses and is driven likewise by two warriors.

SPECIFICATION OF THE CURRODREPANUS CLIPEATUS

XIVI . This astonishing machine possesses a certain novelty, for in some respects it differs from the chariots described above. For here the rear portion of the vehicle is equipped with auto¬ matic lashes to urge the horses on, and is defended with shields surrounded by iron spikes arranged as on a battlement. Further¬ more, it differs from the first chariot in that only one skilled driver (and not two, as in that case) guides the two horses here. From the second chariot it is distinguished by this point of difference: in the latter one horse both carries the warrior’s weight and since the pole carrying the yoke is out of sight, has less grasp.^ 2. In the present case, too, it is possible to turn round the scythes when they have been lowered by the slackening of the ropes and project a considerable distance from the axle so as to destroy the enemy. The rope which when loosened lets down the scythes and when tightened draws them up above the afore-mentioned axles is tied to a ring attached to the horse’s mail on the outer side of its hindquarters: the horses are defended against all missiles by being clad in this mail. ' There is an extensive corruption of the Latin text here and the meaning is very far from clear: see Introduction, p. 15.

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SPECIFICATION OF THE THORACOMACHUS

XV

I. Among all the inventions devised for military pur¬

poses by the ancients in their forethought for future genera¬ tions we have the Thoracomachus—a wonderfully useful article for reheving physical discomfort—which they invented to counter the weight and friction of armour. For this kind of garment, which is made to measure from felt to protect the human body, was worked out of soft wool by the ingenuity that comes of anxious fear, so that, when it had been donned first, a cuirass (or mail suit) or the hke would not injure the sensitive body through the friction caused by its weight. The hmbs of the wearer, too, will be adequate for their work when aided by this comfort amid the vicissitudes of war and weather. 2. In case the weight of the Thoracomachus itself should be increased when it is sodden with rain and should thereby hamper the wearer, it will certainly be advisable to wear on top of it a similar garment made of well-prepared Libyan fleeces to the cut of the Thoracomachus. 3. So when, as we have said, the soldier has donned this Thoracomachus (which has adopted this name from the Greek because it protects the body) and has put on socci, too (that is, boots), and iron greaves, with a helmet on his head and a shield and a sword fitted to his side and has caught up liis lances in his hand he will be fully armed to enter an infantry battle.

SPECIFICATION OF THE ASCOGEFYRUS

XVI

I. In case a river barrier should sometimes impede an

essential march of the army, as often happens, a very simple and extraordinarily useful remedy has been contrived by resource¬ ful Necessity. This remedy is devised in the following way: 2. when calf-skins softened by the Arabian process—the Arabs have speciahzed in the dressing of these, as they have to draw their water from wells in skin buckets—these skins, then, as I said, when carefully stitched together, form bladders three and

Translation

119

a half feet in length, such that, when inflated with air and dis¬ tended, they do not swell into a round protuberance. On the contrary, preserving a kind of equal tension, the bladders pro¬ duce level surfaces because of the very fact that they are fuU. They are tied together side by side by thongs fastened under¬ neath them: on top there are projecting eyes on one side and hooks on the other fitting into them; and when the parts are assembled thus, the whole is unfolded to form a bridge. This construction ydll be more easily extended to the opposite bank of the river if launched obhquely so as to parry the force of the current. If iron stakes are fixed on both banks and strong ropes are stretched beneath the skins themselves in midstream so as to bear the weight of those walking upon them, but above the skins on the banks so as to steady them, this contrivance will provide a ready means of crossing a river in a short time by a novel and irnfamfliar piece of marching-equipment. 3. We must furthermore be reminded that goat-hair mats have to be strewn over the interlinked bladders beneath the feet of those walking upon them, in case the shppery leather-work should provide an insecure foothold. 4. On both banks, however, hand-balHstae will have been deployed lest a band of the enemy should hinder those constructing the bridge.

