Aeneas Tacticus, Asclepiodotus, Onasander (Loeb Classical Library, No. 156) Hardcover – January 1, 1923

The first half of this volume contains a translation of the only surviving work of Aeneas the Tactician. The work has two claims to fame: 1) it is one of the few surviving examples of Greek literature that dates from between the "Great Greek Century" of the 400s BCE and the rise by the first century CE of the kind of Greek that historians refer to as "koine," the Greek in which the New Testament was written. So, for those interested in the history of the Greek language, it may be useful. But I suspect that most people who buy it will do so because 2) the work is probably the earliest surviving work on military tactics to which a fairly specific date can be assigned. Sun Tzu and other Chinese works of that type MAY be earlier but it's really difficult to assign specific dates to those works, because we can't always be sure, in Chinese literature, that the real historical figures for whom we have birth and death dates really did write the works that may have been "assigned" to them.Just because a work is the oldest surviving work of its type doesn't mean it's interesting, of course, and Aeneas' book is rather weird. There are plenty of ideas that Aeneas includes that he obviously thought up for himself, so this isn't really a book about the "state of the art." And though Aeneas's writing is perfectly readable, I wouldn't call it compelling. There is a more recent translation by David Whitehead, with good notes; I checked on Amazon and you can buy it new for about the same price as you could buy the LCL volume new, but then you wouldn't get the Asclepiodotus and Onasander (and you also don't get the original Greek) and you can't get a used copy of the Whitehead nearly as cheap as you can get the LCL used. Whitehead actually refers to the LCL version as a reliable source, so you wouldn't go wrong in buying it; I've compared the two translations and the differences are minimal.So what about Asclepiodotus and Onasander? They are both from a later period in history. Asclepiodotus is a bit of a bore, he's one of those kinds of people who explains things one way and then explains it another way, just in case you didn't get it. I can't imagine anyone reading him for pleasure. but his book is short and doesn't take up much of the volume. Onasander (mid-first cent. CE) is, on the other hand, not bad at all. He does occasionally say things that are self-evident, but then the people he was writing for (generals in training) were probably not terribly quick on the uptake about intellectual things. And Onasander does give you a pretty good idea of what a general did back in those days (the title of his book is "Strategikos" or "The General"). So, surprisingly the last part of the volume is probably the most interesting and if you're interested in Greek history or military history or both and want an account of how armies fought back in those days, that was written back in those days, this is a good bet.