SPECIFICATION OF THE LIBURNA

XVII I. A Libumian ship suitable for naval warfare, so large that human weakness more or less precluded its being operated by men’s hands, is propelled in any required direction by animal power harnessed by the aid of human ingenuity to provide easy locomotion. 2. In its hull or hold oxen are yoked to machines, two to each, and turn wheels attached to the ship’s sides; the spokes project beyond the circumference or rim of the wheels, and, striking the water forcibly like oars as the wheels rotate, work with a wondrous and ingenious effect, their impetus producing locomotion. 3. This same warship, however, owing to its massiveness and the machines working inside it, joins

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battle with such furious strength that it easily crushes and destroys all opposing warships that come to close quarters with it. SPECIFICATION OF THE BALLISTA FULMINATIS

XVIII

I. This type of balhsta, essential for the defence of

walls, has been found by experience to surpass all others in range and power. With an iron bow erected over the groove from which the arrow is discharged, a strong rope is drawn back by an iron hook, and when released fires the arrow with great force at the enemy. 2. The very size of the machine does not allow this rope to be drawn back by the strength of soldiers’ hands; but two men haul the rope back by pressing upon the spokes of two wheels, force being acquired by the engine pro¬ portionate to the difficulty of turning the wheels. 3. A screw alternately raises and lowers the balhsta itself, as required, so as to fire the missiles with a higher or lower trajectory. 4. But here is evidence of its extraordinary effectiveness: constructed as it is from so many component parts, it is controlled, for the purpose of simply applying the motive force to the arrow, by the agency of a single man at his ease, as it were. For the originahty of the invention would be diminished if a crowd of men were to attend to the servicing of it. 5. A missile, then, fired from this ballista, equipped as it is with so many ingenious devices, travels so much farther that it can even carry across the width of the Danube, a river famed for its size. Also, the machine’s pecuhar name of‘fulminaHs’ testifies to the effective¬ ness of its power. 6. Invincible Emperor, you will double the strength of your invincible army when you have equipped it with these mechani¬ cal inventions, countering the raids of your enemies not by sheer strength alone but also by mechanical ingenuity, parti¬ cularly when with keen perception you find machines that will be effective on all the elements. For if danger must be faced on land against the audacity of a desperate foe you will pursue his fleeing columns over open plains by means of the

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scythed chariots. If with daring that rehes on concealment he tries to approach a wall, he will feel the trusty balhsta before he reaches it. If river channels anywhere hold up the victorious course of your army, the unique invention of a portable bridge will come to your aid. 7. But if the enemy flees the land and besets the seas with naval warfare, victory will be restored to you without delay by a warship swiftly traversing the waves by means of a new speed device, for it is propelled by wheels and oxen as though it were on land. 8. For who will resist its strength when it has the firmness of a land vehicle and has the advantage of a ship’s easy movement? 9. Moreover, the Balhsta fulminahs will be the guardian of your happy frontiers: its superiority as an effective invention is in inverse proportion to the number of men whose services it requires to operate it; for the very ingenuity of its own construction bestows upon it whatever advantage a more numerous crew could have given it. MILITARY EQUIPMENT

XIXI . when the army with its equipment challenges battle, its effectiveness must not be diminished and constricted by such a crowding of the troops as throws the columns into confusion. It will therefore be advisable for the commander to marshal the soldiers in three columns with intervals between them in such a manner that each column may comprise no more than two thousand troops: otherwise, the crowded multitude, brought to its own destruction by the excessive numbers of its supporters, would be overwhelmed by its own forces. It will be advisable for the troops, however, when moving through icy regions, to be protected by the Thoracomachus and armed with the other pieces of equipment relating to their protec¬ tion, as their physical well-being demands, so that they can endure the cold and counter missiles, equipped with only small shields. This prevents—a thing that often happens in praaice—dense woods from becoming impenetrable owing to the size of the men’s shields, and a refuge from being lost

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owing to the cumbersomeness of their shields. TheAscogefyrus should be transported on light vehicles and should accom¬ pany the troops on the march on all emergency rehef ex¬ peditions, in order that a broad river barrier may be crossed easily and means of escaping across a stream may be provided if circumstances so demand. 2. Certainly, the Persian nation, which loves guile and possesses physical valour beyond all other races, must be overcome in square formation and with greater quantities of mihtary equipment. Against them, too, all the energy of the machines which we have described must be thrown in to resist the strength and counteract the tricks of a cunning nation. 3. In contests with them, therefore, the Tichodifrus borne by two men should protect the baUista which will thus render much assistance to your mihtary reserves. Troops bearing shields and hiding under cover of the Tichodifrus should come into the close vicinity of the enemy, when he is about to join battle. Then, when they are uncovered, they must be protected from every cloud of missiles, the platforms of that same Tichodifrus, as we have said, being defended by sharp iron spikes. 4. But when the bulk of the enemy wavers and considers taking refuge in flight, the victory must be pressed home by means of the scythed chariots which will hamstring the fleeing foe. 5. But when lack of space does not allow the colunm to deploy, let the long array of machines or hurling engines surround the crowded ranks to prevent the enemy from freely molesting the compressed flank. It will be a more advantageous arrangement, however, if a double supply of pack animals be brought to transport the hurling engines so that it may be feasible in a hazardous situation to replace those which are worn out with fatigue or have become casualties.

THE DEFENCE OF THE FRONTIERS

XX

I. Among the measures taken by the State for its own

advantage there is also the effective care of the frontier-works which surround all the borders of the Empire. Their safety

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will be better provided for by a continuous line of forts con¬ structed at intervals of one mile with firm walls and very powerful towers. These fortifications should be constructed without pubhc expenditure on the individual responsibility of the local landowners, with watches and pickets kept in them so that the peaceful provinces may be surrounded by a belt of defences, and so remain unimpaired and at peace.

ON REMOVING THE CONFUSION OF THE LAWS AND JUSTICE

XXI

I. Most Sacred Emperor, when the defences of the

State have been properly provided both at home and abroad through the operation of Divine Providence,’' one remedy designed to cure our civihan woes awaits Your Serene Majesty: throw hght upon the confused and contradictory rulings of the laws by a pronouncement of Your August Dignity and put a stop to dishonest Htigation. For what is so aHen to decent conduct as to give vent to one’s passion for strife in the very place where the decisions of Justice distinguish the merits of individuals? * i.e. it is Divine Providence which has inspired the author with the ideas outlined in this treatise: see Introduction, p. 25.

CRITICAL APPENDIX Praefatio: i. (c)aelestis V instintu V 2. capitulum post utilitateM libello: bello V indignatione MV 3. £zs om V z om V priuataM 4. opum: opium V 5. effectus V commodo V 6. leucra V quibuscumque Reinach enim: igitur V remissa retributorum P 7. per¬ lustret sugg Reinach largitatem: largitionem Reinach credimus V haec V cuiusquam: cuiquam V 8. cuiusquam: cuiquam V

hae: 9.

exquesita V perpauci: pauci C aut om M 10. multa: multum V utiha: italia C undique: cordique V implendi V CAP I: I. florebit bellorum M floruit P defectibihtas SmwmMS 2. con¬ dendis: condensis V luhtatis: utihtatis V Reinach 3. suam speciem P Reinach 4. culorum C CAP II: I, sed: sub P

et lapidum: ad 1. C

2. priuatae: prauitate V tyrannos V perduxit V

pretiosius quod habetur M

3. imperia: imperitia V 5. habeant P

trrannos corr in

CAP III: I. non ferenda: conseruanda C calliditas: cupiditas Reinach 2. opportunam V 4. magnitudines (= -em) C aure (= aurae) V CAP IV: I. iudicium et execranda M existimabant P existimauit V profligendia V dirigit huiusmodi P Reinach cupidi: auidi M 1

U

^

CAP V: I. meritore pellendis P 2. reuelabit P 3. inde cedentium PV indecentivnn M mihtiam: mahtiam V 4. uiusmodi rubricatoris neglegentia C defenderant: deferendam V 5. deerunt: dederunt V CAP VI: I. circumlatantium V

perstringit M

2. defensa V

3.

castrorumque C persequendae Mulier (1911) p 231 4. excitandis: excudendis Reinach a uero: auro V subiecti corr in subieci P CAP VII: I. in hostem: in hostes C Sed: scilicet Gundermann {ap Neher quod hoc ballistae: q. huius b. V baUistae hoc genus M

p 48 n i)

CAP VIII: f/f THICHODIFRI V ascensus a lin sup M lanceis: lancris P

i. sumpsit: supersit M superimpositos P

protexior C

incessum

necnon et: et om C

a

CAP IX: I. opperit Reinach

gestientem P

CAP X: I. conuersum: concursum V

2. aptutum V

CAP XII: I. Parthicae: in marg Q Curtius Hb ini P pugnam C CAP XIII:

exigunt P I.

a om V

efieciant M quidquid Reinach

citato in cursu

Critical Appendix CAP XIV: I. uehicuH posterior V explicatur V

125 2. pernicies V

ueheculi M

CAP XV: tit THORACONACTI sugg Salmasius cfNeher p 51 usum: aduersum Qelenius aut: et V ponderis om Reinach

Scriuerius

qui: cui Gelenitis

ex tuitione: exerutione V

CAP XVI: I. impendat P Reinach

Reinach Reinach

CAP XVIII: 2. funem: fmem V

Reinach

6. impediat V

assumpsisti V

quod: quid M

tumuermit V pontis om M spatium: statu M

2. praecipuum

in marginibus . . . extensis om

3. dirigendam M

7. obsidiat C

4. ita om

bobus M

CAP XIX: I. tantum: tamen M portatum: portarum C gressibus igitur P 4. meditatur Reinach 5. ne om M CAP XX: I. stabuli M

i. ad 3. induto

3. con¬

sane om Gelenius

CAP XXI: I. foris quae M

ADDENDA p. 2, n. 3: It would be possible to argue a case for the years 384-725 the date of the treatise, for Theodosius then recognized Magnus Maximus, the father of Victor, as co-Augustus. I doubt, however, if this date is correct. p. 26, n. 2: Mr. G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, who has kindly discussed with me a number of problems set by the Anonymus, suggests that largitionum at p. 91. 4 (the only place where the plural is used) refers specifically to the Treasury of the Comes Sacrarum Largitionum, and that largitio and largitas in the rest of the treatise refer to expenditure from that Treasury. This should have been developed in my Introduction. In capp. iv-v, of course, the Anonymous is concerned with the taxes collected and the monies spent by the Treasury of the Praetorian Prefect.

p. 32, n. 3: Mr. C. E. Stevens draws attention to a passage which will interest readers of cap. ii. i: it is Firmicus Maternus, de Errore Profan. Relig. xxviii. 6 ‘tollite, tollite securi, sacratissimi imperatores [i. e. Constantius and Constans], ornamenta templorum: deos istos aut monetae ignis aut metal¬ lorum coquat flamma, donaria uniuersa ad utflitatem uestram dominium¬ que transferte’, &c.

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INDEX VOCABVLORVM ET LOCVTIONVM NOTABILIORVM Selegi (i) nomina propria, (2) noces et locutiones Augusteae uel posterioris aetatis proprias, (3) uocabula uariarum artium propria. COMPENDIA cl. c.: tnech.: s.u.L:

clausulae causa. mechanica. si uera lectio.

Theod.: Codex Theodosianus (usa sum Gradenwitzii indice uerborum, 1925). Thesr. Thesaurus linguae latinae. Veg.: Vegetius, de re militari. Ablatiws: priori, 100. 7; maiori, 104. 21. Abstracta

(qvae

dicvntvr)

pro

antiquitas, 100.28; barbaries, 97.14; capacitas,

CONCRETIS

vsvrpata;

102.18; confectio, 102. ii; diuersitas, 103. 9; improbitas, 105. 18; integritas, 97. 4, 10, 102. i; medietas, 92. 9; mihtaris ordo, 96. 17; paupertas, 94. 23; populo¬ sitas, 104. 8; potentia, 94. 4; sol¬ lertia, 92. 22; utihtas, 91. 4, 5, 93. IO, 95- 19accommodo: promissioni fides -ata, 91. 8. aculeus, 99.7,11,fortasse etiam 104.29. admiratio, u. periphrasis. adsocio {mira syntaxi), 102. i. affectio: pietatis —, 94. 25; (p/.) 92. i. agrariae, 105. 12 (cf. Thes.). ahquanti (= aliquot), 95. 9. annona, 96. 18.

92. 23; pro -is industria, 98. i; imius hominis -e regitur {cf. unius ... sagacitas regit, 100.17), 100. 6; -is effectu, 102. 22; -is inuentio, 103. 12; ingenii -ibus communita, 103.13; -is ingenio, 103.20,104. 3. ascogefyrus {mech.), loi. xvi. tit., al. assero (= asseuero), 92. 31. attritus {subst.), 102. 25. augmentum: in — prouinciahum, 96. 30.

augustus (fere i.q. imperatorius), 96.12, 16, 105. 19. aut {fere i.q. et), 92. 28; cf. Thes., p. 1575 adfin.

ballista, vn, x, xvm, passim. bellator, 100. 10, 19. bellorum apparatus (= bellicus —), 104. 21.

ansula, 99. 27. apertus: per -a camporum, 103. 23; cf. Thes., p. 223. 34 sqq. appellatio: graeca -ne, 98. 12; f. loi. 12. Arabica ars, loi. 22. argumentum: quo -o (= quo pacto),

canahs {subst. masc., mech.), 102. 29. capacitas: in alueo uel -e (liburnae),

92.14; mirae uirtutis — {sens, dub.), 103. 8; u. Thes., p. 550. 44. ars: utihtates -ium (= utiles artes),

Chiasmvs: reuerentiam iuris pietatis affectum, 94. 24. cihcium, 102. IO.

91. 20; equus tah -e muniatur.

102. 18. capesco: pugnam-it, 102.24; u. Thes., p. 309. 71. capitulum (libelli), 91. 4. catafractum (= cataphractes), 100. 24.

circumlatro, 97. 13.

aut

128

Index Vocabulorum et Locutionum Notabiliorum

clipeocentrus, 98. ix. Ut. cliuanus (-iba- Scriuerius): lorica uel —, loi. 5; u. Thes.,p. 1343.4, i.M. clibanus. coactile (subst.), loi. 2. cochlea, 98. 5, 103. 7. collator, 93. 14, 29, 95. I, 27, 96. 3, 97- 2commixtio (= commercium), 95. 18. commoditas: Reipublicae uestrae —, 91. i; a rerum -ibus peregrinus, 93. 4; pro -e renun, 98. 3; ex rei suae -e, 98. 12. communio {uerh.), 99. 25, 100. 15, 103. 13, 18 (communite codd.);

semper cl. c.

dantes (= collatores), 92. 13. Danubius, 103. 14. decor (= ornamentum), 93. 21. defectus (= deficiens): collatorum -a subsidia, 93. 14. delectabilitas, 93. 15 {s.u.L). desiderium: laborum -io potiti, 97. 2. desuper {adti.), loi. 28, 102. 6. discurro, 100. 5; f. discursum, 102. 22 {cl. c.), sensu distributiuo euanescente. discussio {numism., = cusio), 95. 22; cf. Theod. xi. 16. 18 (a.d. 390), monetalis cusio, Thes., s.u. cussio. diuinitas (= deus), 92.

2,

Veg. ii. 21. diuinus, 105.

prouidentia

15;

commutatio (= commercium): -num

diuinitatis, 92. 2;

necessitas, 93. 29. compaginatio: utrium —, 102. 9. CoMPASATiws: tichodifrus non altior sed humilior fabricatur, 98. 17; cf. celerius, 98. 6; sequentior, 93. 30.

91. 3 {bis).

compendium: remedium -io facile {sens, dub.), loi. 20. confectio: — imitandi, 97. 25; lubrica pellium —, 102. II. CoNivNCTiws (et indicauws) : sunt quae . . . queunt et . . . lacerant, 97.17; cum ... prouocet {iteratiue), 104. 4, cf. 29; quocumque . . . uocet, 102. 16; cf. 103. 7 {sed indicatiuus, 104. ii); eo quod . . . paretur ascensus, 98. 13; cf. 99. 6; sciendum est quod . . . perstringat . . . et . . . appetat, 97. 12; cum {sensu causali) . . . subueniendum est, 93. 8 {s.u.L). consisto (= sum), 98. 5, 105. 20 {semper cl. c.). contigua terra, 95. 18. contractus, 95. 13.

102.

13,

conualesco: ut... consilia -ant, 91. 3. conuentio, 96. 6. copia {seq. inf): ut sit copia . . . casibus subuenire, 105. 6 {cl. c.). currodrepanus {mech.), 99 sq. xnXIV.

titt.

cf.

31;

cf.

(= imperialis),

effectus: miro quodam artis -u, 102. 22; uirium -um, 103. 16. elementum {terra et mare), 103. 21; cf. Veg. iv. 42. enormitas, 104. 15 (inorm. codd., cf. Thes.; at enormis, 94. 19, 96. 13). et {coniung. disparia membra): opifices nummariis et solidorum usibus profuturi, 95. 17; cf. Thes., p. 873. 27 sqq. et Tac. Dial. 10. 8, priuatas et nostri saeculi controuersias. exactor, 96. 2. excito: in -andis armorum generibus, 97. 22. expressio {numism.), 93. 25. extollo: ita ut . . . utres . . . non -ant uterum, loi. 26. fabrico, 98. 17. facies {sens, dub.), loi. 10; cf. 100. 7. felix: -cium limitum custos, 103. 33; cf 91. I. figuratio

{numism.,

= expressio),

95- 23fistula {mech.), 99. 9. fixorium

(=

claims), 98.

19,

25.

Ducange confert clauus uel fixorium: quo

aliquid

firmatiu:

in

lexica

Index Vocabulorum et Locutionum Notabiliorum Papiae (a.d. c. 1050); uox aliunde non nota. foramen {sens, dub.), 98. 3. formae et species {nummorum), 94. 9. fulminalis {mech.): ballista —, 102. xvni. tit., 103. 15, 32. functio: tributariae -nis illatio, 96.15; Neher confert Cod. lust. x. 22. 3 (a.d. 456), ad illationem fimctionis tributariae. funis: uaUdus nerui —, 102. 30; cf. Veg. iv. 9, tormenta neminis intenta, fuscina {mech.), 98. 22.

funibus

Genervm inconcinnitas: uictricem

exercitus cursum, 103. 25; fortasse etiam nationes . . . habentur aHeni, 91. 26 {codd.); aliter 98. 25 sq. Genetiws plvr. parttcip.: uenientum, 98. 29 {cl. c.). GeRVND. = INFIN. FVT. PASS., 93. I.

gestio, 93. 5; (= gesto), 98. 27 {cl. c.); cf. Thes., p. 1062. 39. grauidus: expensis -am Rempublicam, 96. 26. habeo: quemadmodum ... in robur proprium prouinciarum cultor -atur {s.u.l.), 92. 10; cf. prouisio in augmentum prouinciahum habet ueteranos. .. opulentos, 96. 30. ibidem (= ibi), 100. 16. idem: hic — tichodifrus, 98. 16; — thoracomachus, loi. 8; hoc — opus, 102. 2; currentibus iisdem rotis, 102. 20; haec eadem . . . hburna, 102. 23; eandem sagittam, 103. I. niatio, s.u. functio, illustro: sohtudinem . . . incola . . . illustret, 92. 12. imperator: optime —, 95. i; inuicte —, 103.17; sacratissime—, 105.15. imperium: grauissimis damnis affecit -a, 94. 27 {ad pluralem cf. Sidon.

Ep.,

129

I. 9 (a.d. 469), I, post imperii

utriusque opes euentilatas). impulsio {mech.), 103. 10. Indicatiws, u. coniunctivvs.

induco (= induo), loi. 4; cf. super¬ induco. industria: pro artis -a, 98. i; machinamm —, 104. 22. ingenium: -i magnitudo, 91. 21; -i magisterio, 92. 20; -i ope submixa, 102. 17; baUista, tot et tantis -i artibus communita, 103. 13; artis -o, 103. 20, 104. 3; nouo celeritatis -o, 103. 28; -i uirtute praestantior, 104. i. inlaesus, 105. 14. mstar: ad — eiusdem thoracomachi, lOI. IO.

integritas: deserta miUtia de summa -tis intercipit, 97. 4; — secura manebit exercitus, 97. 10; cf. 95- 19, 102. I. intercipio, 97. 5. inuentum: machinarum -a, 92. 18; priscae uilitatis —, 93. 27. iudex (= rector prouinciae), 95. 26. lana {pl.), loi. 3. latitudo: superior — (= superficies), 98. 22. hburna, 92. 19, 102. 14, 25, 103. 29. longius: in tantum—{expectes longi¬ tudinis) uadit, 103. 14. magisterium: ingenii -o, 92. 20; sine cuiusquam -o, 92. 24. magistra: sollertia -a (= docente), loi. 4. mamillata {mech.), 99. xi. tit. manubaUista {milit.), 102. 12. margo {fluminis), 102. 5. matricida {milit.), gj. 7; cf. Veg.,

Thes., Theod., Real-Encycl. meztus {fluuii), 102. 2, 103. 26. medietas (= dimidia pars), 92. 9; u. Thes., p. 557. 29.

130

Index Vocabulorum et Locutionum Notabiliorum

mediocritas mea (= ego), 91. 6; ^ Veg. iii praef.

patres (= maiores), 93. 17. pecuharis: pontis — inuentio, 103.27.

minor (= paruus), 104. 12. minutus (= paruus), 98. 25. modicus (= paruus, paucus): auro -o,

penitus (= omnino), 95. 7 {saepe in

93. 28; — clipeus, 98. 25; -o . . . spatio, 99. 10. moenia (= aedificia publica), 93. 20, 94. I, 96. 8.

Theod.). per: — quod (= q^uo), 100. 25. peregrinus: a rerum commoditatibus —, 93. 4; nouo quodem et-o appa¬ ratu, 102. 7. Periphrasis exempla aliqvot: Rei-

pubhcae neque . . . aut, 91. 24. Nova vocabvla {praeter nomina machinarum, ascogefyrus, clipeocentrus, currodrepanus, fulminalis, mamillata, plumbata, quadrirotis, tichodifrus, tribulata): cf. delectabilitas {s.u.l.), fixorium. numerosus: -ior miles, 96. 23; -ior manus, 104. 2. nummarius: -iis . . . usibus profutvni, 95. 17. obfusco, 95. 20. obuio: incursibus -ando, 103. 19. operor: (absol), 98. 15, 102. 22, 24; {trans.) pontem -antibus, 102. 13verborvm: magis post est positum, 91. 17; antiquitus separa¬ tum ab in templis reposita, 94. 15; (fi. 91. I, 95. 17 sq., 98. 18 sq., loi. 15 sq.

Ordo

Paronomasia: utres . . . non extol¬

lant uterum, loi. 25; comminus uenientes . . . comminuat, 102. 25; cfi. funes . . . funera hostibus immittant, 99. 27 sqq. pars (= res): huic quoque parti . . . est... adhibenda correctio, 95.14; fi. Veg. iv. 38; in qua parte naturahs philosophiae tota est adhibenda sollertia. Parthicus, 99. 21. parturio {mech., = genero), 102. 22. paruus: deest; u. minor, minutus, modicus.

uestrae

commoditas,

91. i; utihtates artium, 91. 20; colorum quahtatibus, 94. ii; soHdorum figura, 95. 8; rotarum quattuor fadhtas, 97. 28; fi. machinae huius admiratio, 100. ii {S.U.I.).

Periphrasis in designandis personis:

clementiae uestrae, 92. 3; pietatis uestrae, 92. 31; uestrae fehcitati, 93. 4; maiestatis imperatoriae, 93. 12 {cfi. 95. 10, 14); tua serenitate, 105. 17; ex hoc mediocritatis meae documento, 91. 6. permaneo (= maneo), 94. 7 {cl. c.). Persae, 104. 19. persona: sine -arum electione, 91. 23; fi. Vulg. Deuteron. i. 17, nulla erit distantia personarum, philosophia: -ae Hbertas, 93. 8. plenitudo, loi. 26. Pleonasmvs: in aeris usiun . . . usui habuerunt, 93. 24; origo hinc creditur emanasse, 94. 14; radio¬ rum nisibus adnitentes, 103. 4; quies . . . requiescat, 105. 13; remediimi ad . . . medicinam, 105. 17. plumbata {mech.): 99. — mamillata, 99. xi. tit.

x.

tit.]

pono: (iaculum) in terram positum, 99- 5populositas, 104. 8. post {adu., absolute): qui — detecti, 104. 27. praedictus: -is remediis, 92. 32. Praesens pro fvt., 93. 14 {cl. c.). praesul: Reipubhcae -em, 91. 12.

131

Index Vocabulorum et Locutionum Notabiliorum praeualens: ad colendos agros . . . -entes, 96. 31. princeps: sacratissimi -es, clementissimi -es, 91. 27.

91.

2;

pro (= propter), possim-, cf. indices ad Cassiodorum et Gregarium nensem in Mon. Germ. Hist.

Turo-

procuro: quae bellorum necessitati¬ bus (dat.) -entmr, 92. 16. prope (adu.), 93. 8 (codd.). propero (c. acc. c. infin. pass.): prouisiones exprimi. . . -aui, 94. ii.

si {cum coni, praes, insequente ind. fut. uerbi principalis), 93. 13, 96. 10, 103. 21, 24 (26, fort, scrib. cum V impediat), 28, 105. 5. simihs: -ibus locis in tribulata (= qui¬ bus in trib.) . . . pennis adhaerenti¬ bus, 99. 16. sohdo: terram igne -atam, 93. 25. sohdus {numism.), m passim. sollertia: taHs est excogitata —, ut..., 92. 22. species,

u.

formae et species,

propter (c. gerundiuo): — aquam . . .

spontaneus (= automatus, mech.), 100.

hauriendam, loi. 23; — inceden¬ tium sustinendum pondus, 102. 5. prospicio: quorum tutelae assidua ... castella -ent, 105. 9. prouisio: {sens, dub.), 94. ii; (pl.)

13subleuo: stipendio -ati, 97. 8. sui (= eius): ad soliditatem — . . . munitus, 98. 26; cf. 99. 15, 100. 9, 102. 15, 23, Justin. 37. 2. 3,

96. 13; curas imperatoriae -nis, 96. 27; huiusmodi -nis utilitas, 96. 29. pugnax: huiusmodi genus, 99. 20.

-cis

uehiculi

quadrirotis {mech.): expositio baUistae —, 97. vn. tit. quahtas, 94. 3, ii, 95. 22. quod: {c. indic, post uerbum sentiendi uel declarandi), 91. 18, 98. 8, 102. 8; {cum coni.), u. contvnctiws.

Kuehner-Stegmann,

2.

i

(1912),

598. 4sum: est considerare (= consideran¬ dum est), 91. 17. superimpono, 98. 18. superinduco, loi. ii. superpono, loi. 14.

tabulatum, 104. 29. terrenus (= terrestris): in -is uero congressibus, 92. 21. thoracomachus tit., al.

{mech.),

100.

xv.

vm.

tit.,

redigo: imdique -acta, 93. 5; -acti imdique, 95. 16.

tichodifrus {mech.), 98. 17, 27, 104. 24, 26. titulus: fiscaUs —, 96. 5.

regius (= imperialis), 95. 10, 96. 31. Repetitio verborvm: utilitas, 91. 4,

tribulata {mech.), 99. x. tit. (-bolcodd.), 17.

5, 7, 13, 20; tractantibus, 92. 3, 5; tahs... ut, 92. 22, 23.

tributarius, u. functio, turba (= nautae), 92. 21; cf. 103. ii. tutela: ad -am pectoris humani, loi. 3; cf. 104. II, 105. 8.

sane: {introduc, constructionem parti¬ cipialem), 98. 20, 104. 13, 105. 12; {coniungit sententias ut saepe in Theod.), loi. 8, 104. 19. schola {milit.), 96. 23. si {abundat): in partem quamhbet si fuerit conuersum, 99. 7.

uaco: -ans sibi, 96. 20. uagus, 97. 16 {s.u.l.). Variatio sermonis: quemadmodum, unde, quo pacto, quo argumento, 92. 9-14; teguntur, extolluntur.

132

Index Vocabulorum et Locutionum Notabiliorum locutione multi dubitaverunt; iam alter

uindicantur, proteguntur, defen¬ duntur, 97. 15-21. uel (explan.): compositio uel fabrica,

uita (== aetas): rectores superioris -ae,

98. 15; lorica uel cliuanus, loi. 5; in . . . alueo uel capacitate, 102. 18; ambitum uel rotunditatem, 102.

93- 19. uncinus, loi. 29. imde (= quam ob rem): 91. 3; cf.

19; cf. soccis . . . hoc est calciamentis, loi. 13. uel {fere i.q. et), 92. 14, 16, loi. 14. uestigium (= pes), 98. 18, 102. 10. uetustas: nullo -tatis more, 93. 16 {S.U.I.).

uictrix, 103. 25; u.

genervm incon¬

cinnitas.

uilitas: priscae -tis inuentmn, 93. 27. uis, uires: hostium incursibus non ui solum et uiribus obuiando, 103.19; f. Nep. Thrasyb. i, abit res .. . ad uires uimque pugnantium {de qua

locus alterum tuetur).

Theod. passim. unusquisque (= quisque), 91. 17. usus: in aeris -um . . . terram . . . -ui habuenmt, 93. 24; nullis -ibus proficiens, 94. 6; nummariis et sohdonmi -ibus profuturi, 95. 17. ut. .. non {sensufinali), loi. 4. utihtas (= officium, magistratus), 91. 4, 5, 93- IO, 95- 19-

Zevgma: ad mensuram et tutelam pectoris, loi. 2.

Simila tractat u.d. Aake Fridh, Etudes critiques et syntaxiques sur les Variae de Cassiodore, Goteborg, 1950.

Fig.

I. VARIO P. This picture stands at the beginning of Cap. I in CMP

■i'.-

.

Fig. II. MONOTAE P. At the end of Cap. Ill in CMP

Fig. III. At the beginning of Cap. VII in CMP

Fig. IV. TICHODEFRVS C. CLIPEO CENTRVS CP. At the beginning of Cap. VIII in CMP

Fig.

V. TRIBOLATA CM TRIBVLATA P. At the beginning of Cap. X in CMP

Fig.

vi. CVRRVS DREPANVS CM CVRRVS DRIPANVS P. At the beginning of Cap. XII in CMP

Fig. VII. At the beginnmg of Cap. XIII in CMP

Fig. VIII. CVRRO D REP AN VS CLIPEATI P. At the beginning of Cap. XIV in CP. In M the order of this and the next picture has been reversed

Fig.

IX. TOR A CO MACH VS C. At the beginning of Cap. XV in CP. In M the order of this and the preceding picture has been reversed

-